Anyone have these problems with their T4310?

[Canucklehead]

My gf bought me a T4310 last christmas and I have had nothing but trouble with it since day 1. I've been trying for 5 months to get the issues resolved (their support is that bad). I'm not going to get into a diatribe about how lousy Fujitsu support is (it was the worst customer service experience I have ever had) and how I will never, ever recommend or buy another Fujitsu. This is a Fujitsu forum afterall and will be filled with pro-Fujitsu people. But I wanted feedback on whether or not anyone's had these problems. Keep in mind I noticed these problems last January and Fujitsu hasn't been able to fix them until last month when they basically said "we know there's a problem now, wait for a fix".

So, my brand new T4310 had 3 problems right out of the box:
1. there's a crackling sound that frequently comes from the "unit" (i.e. not the screen or any one place in particular) that I hear sometimes, even after the unit has just been turned off
2. hibernation drains the battery. I expect some drain, but not 10% a day. Other laptops get maybe 1% a day- 10% is ridiculously high
3. I've tried doing full restores from the hidden partition but it takes 4 or 5 attempts for it to restore correctly. I usually get a Fjsetslate error (button driver problem so the tablet buttons don't work). This is when doing a full restore from the factory image- it should be just like out-of-the-box!

Anways, here are the responses I finally got last month:
1. an audio driver issue just came to their attention that causes the problem. Fix: disable windows sounds. I have my doubts if this is the cause but I will say that it's been almost a year since the T4310 has been on the market and only now they've noticed the problem?
2. they say it's a recognized microsoft problem and to wait for a microsoft fix. Of course, they couldn't provide me with a KB reference. I have spent a long time researching this and have only come across an instance of a lenovo model doing it. It doesn't seem to be widespread and if it was, I think it would have come to their attention sooner than a year after the laptop is on the market.
3. I actually had the laptop at their service center (for issue #2) when they called me back and told me it was a microsoft windows problem and they were sending my laptop back. I told them not to yet because of the Fjsetslate issue. He said he'd fix it. Sure enough, I get it back, turn it on, it goes through the initial setup process and voila, "Fjsetslate returned an error". I called them back and they said send it back. At this point, I'm not paying to ship the laptop again. All I need is for it to install correctly once and I'll image the drive.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. Has anyone had these problems with their laptop or the T4310. Because after 9 months of trying to address these issues, Fujitsu basically hasn't done anything and I really don't have the time or patience to deal with them anymore.

[qhorque]

I have two Fujitsu computers (P5020D laptop and ST5112 slate) and both are rock solid though the ST5112 has been a bit odd here and there (it was bought used off of ebay...)

The cracking sound, if coming from the speakers, could be a sound chip problem but, if it's coming from within the PC, might indicate a short. Sometimes just enough dust gets inside to make a momentary contact between wire traces on a circuit board and cause a SNAP! It usually goes away. Though I have never heard that after turning a device off. Maybe it's just thermal expansion/contraction due to tight tolerances between components? Note that disabling something in the OS is really not a workaround if you can't use it out of the box. That's a lame fix in my opinion.

Hibernation should not drain the battery since the machine is totally off. If there is a problem in Windows where the machine does not actually turn off, I can see it drain at the same rate as "Sleep" which actually keeps the machine on at a low power level. Question is if your batteries are draining correctly. I suggest charging it up and putting it in sleep mode instead and compare those numbers to the hibernation numbers. You should see a relatively large difference though 10%/day does not seem that bad to me. That's over a week in hibernation which is pretty good (do you have one or two batteries in?)

The last response is unacceptable. What they are saying is that their developers sold you a product that does not work from the factory (they provide the restore method and you'd think they tested it and certified it works before selling the product!) and that's not what you bought. I'd definitely keep complaining about that. Indeed, if you get it back from them and immediately restore the factory image, it should work - end of story. If not, there's a problem they sold you.

By the way, my ST5112 is not able to restore the XP Tablet restore image and has trouble restoring the Vista Business image but eventually completes the task. I dumped both images for my own copy of Windows 7 Ultimate which installed just fine. The P5020D image (XP Pro) always restores fine. I wonder if Fujitsu's restore software is just not that good. I use Acronis True Image anyway so I don't need their image. There are several shareware tools out there you can use to create and restore images and forget about the Fujitsu one.

Keep us posted.

[prroots]

I have two Fujitsu computers (P5020D laptop and ST5112 slate) and both are rock solid though the ST5112 has been a bit odd here and there (it was bought used off of ebay...)
Indeed, if you get it back from them and immediately restore the factory image, it should work - end of story. If not, there's a problem they sold you.

By the way, my ST5112 is not able to restore the XP Tablet restore image and has trouble restoring the Vista Business image but eventually completes the task. I dumped both images for my own copy of Windows 7 Ultimate which installed just fine.

I know this thread is a bit old, but thought you might help me out. I just ordered a ST5112 from eBay. It should arrive next week. I would like to know which discs came with it when new and what purpose is served by each. My preference is to install Windows XP includes Tablet PC Edition 2005 by itself and then install drivers from the Fujitsu website as needed. I generally avoid Restore discs because they often include 'bloatware'. At some point, I do want to restore to factory state and then make an Acronis image of it for archival purposes. Any hints on how to proceed would be appreciated. Eventually, I'd like to install a dual boot with original OS and Ubuntu. The ST5112 will be used aboard our sailboat as a dedicated navigation system running an open source program called OpenCPN.
Pete