An interesting ThinkPad twist

My Lenovo ThinkPad T14s story got an interesting twist that I never experienced before that led to me owning a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 now.

The original plan

I decided to setup a Windows partition on my ThinkPad in order to make use of my eGPU and play some games. Mainly Cyberpunk 2077 and Diablo 4.

I tried to run the games on Linux using Steam and Bottles which worked but especially Cyberpunk was a bit unstable.

The Unexpected Discovery

So I installed Windows on a dedicated partition and in the initial setup screen of Windows I was greeted with the Microsoft login dialog that weirdly showed the logo of a small German company and the proposal in the E-Mail field also ended with the domain of that bespoke company.

I’m not too familiar with the different enterprise setup options of Windows but I suspected that this notebook still was part of some enterprise program.

The plot Twist

So I contacted the seller and asked what the problem could be. He replied and said he most probably forgot to remove this device in the company’s management software and told me to do this the next day.

I continued installing Windows without Microsoft account (there is a way to do this that involves running cmd.exe and executing some command that I forgot already)

Then, early afternoon next day, I got a really weird message. The seller asked me if it would be possible to revert the buy and if I could send the device back. Short reminder: after owning the device roughly 6 weeks. He said he sold it by accident and his project manager noticed this when he was trying to remove the device from the management software.

He also said he would provide support in finding an alternative device.

This raised a couple of questions in my mind:

• why does an employee of a company sell devices of that company using his private account? Can’t the company do this officially?
• do I even have any options? What if I refuse to do so (given the amount of work I already invested in setting it up and the quite attractive price)? Would they be able to remote-admin my laptop?

Finding the right resolution of the issue

Regardless if this transaction was legit or not I would have the problem in any case that my ThinkPad was registered with that company and if the seller would refuse to remove it from that management software than I’m at a very weird spot.

So I decided to search for an alternative ThinkPad and to revert the transaction. I could have tried to get more out of that guy but you know - that’s not really my way of social interaction. Could very well be that this poor guy just made a mistake and now needs to somehow fix it as otherwise he is in big trouble.

He even offered 100€ as a compensation for the effort and things I invested already in the ThinkPad (like I ordered a special set of stickers as I changed FN with CTRL) but I went down to 50€ to have a compensation for the shipping costs I will have and those stickers.

Getting the T14

So I searched around the internet and found a T14 Gen 4 (also 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) without fingerprint reader, sim card slot and a lower resolution display for 200€ less than what I paid for the T14s. A quick research revealed that the fingerprint reader can be ordered as a spare part and installed into a T14 that was bought without a fingerprint reader.

The T14 was offered by a professional reseller as well so the probability of getting a device that is still linked to another company is quite low 😉 and I get some guarantee and a return window which is also quite nice. So I placed the order.

After I received it and did the installation again (this time I decided to give Fedora KDE another shot) which went through way faster as I already knew what to do for the different issues I expected to encountered this time. After the setup was complete and everything worked I formatted the T14s (gladly I only used the 1TB SSD that was built in to do some OpenSuse experiments and used my 2TB SSD for my actual installation) and sent it back to the original seller (after I received the money, of course 😁).

Everything went well, I received the money, the package arrived the original sender and the case is settled.

So now I have a T14. That device is a bit thicker than the T14s but comes with an Ethernet port, the RAM is replaceable and it is told to be a bit quieter (as the cooling system as more room). Quite a good trade-off in my view.

In the meantime I also received the Fingerprint reader and installed it. It was a bit fiddly to install and I had to boot into Windows once to get it working but now I have a working Fingerprint reader as well so the only things I lost is the OLED display and the SIM card slot.

Performance wise it is the same as the T14s as it has the same specs, so all good.

Now I hope I can keep this notebook for longer than 6 weeks 😁