Question for any former Microsoft store employees, or M$ gurus

[njpaddy]

In Oct 2019, my wife purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 2in1 at a local Microsoft store. It came with 2 year warranty and support (1 year beyond Lenovo’s). As reluctant as I was to trust M$, the store employees were great. They were knowledgeable and helpful, setting it up to my wife’s liking, installing 365, etc. Unfortunately, six months later M$ closed all the stores. So much for 2-year in-person support. Earlier this year, the battery in her Lenovo went downhill. It’s now down to 30 min run-time on a full charge, I tried to order another battery online, but it didn’t fit. I took it into a computer repair shop. The tech spent 2 days trying to source a new battery for a 1.5 year old laptop. He was unsuccessful in finding one. He was as frustrated as I was, and even refunded the diagnostic fee.

I do have some knowledge of PC’s, having used them at work since the mid-1980s, owning home PC’s since 1993, doing computer installation/support for my office from the mid-90s to mid-00s, and building and rebuilding my own desktops since 2007. At some point my wife got into laptops, knowing my support for them would be limited. Windows problems or a virus I will attempt to deal with. Laptop hardware, no way. My wife has already resigned herself to buying a new laptop, and I’m fine with that. It just annoys me to let M$ and Lenovo off the hook for what appears to be a defective product

Any suggestions? I plan to reach out to M$ for laughs, but I have always found their phone support useless. The Lenovo warranty has expired, so Lenovo's off the hook for this one.

 

[c__port]

Do you have the Lenovo part number for the battery? You may have to remove the cover to obtain that, or your tech may have written it down for you. Superseded part number info should be available from Lenovo's free support. So far, I've been able to successfully locate and replace any Lenovo battery.

Don't give up just yet on the Lenovo. The internal boards are almost 100% Hon Hai Precision Industries (FoxConn), which is also the maker of most Apple IC components, and these are some pretty solid systems. There may have been some issue that was addressed with a firmware release, and it might be really simple to update the firmware and see it charge properly. Or it could be a bad battery. But certainly, someone has needed one of these batteries before now, and Lenovo can steer you into getting the correct one.

 

[EclipseRedRing]

I have used Lenovo laptops for several years and have never been unable to source a replacement battery even for a ten year old laptop. I suggest entering your serial number on the Lenovo web site to retrieve the battery part number which may have changed from your original battery if it has been superseded. You may be able to buy direct from Lenovo or use the part code to source elsewhere. Replacement is easy even for internal batteries - there will be a video you can follow on YouTube. Good luck.

 

[njpaddy]

Thanks for the responses so far. I haven't given up yet. I like a computer challenge as long as I don't lose her data. She claims its backed up. While my wife is disappointed, she's not down on Lenovo. Neither was the tech, who wondered if the model happened to be discontinued because of battery issues. I will let my wife look for a new laptop, while I try to resolve the battery issue. I just found it weird that a replacement battery for a laptop less than 2 years old can't easily be found. At least I have a quest for next week.

 

[Mempho]

Back in the aughts I bought a Thinkpad from IBM. It was wonderful, everything on it was an FRU (Field Replaceable Unit). Four years later, when that Thinkpad got too poky, I bought another one from IBM, faster but just as sturdy. Then I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad. Well, I did manage to put in an SSD but that was about it. A year ago the screen went out on that Lenovo and I replaced it with another new Lenovo Thinkpad. Nothing on it was replacable. Nothing. The case cracked in a few months and, as in your case, the internal battery shorted out too.

Sigh. Computers have become as disposable as cell phones. I back everything up to three different clouds and a local disk, and I budget for full replacements every two years. Hope your luck is better than mine.

 

[never-stop-learning]

Do you have the Lenovo part number for the battery? You may have to remove the cover to obtain that, or your tech may have written it down for you. Superseded part number info should be available from Lenovo's free support. So far, I've been able to successfully locate and replace any Lenovo battery.

Don't give up just yet on the Lenovo. The internal boards are almost 100% Hon Hai Precision Industries (FoxConn), which is also the maker of most Apple IC components, and these are some pretty solid systems. There may have been some issue that was addressed with a firmware release, and it might be really simple to update the firmware and see it charge properly. Or it could be a bad battery. But certainly, someone has needed one of these batteries before now, and Lenovo can steer you into getting the correct one.

^^^^^ +1 to this ^^^^^

Did you confirm that the Flex has a user replaceable battery?

 

[brianw]

Don't blame microsoft for Lenovo's downfall....They were just selling them like any other store.

