Thinkpads Forum

I have an X61 on order for my wife from the Outlet, meaning it will come in the next six months. I already lost a couple days because they mistranscribed the credit card's expiration month and the charge bounced.

I picked this one because it had a 7200 RPM drive and 2 gigs of ram. The bigger battery is probably a drawback (weight) because she invariably runs off AC. But the thing that scares me is that this guy comes with Vista Home Basic.

Even by Vista standards, this particular version of Vista seems to garner a consistently bum rap. I grudgingly use Ultimate on my dual boot T42, going to the XP Pro when Vista is acting really ornery (it seems to have good days and bad days). I've never encountered Home Basic, so I'm curious if anyone can relate why it is usually considered a poor choice for an OS.

I'm willing to put on XP Pro if I need to (and if the Chinese USB external unit recommended elsewhere in this forum is really bootable), but want to understand in advance what I'm facing with Home Basic.

Second question: I think this guy will come with a fingerprint reader. I've never dealt with them before - is the reader a big deal to learn how to setup and use? And is it reliable? My wife is fairly computer-illterate, and is volatile enough to use the X61 as a frisbee if too many things go wrong!

Art

ArtShapiro wrote: X61: picked this one because it had a 7200 RPM drive and 2 gigs of ram.
Second question: I think this guy will come with a fingerprint reader. I've never dealt with them before - is the reader a big deal to learn how to setup and use? And is it reliable? My wife is fairly computer-illterate, and is volatile enough to use the X61 as a frisbee if too many things go wrong!

Art

Amusing post about wife & frisbee. ThinkPads do not make a good frisbee due their poor aerodynamics, (unless the lid is open) and they are hard on the dog's teeth when he catches it.

Vista Basic will do the job for most purposes. It's short on multimedia features as I recall (my Basic machine is asleep in the truck now) but you can always get 3rd party apps that are better anyway.
I set up Vista in "Classic" mode for speed and easy on the eye navigation.
Vista does paint a nice easy on the eye screen...better than XP ever did in my opinion.
2 gig is RAM is very good on Vista. You will appreciate having that. Ditto for the 7200 rpm drive.
Fingerprint setup is straight forward and reasonably reliable. An occasional bad hair day will make it cranky but it's a worthy feature. I use mine for power on password and hard drive password but not for Vista admin password.