Here's the promised update - I just replaced the HD in my X60S with a Seagate Momentus 5400.3, using Acronis True Image to clone the drive. This worked flawlessly first time, so I'm very impressed with the Acronis software. The bad news is that although this disk is quieter, it certainly isn't quiet...

Thank you all for your kind and helpful responses to my question.

It sounds like the Western Digital drive is not such a good choice after all. I am going to go with a 120GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3.

I'll post an update once I've got the new drive installed.

Thanks again.

I'm about to replace the hard drive in my X60S because the current one is too noisy. I'm looking for a replacement that is as near silent as possible. Doing a bit of research, this Western Digital Scorpio drive seems like a good choice: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=quiet_laptop_drive....

For the record, I tried this and it's definitely the hard disk. The machine is completely silent when the hard drive is removed (though of course it doesn't do anything beyond trying to network boot).

Thanks again for the suggestion. Now to find a quiet replacement!

Thank you for the suggestion. I will give it a try.

I love my X60S but I think it's too noisy and I want to make it quieter. The noise is a constant low breathy whirr. You can hear it anywhere in the room. It's not actually LOUD loud, but enough to be distracting while listening to music. This is different from the fan that kicks in when the machine ...

I just found out how to set the screen to full brightness even when on battery power: 1. Open ThinkPad Configuration from the Control Panel. 2. Select "LCD" from the Display menu. 3. Change the setting "Brightness when running on batteries" from "Normal" to "High", and click OK or Apply. That's it. ...

Hi,

The system beep on my X60S is very loud. I know you can turn it off, but is there anyway to lower the volume without lowering the volume of other sound?

In case I'm not clear, I'm referring to the beeps it makes when going into or out of suspend mode.

Thanks in advance for any pointers


boffo

Thanks.

Is there any difference between internal and external optical drives when it comes to ripping CDs into iTunes? I'm thinking of getting one of these: http://www.plextor-europe.com/products/px-608cu.asp?choice=PX-608CU to use with my X60S and I want to be sure it will work. I have no particular reason...

Spif wrote:I get around 3 hours with the 4-cell slim battery. I use a very low brightness setting though. When using the 8-cell, I get from 8 to 10 hours, which I pretty satisfied with

How do you find the 8-cell battery compared with the slimline one? To me it looks a little heavy and ugly.

To answer my own question, I think I need to update Power Manager:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 074cacd466

Thanks for your kind reply. I realise that I've been using it pretty heavily now - it's a new computer so I've been downloading a lot of software and of course that hits the disk pretty hard. How do you enable the "wattage when on battery" feature? It sounds useful. I tried clicking on the battery i...

I just got my new X60S today, replacing an old X24. I'm mostly pretty pleased with it. The only disappointment so far is the poor battery life. I am getting just less than 2 hours. This is with wireless networking turned on and used quite a lot, but with nothing particularly CPU-intensive running. I...

In case anyone's wondering how this story turned out - I had a ThinkPad expert look at the X24 (for free!). He concluded that the problem was with the TFT not just something simple with the connector.

So I replaced it with an X60S, which arrived today.

Thank you for your kind reply. To be honest dismantling the Thinkpad is too much for me to take on.

I just checked the warranty and (surprise surprise) it expired just two weeks ago. I think I'm being sent a message that it's time to upgrade to an X60S!

Since last night my X24 has developed a white vertical line down the screen about 2/5 of the way across. It looks like it's a hardware problem with the TFT itself rather than the graphics card or OS because (1) the line appears in the same place regardless of screen resolution, and (2) when I squeez...

Thanks for all the responses everyone. It does seem likely that heat is the issue. I don't have the skills or at least the confidence to open up the thinkpad so if the problem becomes critical I will ask a Thinkpad expert to take a look for me. Meanwhile, the TFT appears to be dying, see my next post.

So if it's the heat, what's the mechanism? Is it a protection mechanism built into the laptop (which could be adjusted), or is it just some random bad thing happening?

My X24 sometimes dies abruptly. It doesn't blue screen or restart, it just dies as if it has suddenly lost power. It does this once or twice a week. It seems to happen when under heavy load, e.g. when compiling an application, watching a video, or making heavy use of Google maps. I ran a memory test...