Well, Lenovo lost a couple of sales today because of thier Free Windows 7 scam. Two co-workers came to me today asking laptop advise. They asked about Lenovo. They had thier eye on a couple of Outlet laptops.
I asked what they used thier laptops for and in the end, I told them to get a MacBook Pro from Apple's Outlet center. I could not recommend for them to get a Lenovo, despite the hardware specs being similar. A friend of mine bought a Macbook Pro about the same time I ordered my Lenovo. Here are our two experiences.
MacBook:
- Order Macbook
- Promptly recieved Macbook Pro
- Download two software updates.
- Got to work smiling 7 days after placing order.
Lenovo:
- Order Lenovo
- Recieved the Lenovo 1 week after my friend.
- Download over 50 updates between windows Vista and Lenovo. Several reboots, crashes, and frustration over two full days.
- Had Vista semi-stable 16 days after order. I still have some conflict with Power Manager starting properly.
- Order Windows 7 upgrade the day I got the Lenovo so I could be running a decent OS. A month after ordering, and I still and running Vista.
- Once I get Windows 7, I will spend a couple of days loading up and debugging that, and who knows when that will happen. Lenovo does not commincate with the customer ETAs.
So, if you have friends asking about laptops, which would you recommend? I had to recommend the Apple. My friend that ordered one got it up and running quickly. No 50 updates, no Vista, no frustrating wait for the Free (my @ss) Windows 7, no hassle of upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. He pulled his Outlet computer from the book, ran two updates, did one reboot, and was done. He been smiling for weeks, while I still don't have an entirely stable OS.
Actually, they have lost 3+ sales now. I have had thinkpads since 1997, but this will be my last. Between running all the upgrades, rebooting, Vista instability, paying for a free upgrade, waiting too long for said upgrade, and having to spend hours removing Lenovo's Virus-Like utilites, I have had enough.
When Lenovo has to cut staff, don't buy thier line that it is the poor economy. It will be becuase they lie to thier customers and treat them like crap. It will be like Compu-USA and Circuit City. Those companies didn't go under because of the economy. They went under because at the end of the day, thier customers were not happy with them.
Get the message Lenovo...
- Your customers don't like being lied to (Free should be Free, not $17).
- It shouldn't take months to get an Upgrade disk.
- Stop loading all the Message Center, Thinkpad Tool crap on, that does the advertising, and the free trails for your partners. No one wants to spend hours deleting total crap off thier machines. They want to get to work.