Almost all lenovo thinkpads have USB C problems

[exetras]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

That might be pushing it a bit, Lenovo assigned me a 65W power brick. But I'll definitely keep that one in mind.

The E595 need a Minimum of 45W to charge. So anything with a 60W power delivery rating will work no issues.

 

Bellow 45W it might function but not charge.

[panzersharkcat]

7 hours ago, Evanair said:

Well, My P52 is on the list, but really haven't had any issues with it.  Tho it could be because I only use it to swap between headphones on my Pixel and my laptop when working.
 

This DOES remind me of the HP wireless problem from 2007-9 where it "could" be a driver issue, or a card issue, or require replacing the entire motherboard under warranty. So many laptops to take apart.  Usually we just replaced the Motherboard to make it quicker - All because of a wireless issue.

I'm just glad my X1 Extreme and my old E480 are not on there. Not that I use the Thunderbolt ports on my ThinkPad. I only use it to charge if I forget my main charger at home.

 

11 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Strange. The two I have experience with (one possible before/just after the acquisition, and one that;s not that old) have lasted well. Yeah, dropping/knocking has cracked the sides of the case, but unless alli/metal, I do that to all the laptops.

 

In my experience, they've been alright. Some of the case screws fell out of my old IdeaPad but that was about the extent of the problems I had. Granted, that is a pretty big problem but not totally surprising for a $300 piece of crap. I had to replace the screen but that was very much my fault for tripping over the cable and causing it to fly off the desk.

With my E480, I accidentally broke the screw retention things on the back two screws. Again, also my fault. The only other problem was I had to stick with an older BIOS because Lenovo throttled the dGPU performance on it for heat and noise reasons. With the newer BIOS, the dGPU performs barely any better than integrated graphics.

Haven't had any issues with my X1 Extreme so far. Had RAM failure but that was because I bought no-name brand RAM at Fry's. (Pacific Sun Memory or something like that. It failed in five days.) Bought a stick of Samsung RAM and haven't had issues since.

[AkatsukiKun]

Well first gen Ryzen thinkpads looks to be safe. Thinkpad E485 with a R5 2500U owner here. 

[panzersharkcat]

40 minutes ago, AkatsukiKun said:

Well first gen Ryzen thinkpads looks to be safe. Thinkpad E485 with a R5 2500U owner here. 

Can't have Thunderbolt problems if you don't have Thunderbolt to begin with. Insert roll safe meme. Outside of something like a T430 as a project laptop (get me that classic keyboard), I'm likely going to go with Ryzen ThinkPads for any future purchases.

[Nementon]

Just saw that topic popping on the WAN show, let me correct some information

 

Quote

ThinkPad laptops from 2017 to 2019 reportedly contain defective USB-C ports.

False, they have defective thunderbolt firmware.
 

Quote

First reported by Notebookcheck, the problems are widespread enough for Lenovo to post a support page titled "Critical Intel Thunderbolt Software and Firmware Updates.

Yes, they had firmware issues, no hardware issues.
And yes, Lenovo in a lot of cases (after what I saw on Lenovo forum), fixed a lot of them by replacing hardware, but only because:

- Their support team is really bad according my personal experience (I contact them about thunderbolt issues and ask me to update my SSD firmware ...)
- They are bad to fix their own software bug.

If you have a Lenovo and encounter thunderbolt issues, the last firmware correct them.
If you are not able to update your thunderbolt firmware, due to their software bug, I've mitigated that issue: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/Thunderbolt-on-T470-does-not-work-after-BIOS-update-cannot/m-p/4575822#M138683

祝你们新年快乐 (づ ●─● )づ !

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

lol, that's a big oof especially considering the Thinkpad is worshipped by many for being indestructible... 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Twilight

[Sauron]

Dang, hopefully the firmware update is enough to fix it. I wonder how this is going to play out on Linux.

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Dang, hopefully the firmware update is enough to fix it. I wonder how this is going to play out on Linux.

As long as Lenovo actually publishes low-level details on what is wrong, you can most likely expect patches within days. There are a fuckton of Lenovo-laptops around in the Linux-community and plenty of enthusiastic and highly-skilled coders who will be more than happy to crank out a patch or two to make their laptops better.

 

That said, if Lenovo doesn't publish such details, the patches will have to be reverse-engineered and it might take a couple of weeks.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

As long as Lenovo actually publishes low-level details on what is wrong, you can most likely expect patches within days. There are a fuckton of Lenovo-laptops around in the Linux-community and plenty of enthusiastic and highly-skilled coders who will be more than happy to crank out a patch or two to make their laptops better.

 

That said, if Lenovo doesn't publish such details, the patches will have to be reverse-engineered and it might take a couple of weeks.

I hope it's that simple, sometimes firmware like this never ends up working properly

[panzersharkcat]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Dang, hopefully the firmware update is enough to fix it. I wonder how this is going to play out on Linux.

