Steve Glendinning

Good call Lenovo!

Yesterday, Lenovo (with no prior warning) turned off the single biggest advantage of the Thinkpad software offering: ThinkVantage System Update.  What were you thinking?!

I’ve just reinstalled a fresh copy of Vista on my T61 (luckily on a new larger disk, so I still have the old install).  Two days ago, all I’d have to do now was download and run ThinkVantage System Update, which would find and install all the individual bits of software, drivers etc that make the Thinkpad offering so great.

Now to have the full “ThinkVantage experience”, I’d have to trawl through the lenovo support site, download and individually install over 20 separate components. Many of them insist on a reboot, so this would take a very long time.

Lenovo recently asked on their blog which of the ThinkVantage utilities they should concentrate development on moving forward. Lenovo: if you kill ThinkVantage System Update:

1. You may as well not bother developing ANY of the other ThinkVantage applications any more
2. I may as well buy a Dell at half the price

I don’t have the time to find and install all these individual components now, never mind regularly reading your support website to manually determine if I need to upgrade them.

Because I have work to do, without ThinkVantage System Update I’ll be running a standard install of Vista.  Just like I’d be running on any of your competitors laptops.

I’m not the only one to be disappointed by this:

• http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=367950
• http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=Special_Interest_Utilities&thread.id=4397
• http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=74929

Update (1st June 2009): After listening to the mountains of complaining customers, Lenovo has reinstated system update.

I’m trying to buy a new laptop from Dell, but they aren’t making it easy for me! I’ve got everything prepared: a great broadband service, budget for the laptop etc. All I need is for Dell to let me place an order for the actual laptop specification I want!

My old laptop is a Dell D600, so I’m looking at the equivalent D630. When I bought the D600 there were two display options: XGA (1024×768) or SXGA+ (1400×1050). I went with the higher resolution option, and it’s been fantastic.

Reading the product pages, the D630 also has two options: WXGA (1280×800) or WXGA+ (1440×900). I can live with the slightly lower widescreen resolution of 1440×900, but 1280×800 is just too much of a step down.

Unfortunately, this display option is missing from the UK “customise and buy your laptop” section. Only one option is listed, and it’s the low-res one:

A visit to the Dell USA website shows the option exists over there:

I don’t really want the hassle of ordering a laptop over there, getting it shipped over here, replacing the USA keyboard with a UK one…

Ah well, there must be plenty of other laptop manufacturers who WILL give me a high-res screen…