Fixing the BIOS would be simple, simple, SIMPLE. Depending on what it's written in, there should be a line somewhere that looks like:
#define SUSPEND_PARTITION_TYPE 0xA5
or
.equ SUSPEND_PARTITION_TYPE, 0xA5
or something similar. Find an unreserved partition type that won't cause problems and change A5 to that number.
Perhaps it's not the easiest to fix current laptops (they'd need to flash the BIOS and write a utility to transition any paritions on the hard drive from A5 to the new type), but trivial to prevent on the next shipment of Thinkpads.
It would be a simple fix (Score:2)
#define SUSPEND_PARTITION_TYPE 0xA5
or
or something similar. Find an unreserved partition type that won't cause problems and change A5 to that number.
Perhaps it's not the easiest to fix current laptops (they'd need to flash the BIOS and write a utility to transition any paritions on the hard drive from A5 to the new type), but trivial to prevent on the next shipment of Thinkpads.