Receiving your new laptop

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tp42card · #1 Post by **tp42card** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:10 pm

For those that had their laptops stuck in Kentucky due to FDA holds, mine was in a hold just yesterday but my laptop arrived in California just this morning!

This is my first laptop so I wanted to solicit your expert advice. Do you guys have any recommendations or suggestions as to what you guys do when you get a new machine? Do you charge it all the way up before you use it? I plan on just loading all my personal software (norton, office etc.)

Thanks!

benz · #2 Post by **benz** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:15 pm

Some people are reporting T42's being shipped with nearly completely charged batteries....is this the case with yours? Whatever the case, I would follow the instructions in the manual about conditioning the battery...IBM knows best.

Here are some of the other reports:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1008

sswany · #3 Post by **sswany** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:15 pm

Mine was one of the ones stuck in KY as of laate last night. I got it at 9:30 this morning in Los Angeles. I plugged it in and it says it's at 98% battery. One bad pixel, but it's so low in the right corner that all the ugly system tray icons get rid of it for me.

UbiMea · #4 Post by **UbiMea** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:58 pm

My T-42 was also stuck in Kentucky, but arrived in D.C. this morning.

No dead pixels, (none seen yet!) and the battery was 97% charged.

I have spent the last hour or so downloading all the "fixes" for XP.

pennypacker · #5 Post by **pennypacker** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 2:28 pm

geez, i'm jealous of all you guys. mine's been stuck in customs in Ontario, CA since last Wednesday! I don't know why this FDA approval process takes so [censored] long...

tp42card · #6 Post by **tp42card** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:28 pm

UbiMea wrote:My T-42 was also stuck in Kentucky, but arrived in D.C. this morning.

No dead pixels, (none seen yet!) and the battery was 97% charged.

I have spent the last hour or so downloading all the "fixes" for XP.

where did you get your fixes from? did you just get them from microsoft? a lot of thinkpad users seem to only get fixes and updates from ibm itself.

tp42card

eriqesque · #7 Post by **eriqesque** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:30 pm

I think he was talking about the XP fixes
not Driver updates

UbiMea · #8 Post by **UbiMea** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:42 pm

Yep, that's correct. Uncle Bill's XP needs as much fixing and patching as a Model A Ford.

As for drivers, the only one I can see is apparently an update for the ATI 9600.

But I'll wait on that until I get the rest of the software set correctly. I doubt if anything really needs the latest ATI driver release since this setup is strictly for business stuff.

yves · #9 Post by **yves** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:53 pm

I have spent the last hour or so downloading all the "fixes" for XP.

Where did you find the fixes ?

UbiMea · #10 Post by **UbiMea** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 4:03 pm

I simply ran XP update.

I haven't even looked at IBM's site.

G-Man · #11 Post by **G-Man** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 4:06 pm

XP updates/fixes: www.windowsupdate.com (Do not install any update from the Driver section)

IBM drivers: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... PAD-MATRIX

Regards,
G-Man

Leon · #12 Post by **Leon** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 4:06 pm

i don't think that ibm does any updates to xp????

kangazoom · #13 Post by **kangazoom** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:03 pm

k so i should be getting my t42 in a few days ...

and when i get it, i should immediately download the ibm drivers? is this correct?

phat_mats · #14 Post by **phat_mats** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:19 pm

What about backing it up to cd, or creating restore cd's or whatever. Shouldn't you do that first?

benz · #15 Post by **benz** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:50 pm

You can always order the recovery CD's from IBM. They will send them to you free of charge, provided you request them within 30 days of your purchase (or receiving the system, forgot which). But I suppose if you don't want to wait you can go ahead and burn the recovery CDs.

UbiMea · #16 Post by **UbiMea** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:16 pm

Regarding my 2378DXU which arrived today:

Does anyone know what's up with single hex machine screw which came in the bag labelled P/N 91P8567?

It appears to secure the CD/DVD, but IBM support didn't know for sure.

(hold all loose screw jokes

)

Also, why the supply of extra BlueTooth/802.11/b/g/ Mac address labels?

The BlueTooth was a complete surprise. When I ordered the machine, it wasn't advertised as having any bluetooth radio or support installed.

Does this mean I can use a bluetooth mouse w/o further hardware? Seems so.

tia

cynic · #17 Post by **cynic** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 8:02 pm

Yes, the single screw is to secure the optical drive (or slim drive, or anything else you place in that space.) I'm suprised the IBM support didn't tell you that outright.

The extra labels of the MAC addresses really is more applicable to IT depts of companies who keep them on file.

And yes, according to the tabook.pdf, your model has BlueTooth so yeah, you won't need anything else to use BT devices with your laptop

UbiMea · #18 Post by **UbiMea** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 8:59 pm

Thanks Cynic!

I'm surprised IBM sales doesn't update the Webpage to tout the Bluetooth on this system.

As for the spare screw and Mac labels, I must have reached a rookie in support--no harm though, as he was perfectly helpful otherwise, and we mostly chatted about other things anyway.

And as for those of you wondering about "ghosting" on this machine, I haven't seen any, but I won't load "Far Cry" or "Painkiller" and stuff like that until the weekend. For now, (not surprisingly) the screen is way more than adequate for Excel and other MS Office applications.

Best/

dcdomain · #19 Post by **dcdomain** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 1:27 pm

Is there a lot of crap that comes with the preinstalled OS? Once I get a new system, I usually just wipe everything out and start fresh. But because of IBM's restore stuff I'm hesitant to do so with the Thinkpad. I'm not sure whether or not I want to keep the restore stuff on that hidden partition. If I'm going to wipe it out... I might just repartition the drive to reclaim the space.

Conmee · #20 Post by **Conmee** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 4:12 pm

IBM generally doesn't put much in the way of apps on their systems, given that most of their business is corporate/volume sales, and most corporations have their own software stacks/images that they will utilize.

Basically, the only thing worth reinstalling if you decide to wipe out all the partitions and do a clean install of WinXP is the ThinkVantage Technology applets and drivers. The DVD player (Intervideo) and DVD authoring (Sonic) applications are watered-down versions (as is Norton AV) just to give new users something that will utilize the DVD-R/RW or CD-RW, etc.

As for the factory backup/service partition and IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore application, the T42's now have an applet that allows you to make full CD backups (took 7 CDs for my T42) of the service partition and factory install. Once you make those, you can safely wipe out all the partitions and install clean. However, without the service partition, you won't be able to boot into a graphical 'predesktop' area that has utilities, a browser, and some basic tools to recover/restore your system and data. Personally, I find that Norton Ghost or Drive Image, when done disk-to-disk or disk-to-CD/DVD on a regular basis, is as good a backup solution as any. And you don't use valuable disk space on your ThinkPad's primary drive.

In fact, I'm not sold on the value of a data or image backup to the same physical hard drive anyhow. In terms of restoring data or files that have been corrupted or overwritten, a same-disk backup and recovery solution is fine, and cuts down on frivolous helpdesk calls, but in the event of a hard disk failure v. a file system failure or data loss, it's not a solution, as the service partition will be lost as well, along with your backups. Best bet is to use the IBM USB 2.0 40GB External HDD with Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore for a more secure backup solution (or backup to CD/DVD).

Daniel.

Receiving your new laptop

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