Lenovo Y50 Fail

Lenovo Y50 Dead and Unresponsive

Richard Charpentier Mobile Internet, Notes from Rich, RLC Design, RV Park Web Design, Web Design 1 Comment

What’s the best way to draw me out onto my personal blog?  A tech failure sure ranks up there.  My Lenovo Y50, the Windows machine I purchased last year for testing client websites with?  Yeah, it’s currently down.  Down hard actually.  The hard drive decided to make grinding sounds yesterday afternoon, fail to boot, and the system attempted to boot off of the net.  Ugh!

Last night I looked up my original order for my Lenovo Y50.  Turns out I made the purchase on October 23rd of last year.  And incredibly enough, I actually bought the “In home service plan with accidental replacement” as well.  I never buy the extended warranties on my Mac products any more.  They just last and last.  But making a Windows platform purchase I did the smart thing.  I got the insurance.  Now comes the question, will it work.

The Lenovo Y50 Support Experience

Lenovo Y50 Fail

You’d think the grinding sounds coming from my hard drive would be enough….

This morning I set out on the journey of trying out Lenovo’s tech support call line.  The number provided at the time of purchase wasn’t exactly the right number.  I had options for IBM products (Think Pads and servers) and obscure options for Lenovo.  I ended up spending a fair amount of time going through voice prompts to hit 2, hit 3, and cycle back into the next queue to drill down for support.  So, the initial phone call to Lenovo?  I’d give it a 4 out of 10 for ease of finding where I’m going.

I am a strong proponent of Steve Krug’s book, “Don’t make me think.”  He talks about UI (user interface) and designing a simple to use experience for users in this tech world.  The menu system on my initial call to Lenovo?  It would not meet his criteria for a good user experience.  Frankly the only reason I didn’t hang up was because I am almost out of warranty and I have to get this resolved.

Once I finally got into the queue for actual Lenovo support I had a bit of a wait time.  But finally I got a gentleman named Bien.  We first had to go through all of the standard information.  My name, phone number, etc.  I had my receipt information ready, my shipping information, etc.  And we eventually got to my address and location, but I didn’t get the feeling that my old order information was immediately available to the support guy.

Finally we got into the support part.  My system tries to boot, pops up a searching for media note in the upper left corner, fails, and brings me to an alternate boot over IPv4 message.  A standard user would be perplexed.  Plus there’s the grinding sound the hard drive is actually making.  A pretty solid indicator of issues!

Finally Bien got us into the BIOS menu.  Nice.  Things don’t work like they did when I was a Windows Engineer….they’ve gotten more obscure.  But we got there.  And what did we find?  Hard Drive not detected.  Hmmmm…..what I suggested when we started the call.

Total call time?  34 minutes.  It says so on my iPhone.

Three business days to call me

So yes, we finally concluded the drive is not functioning.  And then we got to my service plan.  In home service, and accidental damage protection.  Well, nothing accidental happened.  The drive is toast.  Pretty simple.  So now it was time to schedule the in home service.

Lenovo Y50 Fail

A year old and already failing. Sad Lenovo, sad

Phone number, address again, and then a list of what happens if I don’t return the service guy’s call.  The service person has 3 business days to contact me.  If we don’t count today that means anywhere between now and Friday I’ll get a call.  And if the service tech takes their time I’ll be getting outside of my paid for extended service plan.  Of course, the Bien said that won’t happen, but we’ll see.  And I’ll post it here.

Sadly I have a meeting on Friday.  And I always like to demonstrate site development on my Mac and Windows system so clients understand everything works cross platform.  Now?  I’m figuring I’ll still be waiting for my support call.

In the end, I’m disappointed with the Lenovo Y50.  It’s literally about to be 1 year old since I first fired it up.  It is used about 1/10th the time that my 2.5 year old Macbook Pro is used.  Why is it my Mac laptops go for 4 or 5 years where Windows boxes just don’t have the staying power?  I don’t know, but I do know which platform I consider the most reliable.

I’ll update on the service as we go forward of course!

Comments 1

  1. Rich,

    Total cost of ownership is discussed from time-to-time, but people either don’t understand the concept or would rather not think about it too much. Another manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome for Windows/DOS users, I suppose.

    Good luck.

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