Lenovo

Lenovo

Basic information
Founded	1984
Legal structure	Public
Industry	Electronics
Official website	https://lenovo.com/

Lenovo is a Chinese PC manufacturer founded originally as a state-founded branch of a research institute called Legend in 1984. In 2005, they officially rebranded as Lenovo and bought the IBM computer division alongside the Thinkpad brand. Today, Lenovo has more than 77,000 employees and holds about a quarter of the Worldwide PC Shipments market.

In 2014, the company bought Motorola Mobility from Google for around US$2.91 billion.

Controversies

Hardware Lockout for Changes

Lenovo has, on various occasions and for various models, locked the hardware through BIOS in order to prevent unauthorized parts from being used. This can prevent a user from changing to a better wireless card, or using an aftermaket battery or even a battery for a different model of Lenovo computer. Hacks are available to workaround this limitation on certain models, such as the T430, but Lenovo has never offered an OEM method of removing this lock.

Suppliers accused of child labor

In 2020, The Intercept made headlines showing how Chinese manufactures like Lenovo have suppliers accused of forced child labor in Uyghur regions of China. The company later said it was ending relationships with these suppliers.

Disabling third-party batteries

A common issue where third party batteries were working perfectly fine but without being allowlisted they are just got suddenly disabled, and as a result do not charge or function. There is no error messages and the only way to know is to install Vantage software to see non-genuine battery warning. This is critical as perfectly working hardware that is slightly outdated by a couple of years is basically turned into e-waste because of this, and original parts are getting harder to come by with every passing day.

X1 Carbon series problems

The X1 Carbon series of laptops exhibits hardware durability issues and will fail to POST (Power-On Self-Test) if their WWAN Broadband card is replaced with one that is not included in Lenovo's vendor whitelist.

Main article: Lenovo X1 Carbon

Wording in their FAQs; "Is it safe to buy a used laptop or computer?"

Originally from this video: Lenovo wants you to stop buying used PCs because they may have viruses on them

Archived FAQ:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230325030633/https://www.lenovo.com/ph/en/faqs/laptop-faqs/used-laptops/

A few snippets:

Is it safe to buy a used laptop or computer?

In a word, no. Though many people have found inexpensive used computers that work just fine, the world of used laptops and computers can be a difficult one to navigate. People just looking for a good deal can often be swindled out of their money.

The computer could be slow, infected with a virus, or have damaged hardware and you might not realize this until it's too late. Buying a used laptop or computer is a gamble when it comes to computer safety.

Buying a used laptop doesn't only cause headaches. It might not even end up being financially feasible. The maintenance and repair costs that may be incurred due to viruses, malware, spyware and hardware malfunctions can add up quickly. Also, because used laptops have a shorter lifespan, you may have to pay to replace the laptop sooner.

Lenovo then responded to the video with:

"Thank you for calling this out, Louis! Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and we hear you. The FAQ page in question has since been taken down and will be reviewed to ensure it correctly reflects Lenovo's views on refurbished products. We know that smarter, more sustainable technology solutions are as big of a priority for our customers as they are for us, and we want to be clear that we encourage buyers to explore refurbished options from authorized resellers. For this reason, many Lenovo computers are designed to be easily serviceable and repairable, and Lenovo has set goals to improve the serviceability and repairability of our PCs even more. We hope that you continue to be part of the Lenovo community."

Broken Trackpoint

Many thinkpads were shipped with a buggy trackpoint driver, where the trackpoint would stop working and the only fix was restarting the system. This bug affected a wide range of products, but Lenovo ignored the issue for years and refused to help customers. In 2021 a user created broken-trackpoint.com which offered a windows tool that was able to effectively fix this problem. Lenovo sent their lawyers and forced it to be taken down.[1]

ThinkPad Thunderbolt firmware fiasco

Certain Lenovo ThinkPad models released between 2017 and 2019 experienced a flaw in the Thunderbolt firmware. Over time, this firmware version can cause irreversible damage to the SPI-ROM of the Thunderbolt controller, leading to the failure of Thunderbolt functionality and, in some cases, USB-C features.

List of the affected devices can be found here

Black underfill around BGA components

Lenovo uses a strong black underfill material, often referred to as "glue" around the corners of some BGA (ball grid array) components. The underfill adds strength and helps protect the chips from physical stress.

Users have noted, however, that the material is very difficult to remove. In some cases, attempts to take out these components can result in the pads being ripped from the board, making repairs more challenging.

Example of the black underfill being used on a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop