Lenovo Think Book 15 IIL Review.

 Hello, I am going to share with you my First Initial Experience on Lenovo Think book 15 IIL, It will be helpful for you to avoid most of the Issues during the setup. 

I had a requirement of the laptop for my blogging and personal setup, So I was searching the laptop from last one year, and from this, I came to know the good time to buy the laptop would be during Independence Day offers. So, this time I fastened my laptop search, and below are my requirements. 

The Laptop should consist of: 

Min 16 GB of Ram Considering future usage. 

Should have min 1TB SSD. 

Should have a graphics card. 

Should have a budget within 1 Lakhs. 

Should have a premium Look. 

Why I have not bought Dell? 

On searching all of this, I saw the above configuration in Dell was around 1 Lakhs 30 Thousand (Price during Aug 2020) in this we need to pay around 11k to 16k for the Windows 10 Os. I was very curious to use the Ubuntu OS, this was my childhood dream to use the TOP End Model with Ubuntu. Hence Dell does not provide that option because it ships the windows Os along with the Package. 

Why I bought a Lenovo? 

I searched in Lenovo and it also has the same problem and every model comes with the Preloaded Windows Os. Hence, I was a little bit worried then I did a little bit of research and came to know about the CTO(ie customized model), and here I can buy the Laptop without Os and I was happy. The next thing was all top-end models were in the ThinkPad, again I am using this model for my company provided laptop model. 

 Hence the alternate will be the yoga series, again those models are costly. I saw the Think book 13,14,15 CTO models are under my budget and hence I customized it from the Lenovo online store and had a conversation with the sales rep through the call. 

How to get offers from Lenovo Store? 

 Lenovo Stores will provide you some more offers if you purchase it within that EOD. So, remember if you purchase any laptop from it then you should call the customer care and get the help from the rep for coupon code, or else you will lose around 1.5K to 3k as an offer. Along with it I also got the 3k Flat as cashback as I was using the ICICI credit card. This will be processed after 1 month of delivery of the product. But the Problem with the CTO Model is it will take 6 to 8 weeks for the delivery. I was also ok to wait for the 2 months hence Ordered it. 

Initial Impression 

The Experience with the order placement was not good, I placed it as an anonymous user and when tried to save the order information to my profile, there was always an option to create the user instead of Sign In. Somehow, I am able to remember another email Id and saved the information to it. I received only the mail and not the SMS. When I clicked the order status link, it was not working till the order delivery it was only apologizing to me and not the status. The link was broken. 

They mentioned after 12 to 15 working days, we will receive when the order will be delivered to us from the NSDL Team. I waited and called them and obviously, the customer support mentioned they don’t know. 

Unboxing 

I received the laptop in 4 weeks, the outside package was horrible and inside it, there was a Lenovo packaging which was ok. 

Journey to Ubuntu 20.04 

The device came with the Dos, I was trying to put ubuntu, I was not successful on the first attempt after struggling Rufus software helped me to create the bootable pen drive and install it, to my surprise after installing ubuntu the touchpad was not showing up and not working. I was forced to use the external mouse. I contacted the Lenovo support they told this model was not tested on the Ubuntu or any Linux environment and the suitable Os was Windows. I went and searched on the Lenovo website for the Linux supported models, to my surprise there are very few models supported for the Linux. 

And the suggestion for the touchpad was to update the bios, and the bios was in windows and no other releases supported. 

Journey to Windows 10 

I was trying to install windows 10, I was a failure all the time with the driver not found. Later I managed to install from one of my friends. After Installation, the Lenovo support bridge was not identifying any drivers to install. I have tried with the driver pack 2019 and it worked. There was no issue initially. Later on, the next day I was not able to power on the laptop. I checked with the support team in Lenovo they always ask the serial number, I have told them a couple of times.  

They told me to send the invoice copy to some mail id and I did the same.  I asked why should the customer have to do this, also I have purchased the 3 years warranty before itself, again the support executive has no answer, this is what you need to follow sir for the warranty.

 My laptop was not powering on and every time they ask me the warranty and I was upset and I got a reply from the Lenovo, please send the clear copy of the invoice, first of all, they sent me a printed invoice, which was not clear on top of that I scanned and sent it again. This time I got a reply as the case is under verification. It's been more than 10 days and my case is still under verification. Every time I called the customer care and they mentioned 48hours for the 3 times in a row. 

How I fixed the Issue? 

For Fixing the issue with the power on, I reset the laptop and started it and updated the windows 10 to the latest version and installed all the recommended updates. This time the Lenovo bridge identified the drivers to be installed. I installed all of it. After sometimes the Wifi stopped working, with all the skills, I have found the issue with the battery settings and updated it. Then it started working. I have written this first blog from my laptop. I need to start using it more and evaluate the performance. I have to purchase the license for the full features working.

Recommendations.

I always recommend you to go for the licensed Os laptop to avoid such confusions with the drivers and Os. 

Also, check the Lenovo website for the ubuntu supported Products.

Happy Reading..