[Thinkpad Tablet General] lmm112190:
Now first let me start of by apologizing to anyone who has had a good experience with The Lenovo TouchPad, or anyone who dose not want to here anything negative about the product, because what is to follows may sound like a horor story. (Sorry for the length)

I purchased the Lenovo Touch Pad 16gb, with pressure sensitive digitizer, and folio case (the one without the keyboard). I dont remember the exact dates but i ordered the above products (directly from the Lenovo website) at the start of September. I received the folio case in about a week and was supper excited. The case seemed on par with what i would expect, nothing to rave over but at the same time nothing to complain about. Upon receiving the case i checked online to see when i could expect the remainder of my order. To my surprise the estimated delivery date was late into October. Thinking something went wrong with the order i called the Lenovo sails department....several times. i was reassured that the date provided was a worst case scenario and i would receive an email conformation that my product had been shipped "any day now." The email never came until the last week of October, thankfully i received my tablet in a couple of days after.

I received my tablet on a thursday and spent the day setting it up with my personal preferences (as i have used several android products). The very first realization i had was the pen added absolutely nothing to the user experience. The note application that comes with the tablet is nice to show off but is virtually useless in every sense. I tried, at the time, every handwriting method of input and note taking application that i could find on the market. Needless to say nothing worked as i was hoping they would.

After setting up the tablet i let it charge on the factory charger from about 4pm to about 9am. I was a little shocked in the morning when grabbing it to test it out in the first day of class that the battery was only at about 70% charged. despite what i mentioned above about the note applications, the tablet performed as well as any tablet would have, I was able to browse the web, read the pdf copies of my books, send emails, etc. but as an engineering student i was hoping to get a little more use out of the pen then i actually did.

Saturday night i had some time to test out its media playback ability. i found some tv shows that i wanted to catch up online and decided my newly purchased tablet would be perfect for the job. upon starting the video stream (that the tablet had to struggle to finally load) i realized there was no sound being emitted from the speakers. I grabbed a pair of earphones and plugged them in only to find the sound coming from the earphones loud and clear. Thinking i missed a setting somewhere i checked and rechecked the system, adjusted the volume rocker up and down, tried everything i could think of, before trying the standard.....restarting the tablet. upon the restart i downloaded an audio test track to the tablet and found it would play from the one speaker on the bottom (landscape) of the tablet. confused, i chalked it up to a bug in Honeycomb. but after 20 mins of streaming my tv shows, while straining to hear what was being said, with the volume maxed out, all sound again cut out. again restarting the tablet seemed to solve the problem for a few minutes. over the course of the next couple days i came to the realization that the speaker did not work more often then it did. (i did find fix, to push down on the screen bezel above the speaker).

Sunday brought on a new issue, i could not get the screen to stay on/ turn on. after finally getting the device to stay on for more than 0.05 seconds i managed to turn all screen timeout settings off, that way the tablet would never sleep. but it did not matter, the screen would shut its self off. the wake/sleep button would often be unresponsive, if the screen would ever turn on i was not able to get past the lock screen. not being able to turn the tablet on long enough to restart it i was left with no other option than to sit the tablet on the shelf until the screen decided to light back up (normally around 4am). completely annoyed by the entire device i called tech support. Their answer, boot into a stock recovery menu and perform a factory reset....didn't solve anything (i was not expecting it to). after 3 more days of use i again called the dreaded Lenovo tech support and after several hours of arguing i managed to convince the technician that the device would need servicing.

A box arrived the next morning for me to place my tablet in and mail to a certified reapair facility. After 3 weeks of no word and no progress (as i was tracking the repair status online) i again called Lenovo. who after several hours of being transfered all over the company gave me a number to call the repair facility. I then managed to get the tablet put back together and mailed back to me so i could return it to Lenovo.

Then i had to arrange a return with Lenovo which took in total 9 hours of phone calls and arguing, as my 30 day full refund window had expired. Eventually i persuaded them to wave the restocking fee and give me a full refund on my order. the next day i shipped everything back, and was glad the entire ordeal was over....it was not over until last week when i finally received a credit on my credit card for the full purchase amount. I had already arranged with my credit card company that if a refund was not received by the first of the year that my credit card company would fully refund my purchase and open a case against Lenovo.

Wrap Up.

I had the device for a total of 7 days. in that time i became dissatisfied with every thing about the device, (other than the folio case). The screen was washed out and faded, the speaker was weak, the tablet struggled to open the app drawer with the addition of maybe 10 apps that did not come with the tablet, the pen was useless in every way imaginable, the sd card slot and full size usb which despite trying to use many times, I never was able to get working. The only pros i have for the device, is the back did not attract fingerprints, the slot for the pen worked great, the rotation lock button was a nice feature but the remainder of the buttons were only an annoyance. However there was no indication that the rotation had been locked and i found myself rotating my tablet and nothing happening. Thinking i had the rotation locked i would push the designated button, only to then lock the rotation, the device was sooooo slow i could not tell if the screen orientation was locked or if the tablet was still trying to rotate the screen. One last note: as being a personal device i never used the security features the Lenovo included for businesses, but all in all i had an absolutely terrible experience.