After purchasing my Macbook two weeks ago, I decided to put my Thinkpad X60 up for auction. After the auction closed, I got everything together in order to package and ship out the system. As with all the previous machines I sold on eBay, one of the first steps is to securely wipe my hard drive, then install windows from the system CD.
I manged to find all the documentation and accessories for my X60, but I looked high and low for the system disk to no avail. After talking to a coworker, I discovered that Lenovo no longer ships system CD’s with their computers. Lenovo expects people to keep the system partition. Formatting the system partition, is the first thing I do with any new laptop. I’m not paying to have 5GB of my hard drive clogged up with a copy of windows. 5GB is lot for a 60GB ultra portable (8.3%).
I called up Lenovo to order a new system CD for the X60. Amazingly, I was charged $51 for something, that by all accounts, should be provided with my computer. I asked the technical support person why Lenovo was no longer providing system DVD’s with their computers anymore, and he couldn’t give me a straight answer. I also couldn’t get a strait answer, as to why a replacement DVD costs $51.
Needless to say, I feel betrayed by Lenovo. I’ve been a huge supporter of Thinkpads for a long time, and I always trying to set the record straight when it came to overflow of anti-Lenovo FUD during the IBM -> Lenovo transition. Its simply unacceptable that manufacturers like Lenovo ship computers without an off-hard drive method of restoring the system.