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Together, they will form Voltron and fight Chinese rival, Lenovo.

Acer has agreed to finance the Packard Bell bid and said it had already put the necessary funds into escrow for Gateway to use.

A source close to Acer said the cost for the Packard Bell acquisition would come on top of the US$710m Acer is to pay for Gateway, but the European PC maker would cost it less than US$100m. The source said that the agreement between Gateway and John Hui, Packard Bell's major shareholder, did not allow for a renewed rival bid following from Lenovo following an offer from Gateway, thus preventing a bidding war between Lenovo and Acer.

Lenovo had expressed an interest in acquiring Packard Bell to bolster its European presence.

But Gateway last month threw those plans into doubt, saying it intended to exercise its right of first refusal to acquire all shares in Packard Bell's holding company from Mr Hui. Gateway acquired the option to buy Mr Hui's shares last year.

Nevertheless, Bill Amelio, Lenovo's chief executive, said last month that Lenovo was "still very interested" in the company. Acer and Lenovo have been fighting for third place in the global PC industry behind US computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

(Photo:Wikipedia)

On Wednesday morning, IBM sent me a sturdy shipping box with a return DHL label. On Wednesday early evening, I packed up my baby and sent her to a company called Solectron in Memphis. I left town on Thursday (to Madison, Wisc. — my first visit; great town), and got home by late Friday morning. There she was waiting for me, my smart little machine, all fixed up by someone halfway across the country, at a cost to me of $0.00, the entire transaction taking about 36 hours.

I wish IBM made more things so I could buy them and know that if something went wrong, the repair process would always be this good.

This is the best customer service I've ever encountered in my life.

from the CPSC:

Lenovo sold these extended-life batteries with new ThinkPad notebook PCs or as optional or replacement batteries for the following ThinkPad notebook models: R Series (R60 and R60e), T Series (T60 and T60p) and Z Series (Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, and Z61p). The recalled 9-cell batteries have the following part number, which can be found on the battery label: FRU P/N 92P1131. Consumers should stop using the recalled batteries and contact Lenovo for additional information and to receive a free replacement battery.

Contact Info:
Lenovo (800) 426-7378 anytime, or log on to www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram

Lenovo Recalls ThinkPad Notebook PC Extended-Life Batteries Due to Fire Hazard [CPSC]

The good news is that Sony's recalling practically all of their batteries, regardless of the manufacturer of the laptop itself. The bad news is that recall is still up to the discretion of the laptop manufacturers.

Strangely, it doesn't appear that Sony is the bad guy in all of these exploding laptops, despite providing the small thermonuclear device installed into their bellies. Sony claims they can't reproduce a laptop fire and they fault the laptop engineers for shoddy design. Given that most of the laptops exploding are Dells, we're far more willing to give Sony the benefit of the doubt than usual.

Sony battery fiasco escalates [Financial Times]

Too bad reader Petro can't say the same about their customer service, who as you'll to soon read after clicking on the hyperlink jump, pulled one of our least favorite customer service lines: "Sorry, I don't have a supervisor."

Petro writes:

I ordered a laptop from Lenovo. Since I wanted it in time for a christmas trip, I picked a slightly more expensive model than I otherwise would have because their website had it listed as "in stock". As I placed my order a friend alerted me (via instant messager) that they also had free second day shipping.

Which turned out to be rather pointless.

So after I placed my order for a Lenovo T43 with an extra "free" 512 MiB of RAM, I called to ask about the free shipping. This happened on 15 December at about 7 pm.

The order center was closed.

When I got to the computer the next morning to find that my CC company had blocked the charge as being outside my normal usage pattern. It's freaken CHRISTMAS TIME. OF COURSE my normal Credit Card Pattern had changed. So I deal with the CC company, and call Lenova to reprocess the charge, and add the free shipping.

No problem, according to them.

Then Friday night after 11 pm they send me an email saying that "part or all of my order has been delayed". Of course by the time I see it their sales line is off for the weekend. Their webpage still says that my laptop will ship on the 19th, so I'm trying to keep a postive attitude. Which is stupid when dealing with large companies.

I check again on Tuesday, and notice that their order webpage now indicates that it will ship on the 20th. This is starting to get annoying.

So on Wednesday morning their webpage still indicated that the laptop would ship on the 20th (the 20th being the day before), so I called their sales line again to ask. I spoke with some young man (I want to say "Matt" or "Bob", but I really don't remember) and he very cheerfully informed me that it had probably already shipped, but that their system was just not synced up, and that their shipping guy was "out" today, and he'd make a note to have this investigated and something emailed to me.

That evening I went back to the webpage to look again. Now it said that the laptop would ship on the 21st, which was wednesday.

So once more I called. This time I spoke to a nice Indian lady who gave her name as "Gatha". Well, calling her nice was a little much as she sounded rather harried when I first got through to her. And after she told me that my order would ship sometime between now and FRIDAY the 23rd, I requested to be put in touch with a supervisor.

Then she lied to me. "I don't have a Supervisor".

I don't like being lied to. It really frosts me. We went around like this a couple times. She at first insisted that she did not /have/ a supervisor, and then when I pointed out that EVERYONE in a corporation has a supervisor, up to and sometimes including the CEO, she indicated that they were not in (which I suspect was another lie), and that I would have to call back in the morning when they were in.

At that point Lenovo had lied to me AT LEAST 3 times, so I informed "Gatha" that I wanted to cancel my order.

She said she *could not* because the label had been printed, and the laptop was ready to ship in China.

*Could not*?

She indicated that she could "send a note" to try to cancel it, but it still might ship. I informed her that I would be contacting my credit card company to refuse the charge, and would refuse delivery on the laptop should it arrive.

This is from (purportedly) one of the largest laptop manufacturers in the world.

If their ordering and shipping is this screwed up, how can I trust their service?

This is about a bait & switch by Lenovo, from whom I just bought a $2,500 Thinkpad. I bought the computer from their site, paying $300 more than it would have cost on Buy.com because I wanted to configure it. And Buy.com had a fucked up policy.

Anyhow, when I ordered the computer, there was a promotion on the site that offered free shipping, as well as an extra battery, a cheap printer and some other stuff. I told the salesperson I wanted the battery. He came back and said they were out of them and did I want a printer. No, i didn't want a damn cheapo printer. I wanted a battery.

If they were out of stock they could have sent it when they got some more. It's not like this is a product that is rare. But no, the bait & switch was 'cheapo printer or go to hell.'

Now the guy tells me he can't do anything about it because that promotion is over. "As for the promotion I do apologize but we are not able to offer it to you since the order was placed after the promotion expired, alternate promotions were offered as was free shipping."

Bonus Link from the Icy Reaches: Bell Canada, Thy Name is Agony [Woolsock.ca]