From what I've read on r/ThinkPad, it's preventative. If you're already encountering the problem, you're screwed and have to replace the mother board. Something about corruption of the ROM on the TB3 controller. See this thread and the ones linked at the bottom.

[TechyBen]

15 hours ago, panzersharkcat said:

I'm just glad my X1 Extreme and my old E480 are not on there. Not that I use the Thunderbolt ports on my ThinkPad. I only use it to charge if I forget my main charger at home.

 

In my experience, they've been alright. Some of the case screws fell out of my old IdeaPad but that was about the extent of the problems I had. Granted, that is a pretty big problem but not totally surprising for a $300 piece of crap. I had to replace the screen but that was very much my fault for tripping over the cable and causing it to fly off the desk.

With my E480, I accidentally broke the screw retention things on the back two screws. Again, also my fault. The only other problem was I had to stick with an older BIOS because Lenovo throttled the dGPU performance on it for heat and noise reasons. With the newer BIOS, the dGPU performs barely any better than integrated graphics.

Haven't had any issues with my X1 Extreme so far. Had RAM failure but that was because I bought no-name brand RAM at Fry's. (Pacific Sun Memory or something like that. It failed in five days.) Bought a stick of Samsung RAM and haven't had issues since.

Yeah. People forget... Apple don't do £/$300 laptops. Yet people complain the £/$300 Lenovo (or Dell, Asus/HP whatever) is "crap", while most of us with the £/$1000 versions are happy (though I agree, not perfect!). Not an excuse, just make sure apples for apples and oranges for oranges before pointing fingers.

[panzersharkcat]

Lenovo's statement says it's a problem with Intel's Thunderbolt firmware, not a problem with chip design.

[Kisai]

On 1/24/2020 at 7:40 AM, bcredeur97 said:

Our Latitude 7400 2-in-1's at work are by far the nicest laptops we've ever had for sure, but they have also had the most issues.

Things like:
Headphone jacks not working
Trackpads squeaking (? lol)
a few WiFi card failures too

also up until the latest BIOS, they physically got very hot on the left side (too hot, many complaints from our users)

 

Fortunately, Dell ProSupport is AMAZING. You call/chat them and next thing you know they are asking what address to send a tech or the part to NEXT DAY.

 

Headphone jacks requires installing the USB audio driver and then the system audio driver AND the mixer software, in that order. Windows update will download a working driver but it won't install the control panel to have it auto switch from speakers to headphones and back. This is a realtek issue and it plagues all dell systems.

 

Basically, if you plug in, or unplug an audio device you should see a popup asking "which device did you plug in" unless you previously dismissed it to never show again. It literately waits for you to hit OK before it switches.

 

And as for Thunderbolt firmware, I don't know how Lenovo managed to screw up the TB firmware, but the TB firmware is not something installed into the OS like USB firmware, it's something written to flash somewhere as it survives OS reimaging. Speculatively speaking, if a corrupt firmware can kill the TB3/USB-C controller, then that speaks to some incredible incompetence.

 

On a Dell, if the Thunderbolt3 hardware becomes disabled due to a bad TB flash, you just pull the bios battery, resetting everything in the bios, and somehow this makes it enable-able again and you can then flash it again. I don't know if that's something that would work on a Lenovo if the TB hardware stops working, but something to consider.

 

 

[mr moose]

15 hours ago, Twilight said:

lol, that's a big oof especially considering the Thinkpad is worshipped by many for being indestructible... 

 

It's hard to break something that is already broken.    Indestructible Reputation remains.

[hishnash]

On 1/26/2020 at 8:23 AM, TechyBen said:

Yeah. People forget... Apple don't do £/$300 laptops. Yet people complain the £/$300 Lenovo (or Dell, Asus/HP whatever) is "crap", while most of us with the £/$1000 versions are happy (though I agree, not perfect!). Not an excuse, just make sure apples for apples and oranges for oranges before pointing fingers.

This is very true, i think for apple some of it is the don't want to tarnish their brand and cut corners that would risk these issues so they insist on only making the higher end products.

[caldrin]

On 1/24/2020 at 1:25 AM, RejZoR said:

Lenovo is such shoddy garbage. Had one laptop and it was pretty much disintegrating in front of my eyes. I've literally never had so many absurd problems with any device in 20+ years. Not touching anything Lenovo ever again.

Not sure about their personal use laptops but their business ones are solid and good performers have ones here that are over 5 years old and still working fine.. other than this issue with thunderbolt I cant recall having any major issues with them and we prob have well over 10k Lenovo devices. 

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, caldrin said:

Not sure about their personal use laptops but their business ones are solid and good performers have ones here that are over 5 years old and still working fine.. other than this issue with thunderbolt I cant recall having any major issues with them and we prob have well over 10k Lenovo devices. 

I think build quality across the board has gone down with ultrabook's. One of the Dell techs was telling me that Dell is now soldering the SSD's in their ultrabooks, and there are no cooling fans.