Dealing with Lenovo

jrm@

Developer
Some Lenovo laptops have a BIOS bug that prevents many Linux distributions and FreeBSD from legacy booting from a GPT-partitioned disk. A hack/workaround is described in this mailing list post. There is some work to include the hack in gpart, but the real solution is for Lenovo to fix the bug.

If you care about this, please consider contacting Lenovo. The site gethuman.com lists customerfeedback@lenovo.com as a contact email. Also, http://www.headquartersinfo.com/lenovo-headquarters-information/ lists the Lenovo Headquarters Executive Team. Most of them have Twitter accounts. Some public tweets to them might have a strong impact. If you're providing feedback and you don't agree with Lenovo's practice of preventing you from installing your own wireless card, please mention that as well. There is also a petition.
 
Some of these models have had the bug fixed, so Lenovo knows there is a problem, and they know how to fix it. Owners of Lenovo computers: part of the premium price you paid for those systems is due to a reputation of quality. Hold Lenovo to that. Contact them and ask, politely, for them to support you as a customer by fixing their GPT booting bug. Point out that operating systems are adding specific workarounds for Lenovo systems, and mentioning them by name: "the Lenovo BIOS bug". Being famous for bugs is probably not one of their advertising goals.
 
To be fair, Systemax no longer manufacturers computers and I'd be very surprised if the other two, or any computer manufacturer for that matter, didn't have at least one part in it made in China or at least Asia. It just makes business sense today financially to do so.
 
From what I can tell, those laptops are also (mostly) manufactured in China. Maybe some of the high level parts are assembled elsewhere.
 
Let's not lose sight of the point of this thread, which is that whatever might happen in the future, there are people with buggy Lenovo systems right now. Most of these people are not in a position to immediately switch systems, even if they wanted to. These are the people who need to contact Lenovo and ask for a BIOS update. How Lenovo reacts to this issue could determine whether those people buy Lenovo machines in the future, too.

making anti Chinese comments isn't that friendly either
That is absolutely correct, let's remember that this is a global forum. Be respectful, and don't point fingers about trustworthiness when a quick search shows that the Chinese government does not trust Cisco and Apple gear.
 
Back
Top