My upgrade kit came yesterday:

Order Number LENOVO0307899 payment confirmation 10/25

Order placed 9/28   Unit purchased June 30, 2009

2674CTO T400 with Vista Business License  4 gigs RAM and T9600 2.8 ghz C2D; 320 gig 7200 rpm drive.

I never got an email saying it had shipped and my status right now is the black bar again.

I am running Windows 7 now. The upgrade from Vista Biz 64 bit was fairly easy. I was required to uninstall several Thinkvantage programs like the hard drive protection, pres director and then also the ATI driver and a couple other non-Thinkpad things. The process took about 2 hours from opening the envelope to tweaked Windows 7. After the upgrade I ran the companion disk which is like a minimal version of the Thinkpad System Updater, and it added back in most of the drivers I had uninstalled. I then ran the Thinkvantage System Update which had carried over from the previous installation and it added back in a few more things. Networking initially was not working 100% right and it seemed that the Access Connections was clashing with the Windows 7 networking interface. I also had a couple unknown devices for a while. One was the Bluetooth but I reloaded the driver and BT worked after that. The hard one was the WAN Miniport IKEv2. It would not update the driver or uninstall. I went out on the net and found another person with the same problem and he solved it by just forcing a meaningless driver to load on the device. It does not work obviously but then you can uninstall the device and reboot. It did not come back and networking has worked fine since. 

I don't know much about this Lenovo Enhanced Experience but I think I am as well off as if I had waited until after 10/22 to buy my T400 with Win7 out of the box. I had my Vista Biz 64 installation (clean install upgraded from Xp Pro in mid-Oct anticipating getting Win7 right away) working pretty well after a lot of tweaking of the startup apps. The big thing that helped was stopping the Vista Sidebar from loading at startup. It seemed to interfere with Access Connections. I am very happy right now with my boot up and shut down times. Shut down is virtually instantaneous and startup is as fast as it ever was with XP Pro. The OS seems to respond very fast. I am comfortable with Win7 as I have been playing with the Beta and RC for quite a while now. I have been working with the machine all morning and no problems so far at all. The verdict: worth the wait. I am glad I did not jump the gun and go buy Win7 at retail.

I just want to say how disgusted I am by the whole process. In June I bought 2 lenovo desk tops, thinking that I was buying from a reputable, reliabel supplier. I registered for the upgrades as soon as the boxes arrived.

Mentor did not bother to invoice me until November, they took my money, and all  I can get from their website is 'awaiting fulfillment'.

In the UK I can order software at 1700, and have delivery the next day. How the hell can anyone justify taking months tp get this to me?

I also have not gotten any e-mails at all advising me of my order status, except when my card was charged on 10/25.

---

wrote:

OK, it seems my ordered 'Win 7 x64 upgrade' is on my way. I was just wondering:

I have two licensed copies of XP x64 Edition on my T500 now, next to CentOS x64.

This T500 came with Vista Business x64, but I kicked that off before even booting, and installed the multibooting OSes I wanted.

 

I'm prepared to replace one of the XP x64 Edition installs with the Windows 7 Upgrade disk, but I don't know what this 'upgrade' entails. Can I use it to install Win7 x64 cleanly, do a fresh install from DVD, or is it required to have Vista x64 or XP x86 on your SSD before installing?

---

I installed my retain Win7 upgrade on top of the Win7 RC.  Others in other threads have said they installed it on a completely clean drive.  The upgrade media does not appear to check for a prior installation of Windows.

JohnMoppett,

The upgrade program started at the end of June, but no media could ship until Oct 22 at the earliest.   In our case, orders began processing on the 22nd, and obviously it is taking time to clear not only the backlog of orders received and unprocessed between June and Oct, but also all the new orders that have come in since Oct 22.

I can see from all the comments just how frustrating this has been for many customers.  We are working with Mentor Media to reduce the time between when the card is charged and the upgrade kit is on the way.   I agree that a week seems like a rather long time.

We are also working with them to update the site functionality - obvious from many comments here, the product has shipped and arrived in some cases before shipping emails, or updates on the website.

I know you have been enormously patient so far, and would just ask that you bear with us a bit longer.

Best regards,

Mark

Mark,

I for one appriciate that you are responding here on behalf of Lenovo.

Me too, but is difficult to accept that orders seem to be going out in reverse order!!

Just got an email from Menor Media...

"Due to unprecedented demand, we are behind schedule in processing Windows 7 upgrade orders for IdeaPad And IdeaCentre systems. We expect to complete processing of your order by mid to late November. Once your order is ready, we will send you instructions to complete your transaction on-line. We apologize for the delay And appreciate your patience."

Anyone else get an email like this? And I guess it's a step in the right direction considering I haven't heard from them since my PoP was validated, but I must say that I've been very disappointed with the upgrade program. One would have thought that they would have prepared for "unprecedented demand".

i recieved the same lame email

they had months before the 2nd to get ready

Also some of us have been charged better than 2 weeks and haven't received it yet. I don't think it's fair to pay the money we did for shipping for the service we receive through UPS MI and USPS. There was plenty of time to prepare for this and should have been better handled all around.

So my credit card was charged on 26 Oct and after all the mess with the status update website (and the lack of an update therein) and the fact that MM didn't respond to a single one of my e-mail queries, I called MM on 4 NOV and spoke with a rep who told me that I could cancel my order and WOULD be reimbursed.  I pushed him on this and he confirmed the reimbursement would happen and that it would take 2-3 business days to show.  I got an e-mail showing my order had been cancelled the same day.

Naturally that reimbursment never happened.  I phoned MM again and they told me reimbursements are not possible from their end (I'm still not sold on this -- they can charge to my card but not credit?).  They pushed everything off onto Lenovo.  If I wanted a reimbursement, I needed to take it up with them.  Okay, I said, that's fine, who do I talk to at Lenovo?  MM couldn't tell me (not even a toll-free number).  I continued to push them on specifics, as I had the feeling this whole "it's not us, it's Lenovo" thing was avoidance.  They gave me nothing.  (Supervisors were naturally "out of the office" during my call, by the way.)

So I called Lenovo in spite of MM's stonewalling and the customer service experience was completely different.  After going through a few reps who were unsure what MM's intention was, I finally got to someone who, in spite of not knowing who in the hell MM intended me to find, said, "Send me your details, order number, etc., and we'll kick it around over here.  Someone has to know what to do."

In the end, it's just seventeen bucks, so I'll manage in spite of the outcome, but it's refreshing that when faced with a puzzler, Lenovo refused to put me through the runaround as MM did.  I give the new Thinkpad a hard time (e.g. the fact that I'm supposed to install a utility to disable those dumb browsing keys by the arrows -- since when do we install software to disable hardware?), but there's no doubt that Lenovo's service is far and away better than any other OEM I've ever interacted with.

The rep at Lenovo may not get anywhere, but at least he made an effort.  Thank you, Lenovo.