Incase Lenovo Management is lurking;
I placed an order for a W510 BTO/CTO machine on 1/19/11 on the EPP, all indications on the order from Lenovo were claiming a ships within 8 business days. The initial ship date estimate when the order was fully accepted and funded was on 1/31/11 which was generally on time. About 5 business days latter I got an email indicating the ship date slipped to 2/9/11. Fortunately, I left some slack in my schedule, so I'm not hurting for this computer due to the delay.
The points I would make to Lenovo Management in my case is "under promise and over deliver", had I not left some slack in my schedule, I would be quite disappointed in my Lenovo experience (i'm mildly disappointed now), and might ultimately be disappointed yet until I get a confirmed ship date.
Currently the BTO/CTO ships within dates are 13 business days, and the Intel 160 GB Intel SSD (part of my machine) has dropped off the available configuration, but there was no indication in the order or subsequent communications that this was part of my delay. On a a BTO/CTO with Dell, a delay was accompanied by an explanation for the reason of the delay, so I would also say to Lenovo, an informed consumer is a happy consumer.
I will say in comparison, I have ordered Apple machines that were CTO/BTO that had shorter ship date estimates, and in my personal experiences the actual shipping dates were early. I will give Lenovo some slack, as the CTO/BTO with these machines have a lot more options than most Apple products.
