R51e, T42 and T43 with Windows 7

[Robocopper]

Greetings,

I am considering the future with my families 3 laptops, one each of these: R51e, T42 and T43.

At present they are all running various version of Vista with 99% success. The 1% is power management problems.

The T42 is especially bad. The R51e is the best and seems to work well. The T43 generally comes out of sleep mode within 30 seconds but sometimes takes considerably longer. I have never managed to get the T42 to operate well with sleep mode and currently it blue-screens if the power button is pushed. The T42 problems may be due to bad drivers as I had installed a hacked version of the video card driver which made a big improvement for a while.

Anyways, the question I have is this:

WHAT IS POWER MANAGEMENT LIKE ON THE T4X SERIES LAPTOPS WITH WINDOWS 7?

I am mildly considering a shift to Apple, and this will be more likely if I have to pay lots of $$$ for Windows 7 (e.g. if they have no family pack option). Here is my reasoning...

The laptops I have not are getting old. If Win7 is going to cost (say) $300 (New Zealand dollars) per laptop, well, a new Mac Mini will cost me $1200 but comes with the latest version of OS X free as part of the package. And I am guaranteed of a new and faster machine and power management that works.

Thanks 4 any help.

Robo

PS. the 3 model munbers are:

1845-A19 (R51e)
2668-44U (T42)
2373-7WM (T43)

[SlamX]

Windows 7 runs fine on my T-42.

[Robocopper]

Great! Can you tell me if it goes into sleep mode?

[SGD]

Runs great on my T43. And yes, it goes into sleep mode.

[SlamX]

Sorry, and yes mine does go into sleep mode too.

[Robocopper]

Well that's pretty encouraging. Sleep mode is not even an option on my T42 with Vista. Hibernate works fine but no sleep option at all. Of course, there are different T42 models so it may not work on all of them.

[dsvochak]

Is there a reason you haven't just gone back to XP?

[Robocopper]

Sure. Having used Vista, it is clearly a better OS in many small ways. Not perfect, but lots of incremental improvements. Win7 I hope will be better still, perhaps much better