Lenovo ThinkVantage System Update Returns

I normally try to shy away from the “press release” type of blog posts here, but this is too important. We are trying to get this message out quickly and clearly in a coordinated manner. Hence if you follow our forums and our other official channels of communication, you will see very similar text.

The net of the story is simple — we listened to you. You said quite clearly that TVSU was a tool that you found valuable.

We do have a long history of listening to customer feedback. Your feedback brought back the stripes to the ThinkPad keyboard, added the Windows keys in 2006, supplemented our on-screen wireless on/off tool with a hardware disable switch, and yes, had a touchpad lay down alongside a TrackPoint in harmony on a ThinkPad. (Sadly, however, it won’t make 4:3 displays come back, no matter how loudly you scream.)

Keep it coming. We do listen.

Recently, Lenovo announced that we were changing the way we handled system updates going forward. Basically, we were discontinuing ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) for individual use and directing those customers to our public support site for driver and BIOS updates. Never removed was the ability for business customers in managed environments to access, download to their network, and then apply these updates as required.

There were several business reasons for this change. Regular scheduled update requests were being sent to the Lenovo servers with the subsequent downloading causing very high traffic - yielding performance issues and, in cases, causing a decline in the customer’s TVSU experience and confidence. Balancing the high cost of that already existing solution and the additional investment required to improve performance and reliability for our customers has been a difficult process and led to a more difficult decision which resulted in disabling of TVSU on April 1.

Following our announcement, however, we heard from many customers on our blogs and forums. We’ve heard clearly that our individual and business customers alike value TVSU highly. Therefore, we are adjusting course based on your feedback, and have released a new version of TVSU on May 31st. In addition, we have made some backend investments which should indeed improve system performance.
This version can be launched by the customer and it will find and install applicable updates for their system, as before. We also have a new tool, Message Center Plus, which we encourage you to download, as it provides a fast conduit to important advisory messages and helpful information about our products and services.

We value our customers’ feedback, and we hope the deployment of this new version of TVSU proves that. Thanks for your partnership with us, and the loyalty you have shown to TVSU and the other services we provide to our customers.