Lenovo abruptly drops ThinkVantage 'big blue button' support

It was announced in late March, but only as Lenovo owners get around to updating their systems are they becoming aware that ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU), the power behind the "big blue button," has been discontinued, eliminating the line's beloved automatic-update capability.

One-click driver update capability has been a longtime feature of the ThinkPad line, which include a large programmable button (labeled "Access IBM" on IBM-era machines and "ThinkVantage" on the later Lenovo models) set up for that purpose. Clicking the button after boot-up fired up the TVSU process, which downloaded many if not all of the driver updates required for that particular machine.

The system support utility was part of the ThinkVantage technologies suite, which IBM make a centerpiece of its 2002 "Think" ad campaign. It's still mentioned on the ThinkVantange Technologies page, but clicking through now takes visitors to a form into which one enters information on each ThinkPad one needs to update -- tedious with just one machine, maddening with multiples. Worse, the page mentions that "Lenovo is pursuing alternative solutions for system updates" -- but gives no indication of a timeframe in which a solution will be available.

The announcement appeared on the Lenovo site and in the Lenovo Community blog, posted by Mark Hopkins, Lenovo's project manager for social media. Mr. Hopkins' notice was posted at 5:37 am on March 31; the change took effect on April 1.

There's also a new Message Center Plus install, which, according to its Web page, "alerts you when conditions arise on your computer that require your attention." The update to Message Center was released last month and operates rather differently from its Message Center predecessor -- in particular, notifications are handled very differently; they don't automatically show up at startup, forcing users to actually load the message tool to see if there's anything they need to know. That may "encourage" users already lax about their updates to be even less diligent.

Response was immediate and negative -- among the people who saw the announcement, anyway. Many commenters said that TVSU was a significant purchasing concern for them, either for work or for recommending the ThinkPad to users who might not be otherwise comfortable with proper system maintenance. A number of them connected it to a perceived pattern of changes, not for the better, since IBM turned the laptop line over to Lenovo. "I don't know if I am more disappointed in Lenovo's lack of understanding of what makes the ThinkPad unique, or in IBM for selling its notebook business to Lenovo in the first place," wrote commenter PhilD. "I guess the next step will be to replace the keyboard with one of the inferior versions used in the competition, remove the trackpoint, and paint it a flashy color..."

Other users were more specific in their dismay. Commenter mbhockey13, who said that he'd switched his 400+-seat firm from Dell to Lenovo in part because of TVSU, had a particular mess on his hands: "This is unacceptable. I had a new image to begin building today. Now I have to try to manually download and install each driver, and then try to keep track of which driver needs updating and which one is current on a ongoing basis? We have ThinkStation D10s, ThinkPad X300, X200t, T400, R400, T61, X61, X61t, ThinkCentre A61 and A62. Now I have to manually check for updates on all of them?... This is a FAIL."

To paraphrase most commenters, what was Lenovo thinking? The goal, according to various IBM documents, is to develop "alternative patch management solutions to better serve our customers. Powered by LANdesk, the new services will offer a more complete approach to patch management." Alternately, there are RSS feeds for updates to each model.

However, there's no equivalent service in place yet, and there's still no indication as to what caused the company to yank support so very abruptly. (The end-of-quarter timing may or may not provide a clue, as may the fact that TVSU was still hosted on IBM's servers; Lenovo did not respond to our interview request for this article by press time.) A number of commenters complained that they hadn't even heard from their sales reps about the change. One commenter stated that he received a message from Lenovo's in-house sales team saying that they didn't know anything about it either. And several ThinkPad users who have called tech support about the matter say that they've reached support staff who are unaware of the change.

In addition, LANDesk Patch Manager is corporate-grade stuff; for smaller offices and home users, it's not a solution at all. Similarly, the only information known to be flowing to concerned users is being directed to those at large installations.

Commenter rtlinux on Tuesday posted an e-mail from someone purporting to be with Lenovo, which said that TVSU isn't entirely gone, if you're a corporate client or business partner. "The TVSU application has not been eliminated, although the ability for it to connect to the Lenovo server and provide individual updates has been suspended," the excerpted e-mail said. "For managed environments for our corporate clients and business partners, the function can continue to be used. All one has to do is download Update Retriever and redirect the TVSU from the Lenovo server to an internal repository. Creating this repository is very easy and it should only take few minutes. Once that is done the TVSU will work exactly the same and end users in your environment / enterprise won't have to do anything differently."

Nice for the big guys, one supposes, but it appears that for now at least Lenovo's put a great many other customers into a world of hurt. Commenter Serenityvalley sold his bosses on the pricier Lenovo machines because they were easy to upgrade with that big blue button; now, he posts, "I'm lucky this whole TVSU debacle hasn't gotten me fired so far. I'm in the doghouse over it and my 'slavish devotion' to ThinkPads ... [Lenovo] now has put a HUGE target on my back because of the mess and all the money it has cost us."