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Funny Vent Smell in Lenovo v100

There was a best-I-can-describe-it portable heater smell emanating from the vent of my Lenovo v100 a few days ago. I’d been leaving the laptop on and leaving my glass a tad too close to the vent and caused 2 auto shutdowns due to overheating (this is from retrospect).

The most likely possibility was that perhaps some pet hair or hair had gotten stuck inside and just needed a camera blower to clean it. I lent a concentrated amount of my own CO2 but to little effect. Other suggestions included burnt chips and an impending fire. I quickly shut it down and did not turn it on again.

A call to Lenovo saw me bounced around to 2 different venues thanks to the efficiency of outsourcing. So was the very polite advice, which was to bring it to the service centre where they would charge me $50 for simply looking at it (or at their discretion).

I protested that while IBM was still IBM, my Thinkpad was always looked at for free, then I would be charged if I required further work. Of course these were the same guys who, in Melbourne, pronounced my Thinkpad deader than dead, causing me to weep in my husband’s arms for its demise, only to start it up months later back in Singapore to find it running again, as if nothing had happened.

Further investigation uncovered that Melbourne’s erratic power supply may have been at fault.

Anyhow, while that old Thinkpad sits in the unexciting museum cupboard in my study reminiscing about the good old days (it worked for 10 years – might actually still work but I haven’t tried turning it on), I thought the Lenovo’s days were numbered when the smell persisted on the vent itself and I removed it from the room. I even contemplated buying a Mac, only to be rather concerned about the “toxic smells” coming from it too (Google: Mac+toxic+smell).

3 days later (and many hours wasted researching for a non-toxic laptop later), the smell was suddenly gone. A few good sniffs delivered just hot air up my nose and I was relieved that the need to search for another laptop was over.

Incidentally, Nokia is still the greenest company. Have a look at the Greenpeace report and see where Lenovo and the rest stand.