… and was quite impressed.

Wednesday evening, I called the support to report that I was not satified with my battery. I had lost 25% of its capacity over less than 8 months.

Thursday morning, I am recalled by someone from the technical service. They first say that the battery is no more under warranty – 1 year long. I guess they say so after checking when the battery was made or sold the retailer. That does not concern the end-consumer like me : the warranty only started when I purchased the laptop, and I still have 4 months of warranty ahead.

As they asked, I send them by fax the bill which proves that, thursday afternoon. Soon after, they recall me again, just to tell me that a new battery is going to be sent to me.

Friday morning, it arrived ! So far, so good !

Next time, I may test it again concerning this issue (not so terrible in fact, and I am reluctant to send back my laptop).

JC :: Sep.21.2008 :: Hardware :: No Comments »

When you want to do such a thing as upgrading the BIOS of your Thinkpad, read the instructions that come with the bootable CD flash utility.

If you think you did, read it again -  and do not interpret them.

It would avoid loosing time with a boot error like :

CDR101: not ready reading drive C

That occurs when you choose the CD player as a temporary boot device (Thinkvantage button and then F3), although it is required to really change the boot order within the BIOS menu (F2) and save this setting.

By the way, I really recommend a BIOS update if you are a happy Thinkpad T61 user : not only it fixes numerous issues with the Intel chipset, but it optimizes power management. I noticed that the fan management has been improved. It is most of time slower than before, so the laptop is more silent.

JC :: Sep.06.2008 :: Hardware, System :: No Comments »