Thinkpads Still Rule - I Hope

This weekend I took my mind off the mess unfolding on Wall Street, and the rain outside my window by engaging in an overdue project to repair the LCD panel on my IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T43p. In the process I recalled why I've owned a succession of Thinkpads and why they represent better value than a lot of other notebook computers on the market. 

Even a computer as solidly constructed as the Thinkpad will break eventually, and mine was no exception.  In this case the LCD backlight was malfunctioning, sometimes starting up with an orange glow and sometimes refusing to work altogether.  Had the warranty still been in force I could have had it fixed in a day, but the machine was three years old and the repair would cost hundreds of dollars.  Fortunately, IBM provides complete documentation on their web site for how to fix it yourself, and there are third-party sites that go beyond IBM's extensive documentation.

The majority of manufacturers seem to think that their notebooks are too complex to be serviced by end users, or anyone outside the factory for that matter.  Go to the Apple web site and see if you can find instructions for anything more complicated than swapping a disk drive or upgrading RAM.  The Dell site is much better, providing instructions for repairs as intricate as replacing the system board.  But none go as far as Lenovo, which provides a several hundred page PDF on each individual model with detailed diagrams that describe how to get things apart.  More importantly, they provide helpful hints on puting it back together as well - something that I appreciated when trying to recall how a cable was routed or which size screw went in which hole.

An especially nice touch is the way the screw holes are labeled on the bottom of the machine.  Notice the icons next to the screws in the photograph, indicating which screws need to be removed when servicing the keyboard, installing RAM, etc.  These reinforce the information from the manual and present it right there where you need it.  And if you don't have a metric ruler handy to distinguish among the different size screws, a number next to each hole corresponds to a life-size diagram on the back.

In the Thinkpad line IBM estabished a practice of respecting its customers.  That practice appears to have carried over to Lenovo when it purchased the IBM business.  Now that Lenovo is completely independent of IBM I hope that practice continues.

Comments

[Turner]

I already have Lenovo notebook computer... It is really best!!