As I promised, here is my status update on getting my WiFi problem fixed. I had to have it repaired three times to get everything working.
Repair number 1:
- Fri. June 22 - Courier delivered the shipping box. The supplied box was intended for notebook computers. The foam cutout area was too large to properly support the tablet. By using the packaging edge supports that the tablet came in I was able to securely hold it in the box. Also, the form that had to be filled out was geared towards PC's, not tablets running Andriod, so some questions didn't make sense.
- Sat. June 23 - Instead of scheduling a pick up, I decided to personally drop the box off at the courier's shipping centre, since I would be passing by there anyway.
- Mon. June 25 - Maybe dropping off the package myself confused the courier because it was delayed in transit due to a routing error, costing an extra day.
- Tue. June 26 - Lenovo service received the box at 8:20AM.
- Thu. June 28 - Courier attempted to deliver my repaired tablet in the afternoon but I wasn't home to receive it. A pretty good turn around on Lenovo's part; only a day or two to repair and ship.
- Fri. June 29 - Drove to the courier depot to pick up the package myself. The same notebook sized box was used but not the edge supports that I'd used. Just odd bits of foam were used to fill the gaps. The tablet was kind of loose but didn't appear to be damaged.
The repair report said that the fix was to replace the "System board/planar". The WiFi seemed to be working so I spent a few hours making sure that everything else was still okay. The last thing I tried was the external SD card slot. When I tried to insert an SD card, it wouldn't stay in. The slot's spring would just push the card back out. The latching mechanism was faulty. So I needed...
Repair number 2:
- Tue. July 03 - Canada Day meant that Monday was a holiday, so I waited until Tuesday to call Lenovo's service line. This time the service rep. said I had two options: 1. I could have it picked up and returned by courier, as before. 2. I could take it to a Lenovo authorised business partner that did warranty repairs, which might be faster. The rep. told be how to use bplocator.lenovo.com to look up a partner on line. It turned out there was a "Premium Partner" about a 5 minute drive from me, so I decided to take it there. When I dropped it off, they said to expect the repair to take 3 to 5 days.
- Fri. July 06 - Got the call saying the tablet was ready, so I drove over a picked it up.
The repair report said they ordered and installed a new mainboard but then the touchscreen stopped working. A cable had broken off the screen so they had to order and replace the LCD assembly. This added an extra day to the repair.
The SD slot was now working and WiFi still seemed okay, so I spent some time checking out everything else I could think of. Now I found that the GPS receiver was unable to see any satellites, ever (It worked with the original and second mainboards). I also noticed that the "Machine Type and Model" and the "System-unit Serial Number" were all zeros under Settings->About Tablet. They hadn't programmed the proper ones into the new mainboard. So that brings us to...
Repair number 3:
- Mon. July 09 - After getting an okay and RMA number, I took the tablet back to the business partner for repair.
- Thu. July 12 - Got the call that the tablet was ready. Drove over and picked it up.
Here's the repair report, verbatim:
Fault desc: GPS not working -found the gps antenna not connected -connected. Took unit outside and was getting a signal for about 1 minute, then it was gone and never came back. Called Lenovo support and they recommended that the software be reset to factory mode -done. Now there is no GPS test app. I also asked for instructions on re-entering the s/n and model -they weren't sure and that was normally done at their repair center. The customer can try unit. If it's still not working then it needs to be sent to Lenovo's repair centre. Lenovo support was surprised that a business partner was working on a tablet. As far as they knew, these should go directly to the repair centre.
Anyway, it turns out that the GPS is now working about as well as it originally was with the previous mainboards; that is to say, just barely, even with ICS (as many others have found). Everything else checks out to my satisfaction, as well.
I hope having zeros for the MTM and S/N set in the mainboard won't cause me any trouble in the future. Unless someone can give me a reason that they should be set properly, I don't really want to send the tablet in again.
It looks like Levovo needs to get their act together with regards to support for Canada. They should supply proper size shipping boxes for tablets and forms for Android based systems. And why did one service rep. tell me I could use a business partner, then the business partner happily worked on the unit, then was told by Lenovo service that they didn't think business partners should be repairing tablets?
