On or neaar the 15th of February, we decided to participate in GrupoCVA & Lenovo's demo program where resellers such as ourselves can purchase 2 Demo products per year at a reduced price.
We explained to the representative at GrupoCVA that we are the LinuxCabal, founded in San Francisco, California in 1996 and established in Guadalajara in 2005 and that our community service entity known as http://www.LinuxCabal.ORG is the center of the F/OSS (Free and Open Source Software) and GNU/Linux communities in Guadalajara and as such we are often invited to speak at colleges and Universities as well as Government functions on a regular basis. As you can see from our Web page., we are often quoted by newspapers and magazines and we often appear as guests at local radio programs to promote F/OSS as well as to let people know of our weekly install fest to which everyone with interest is invited to attend, free of charge.
We also explained to the representative that out commercial entity known as http://www.LinuxCabal.COM provides consulting services to the industrial community as well as to the Government of Jalisco and several well known and established local businesses.
As a result of IBM's commitment to GNU & Linux, it is no coincidence that our customers prefer IBM servers and Thinkpads.
In order to continue promoting ThinkPads we decided to avail ourselves of the Demo program in order to acquire the latest of Lenovo's offerings. The GrupoCVA representative was quite enthusiastic about the new ThinkPad SL series and convinced us to acquire one through the demo program. Though it was a new and unknown product for us in the ThinkPad Line we decided to order one based upon Lenovo's past commitment and dedication to GNU & Linux through the ThinkPad products.
We acquired the new Demo of the 18th of February and installed GNU & Linux. After several hours of wrestling with the new ThinkPad SL400 2647-5KU we decided that there were a major probems and went to the Internet to see what solutions might be available.
We learned that the SL Thinkpads do not make use of the ThinkPad modules provided by IBM and Lenovo in the Linux kernel as they are in reality “IdeaPads” internally therefore there is NO support for the special BIOS calls and ACPI calls and special features such as the FingerPrint Reader... Further, we learned that Lenovo has no intention of providing support for the SL series in Linux.
As if that was not enough, we discovered that this particular unit has very ittle volume in either Windows or GNU/Linux applications. With the voume set a maximum level, it is difficult to hear.
In short, we seem to be the proud owners of a demo product that convinces our clients NOT to purchase ThinkPads for GNU/Linux.
We immediately contacted the Lenovo representative at GrupoCVA to explore the possibilities of exchanging this ThinkPad that is not a ThinkPad for a real ThinkPad such as a R400, R500, T400 or T500 and of course assured them of our willingness to pay the difference. The Representative was quite friendly and sympathetic and explained that she would have to seek an authorization from Lenovo in order to accomplish the exchange. After 5 or 6 days of waiting she contacted us to inform us that Lenovo refused to authorize such an exchange.
This strikes us as being VERY different from what we had become accustomed to with IBM. One of the principal reasons we have given customers for paying a bit more for ThinkPads than for competitive products was the fact that IBM/Lenovo was behind the guarantee and that there was absolutely no better provider of of service on the planet.
I am hoping that you will reassure me that my expectations from Lenovo are justified and that Lenovo really does not want to charge me the price of a laptop to convince people not to purchase their products when we are in fact ready and willing to pay for a product that we can offer to the GNU/Linux community.
Sincerely
Ing. Richard Couture
Novell CNE, ECNE, MCNE
HP/Compaq ASE
Tel.: (52) (33) 3145-2638
Cel.: (044) 33 3377-7505
Web: http://www.LinuxCabal.com
E-Mail: rrc@linuxcabal.com