⚠️This article has been marked as incomplete. Sourcing or verifiability needs additional work.
#appeals channel in either Zulip or Discord to request removal.Articles must provide verifiable, credible evidence for their claims and avoid relying on forum posts, personal blogs, or other unverifiable sources. You can help by replacing weak citations with reputable reporting, corporate communications, receipts, repair logs, or independent investigative coverage that demonstrates the systemic relevance required by the Mission statement and Moderator Guidelines.
This article outlines the various anti-consumer measures used in the Lenovo X1 Carbon series of laptops. Some concepts may overlap with Lenovo's general practices, a Chinese-American multinational technology company.
Hardware-vendor lockout (BIOS whitelist)
Most models of the Lenovo X1 Carbon will fail to post if the user changes their WWAN broadband card to a WWAN card that is not on the Lenovo Vendor Whitelist[1]. If a user intends to use a WWAN card manufactured by another company, which are typically cheaper than the Lenovo factory-installed WWAN cards, the computer will not boot until the user removes the card. Evasion of these whitelists has been outlined in the ArchLinux wiki[1], but success is very limited.
The intent behind this vendor-lockout is ambiguous, and not well-documented officially by Lenovo.
Resulting cost for the consumer
Lenovo currently charges $298 USD to install a Quectel RM520N-GL 5G Sub6 from the factory[2].
Some used options of similar modems can, at the time of writing, be purchased for $150 USD[3]. 4G modems can be purchased for even less[4].
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "ThinkPad mobile Internet" - wiki.archlinux.org
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Screenshot or pricing options for WWAN card of Lenovo Laptop
- ↑ "Quectel RM520N-GL" - ebay.com - 17 Jan 2025 - Archived Page: https://archive.is/IkmZV
- ↑ "NEW Dell V8KN6 Sierra Wireless AirPrime EM7455 DW5811e LTE 4G WWAN Card" - ebay.com - 17 Jan 2025 - Archived Page: https://archive.is/uSubr