I never had any luck with lenovo

 

[njpaddy]

Don't blame microsoft for Lenovo's downfall....They were just selling them like any other store.

I never had any luck with lenovo

Hi Brian. Hope you're doing well. Can't believe it's almost 10 years since our Brick House lunch with Rudy.

I don't blame Microsoft for Lenovo's battery problem. I've owned many pc's and laptops in 30 years. Failures happen. I'm just miffed at MS for giving us 2 years warranty and in-store support for the laptop, then closing all the stores 6 months later. I refuse to subject my brain to MS phone support, located somewhere on Planet Nibiru. Been there, done that over the years and always found it a waste of time. On the other hand, staff at the Bridgewater MS store were exceptional, which is why we bought the laptop at that store. Staff had the patience of saints to deal with my wife, configuring it to her liking and installing & training her on Win10 and the 3 yrs of Office 365 we also bought. I was very happy to be relieved of that burden, since I was still running Win7 and Office 97 on my home-built desktop at that time. I was so impressed with that store that I even upgraded my desktop, buying Win10, internal SSD, backup SSD's and other items at that store. I never would have considered ordering anything at MS on-line, and I never will.

Other than the battery problem, my wife likes her Lenovo better than Dell and HP laptops we've had in the past. There were reports sometime back with Windows updates causing problems with Lenovo, so I usually delay her updates by a month until I test them out on my desktop. Other than the battery issue, we have had no complaints with the Lenovo.

As to the Lenovo battery replacement, it appears that the original battery was replaced by another, which was replaced by yet another, that won't be in stock until later this month. Once confirmed, I'll order one. Original battery still works for 30-40 min, but plugged in it works fine. We're both retired, so it never leaves our house anyway.

Speaking of Microsoft, Win10 was supposed to be the last Windows. How nice of MS to announce Win11 will be out later this year and support for Win10 will be discontinued in 2025. I think between work and home, I've used every Windows since 3.1. In my mid-70s, I'm not looking forward to dealing with yet another.

 

[ackvil]

Don't blame microsoft for Lenovo's downfall....They were just selling them like any other store.

I never had any luck with lenovo

Agreed. The hard drive on my wife's Lenovo gave out about a month after the warranty ran out. Lenovo gave her a "deal": 15% off a number of laptops on their website. The replacement turned out to be a refurbished laptop. After about 6 months she would get an error message and the computer would reboot. This would happen about once a week. After a year the laptop would not boot. Lenovo's support was a joke.

 

[c__port]

All laptop failure stories are anecdotal.

I work on a lot of different brands of hardware, and the common thread is "My [Asus|Acer|Dell|HP|Compaq|Lenovo|MSI|Sager|Etc.] is the worst I've ever owned. I'll never own another."

In all of these systems, none of the hardware is proprietary. Each individual piece comes from a different supplier, from cpu down to the housing and power transformer. The suppliers are common among brands. Screens come from Samsung, AU Optronics, etc. Hard drives and SSDs come from WD, HGST, etc. Mainboards come from FoxConn, Shuttle, Asus, etc.

Construction, quality of mainboard, quality of screen and other components is going to be better in the corporate LOB products than it is in the consumer grade (aka Best Buy loss leader) line. If you pay more, you get better quality.

The most common failures are

#1 Hard drives. These WILL fail, without exception, sooner or later. Failure rates between different brands are only different by a microscopic margin. To believe that buying a laptop from a particular manufacturer protects one from hard drive failure is either ignorance, negligence, or both. But in no way can blame be assigned to the laptop producer. If you still have a hard drive in your laptop and you haven't created an image and don't use a daily backup strategy, you are negligent. The best possible thing you can do is replace the hard drive with an SSD, and continue imaging weekly and backing up daily.

#2 Battery. While these will fail eventually, this is not typically catastrophic. No data is lost, and recovery is usually quick and cheap.

#3 Screens. Kids step on laptops all the time. Almost everyone who travels drops or dings a laptop enough to break the screen eventually. In some cases, a replacement panel is $40, but the labor is somewhat intensive and specialized. This also is typically not catastrophic, and the laptop can still be used without repairing by hooking it up to an external monitor.

#4 DC Jack/Power supply. This used to be the most common, but almost every manufacturer has removed the jack itself from the mainboard and improved the design of the jack component. The power supply itself is easily and inexpensively replaced, and is pretty much something every user can do with a little research.

Beyond this list, it is amazing to me that laptops last a decade or more in many cases. People beat the daylights out of them. I've opened working systems to find dried coffee residue all over everything, and the system is still chugging.