T42 Purchase and Initial Setup

[Milintellect]

I just purchased my first ThinkPad two days ago, a T42 through the educational agreement at my university. The model number is 23743VU. I would have asked these questions before ordering, but I just found this forum yesterday. In any event, if I need to change something, it isn't expected to ship for another week or more so I've got some wiggle room. My questions are:

It is coming with the 80gb HDD (5400rpm), I had read some complaints about quality, though they were in respect to the T41p. Things like multiple failures and returns, have these problems been addressed? If they haven't, is the 40gb HDD more reliable?

The IBM site says that the ATI Radeon 9600 is 32mb, Tabook says that the 9600 is 64mb, who do I believe?

It is coming with the standard 6-cell battery, how long will that last? Will I be able to watch a 3-hour DVD off of it? Will it last me through a full day (~6 hours, intermittent) of classes (meaning mainly word-processing, internet browsing, some music)?

What is the best way to keep myself virus/trojan/spyware free (outside of running under Linux)? I assume before I ever connect to any network there are some steps that I should take.

Is there a "best" initial setup procedure that I should follow? I've read about removing the IBM partition and reinstalling XPP, but what is the benefit of that? Does it just open up more HDD space? What is lost in the process?

Okay, so that's a lot of questions for one post, in retrospect it should probably be broken up into a more than one. Whatever you can help me with would be appreciated though, I can't wait to get my hands on my new TP!

[SimonCC]

to keep viruses and hackers away use the following - nod32 AV (v.fast and excellant detection rates), use the free zone alarm firewall. Also use adaware and spybot to keep your system free of spyware. Get abtrsuion protector - its a great last line of defence as it stop any files, programs installing without your say so, theroretically you could click on a virus file and it would not be allowed to execute. To speed up ur comp go to www.backviper.com and get rid of any unncessary windows services. I use executive diskeeper 9 to keep my tp running fast - i recommned it also. Use these and you will have no problems! oh yeah check out http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html and http://www.markusjansson.net/erecent.html - these are full of interesting stuff.

[Milintellect]

Thanks for the info Simon! Does anyone else have any thoughts/suggestions, especially about the hardware/setup? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[JohnDrake]

Update all the drivers. Go to this page
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-55386

Its all the drivers for the T42. Note the BIOS and embedded controller program firmware...update them. Do the embedded controller first, BIOS second.

Download and extract all drivers for the T42...example, just say "Run" rather than "save" the big driver executables from the site above. They will extract (but not install) the drivers to C:\DRIVERS (and some subdir under that).

Download, extract, and RUN SETUP on the Thinkpad Software Installer (from the site above). Run the Thinkpad Software Installer (Start>All Programs> Access IBM>Thinkpad Software Installer)

It will correctly install all the drivers you just extracted in one pass. May require some manual installs due to sequencing, but it will tell you about that.

After the system is completely set up the way you want it, run Rescue and Recovery. If you have a CD burner in the unit, you can use R&R to make your own customized set of backup CD's for your personal image.

[sheed_03]

Milintellect, I just ordered the same T42 model 23743VU through my university as well (on 8/10/05). I have a few questions:

1. Have you had any problems with the hard drive?
2. Any issues with wifi connection? My university provides wireless 802.11b on campus so I hope to connect without problems.
3. How long did it take to arrive? I can't wait to finally get my hands on it.

[pipspeak]

I would disregard any tales you've heard about reliability of the 80GB drive. Just use common sense and backup regularly so in the event it fails (as all HDDs sometimes do) you'll get a new one under warranty and have all your backups to boot.

Everyone has different stories about hardware reliability. For example, someone told me about a coworker who'd expereinced an HDD failure on a T42 and implied that the hard drive sucked. But after talking to the T42 owner it turns out he'd once dropped the HDD and therefore wasn't surprised that it failed a few months later.

The only other thing worth doing with a new machine IMO is to go through all the various crapware and bloated IBM apps and decide which you don't need, then uninstall them. You'll be amazed at the system resources that frees up.

If you have an 80GB hard drive, I wouldn't worry about getting rid of the hidden partition. It's about 4GB I think, and might come in useful one day. As for specs, go with the tabook. If that says 64MB, then it's 64MB. The IBM site is riddled with errors.

Battery life depends on what you're doing. I've never played a DVD so no idea about that but if you turn off the wireless card, bluetooth, IR port, and set most of the power options to "maximum battery life" (through IBM's power management software) you should be able to get about 4 hours continuous, moderate use (word processing etc.). At least I can with my T40. The wireless card is a fairly big power user, so wireless internet browsing will sap the battery quicker.

[GomJabbar]

As for specs, go with the tabook. If that says 64MB, then it's 64MB. The IBM site is riddled with errors.

Not to worry, the Tabook says 64MB RAM for the 9600 display adapter on the 2374-3VU.

[nirvana0001]

1.) HDD: 74.5GB after deleted the hidden partition
2.) 6 cell battery for DVD: approximately 1.5 hours (as my experience), I did undervoltage the CPU and GPU
3.) Initial setup procedure: not sure about it, but my system got faster after deleted the hidden part.