New T42P owner AND 1st post here... tips on sys.setup sought

[jaxf250]

Hello all -

New 'round these parts. Just swapped out my 18 month-old Dell Inspiron 8500 for a new T42P straight from Kowloon Bay about 4 weeks ago. It is a 2373-Q1U (2.1GHz, 15" 128 MB FireGL T2, 1GB RAM, 7,200 60 GB HDD, fingerprint reader, et al...). So far I am loving it. Nice and quiet, and I really liked having the IBM keyboard back.... best feel out there IMO.

Other than being swamped reading all the fine posts here, I would like to ask some newbie questions w/r/t this hardware. Appreciate any help/tips:

1) I am running OOTB config with XP SP2 Pro factory load and all the TPad utils. Is there anything I should know/configure/delete to improve system performance? I realize the OOTB diskless install uses like a 4GB chunk of the HDD, but this does not concern me at the moment. I am looking for any tweaks or tips from you long-time users on setting these systems up.

2) What FireWire cards are you guys using out there? I miss the built-in
1394 port on my other laptop, and the Adaptec DuoConnect PCMCIA card I got for Firewire does not play well with the T42P.... any ideas here? Any one else have a better card to use? I can still take this one back to CompUSA.... none of the drivers seem to get the ports on the card to recognize and I have the latest s/w from Adaptec.... blah...

3) Any experience with the 9-cell Li-Ion battery pack? I upgraded to this before realizing it would stick out of the back of the unit as much as it does... is this item prone to loosening with rough handling? Or am I being too critical? So far it is fine - no issues. I am just wondering what it'll be like a year from now....

Thanks, and looking fwd. to getting to know you all here... someone is going to have to show me how to upgrade my .sig with HTML links....

[bevross]

Does not knowing what OOTB means make me unqualified??! I haven't had to do too much tweaking beyond installing all the updates IBM comes out with. Many have given up Update Connector since it doesn't work too well. I've also given up on Access Connections since Windows XP works perfectly well (versus buggy stuff with AC; some swear by it, though). I've also noticed, when I run XP's disk frag utility, that my 60gig, 7200rpm Hitachi comes up as needing to be defraged (according to Windows). When I run this on other systems, I mostly get "doesn't need." I find this peculiar and wonder if it's not due to the hidden recover partition? I also turn off XP's system restore, file indexing & auto update.

[gcchatel]

bevross, OOTB is "out of the box" I am guessing, I don't know of it meaning anything else, so you are not underqualified as far as I am concerned

Gael

[taphil]

ootb = out of the box

I would recommend uninstalling a few of those pre-installed programs. Some that I can remember from the top of my head are: IBM Access Connections (if you use Windows to configure wireless), Support.com, IBM Update Connector, and a few others I think. Then update drivers and other software.

[kano]

Ad 2. I recommend combo FireWire 800/400 from LaCie. Expensive ($80), but work OOTB:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10121
Regards, KaNo

[jaxf250]

All great tips - thanks everyone!

kano - much thx for the firewire card tip.... esp. one that works. Do you have a good source / recommendation for where to get this, or should I just google it / pricegrabber.com / etc. myself ?

[kano]

All great tips - thanks everyone!

kano - much thx for the firewire card tip.... esp. one that works. Do you have a good source / recommendation for where to get this, or should I just google it / pricegrabber.com / etc. myself ?

I bought directly from LaCie Webshop.
Regards, KaNo