So, an update on my status, for posterity I suppose.
I've purchased two x220 laptops from Lenovo. Both of them had severe image persistence. For the first one, I was instructed to RMA and re-buy. For the second one, I tried sending it to the depot for repair, and it is still there with no ETA on when an screen may or may not be in stock. In some sense, this is a good thing: maybe whatever panel they get isn't part of a notional "bad run" of LCD's that ghost. The issue is, I'm currently out about $4,000 for a supposedly premium laptop, and it's been almost a month since I initiated my attempts to buy a new laptop from Lenovo.
Lenovo's customer service is terrible. The advice to RMA and re-buy was absurd, and sales staff configured the second laptop incorrectly twice before getting it right, they had to cancel the transaction. What kind of company doesn't immediately replace out-of-the-box failures with a product without this level of hassle?
I bought a thinkpad because I thought it WOULD NOT be a hassle. In exchange, I've gotten nearly a month of wasting hours of my time on the phone with a rotating door of "escalations" of my support calls, not to mention the loss of productivity involved in not having a laptop. I thought these were robust machines that would take a Linux install with minimal hassle and be a solid workhorse for years, backed up by an excellent warranty. That's all marketing. The attention to detail and customer service just isn't there at Lenovo. This whole experience has left me frustrated and disgusted. Maybe thinkpads used to be good, I don't know, this was my first thinkpad. I had really hoped for better.
