Questions about my 'new' T23

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0rion · #1 Post by **0rion** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:08 pm

First, I'd like to thank you all for this great site, it really helped me make a decision in purchasing this off-lease T23.

From what I read, the way to go with this model for the best 'XPerience' is to up the memory to at least 512mb and a 5400rpm drive. But I am really amazed at how well this lappy is running with just 256mb and the stock 30gb 4200rpm drive! I was just playing with Google Earth (on battery power no less) and it was doing just fine! (regardless, I have a 512 chip on it's way from an ebay win...)

Questions - I noticed the first time I began playing with it on battery power (brightness at 3) the LCD would flicker (more of a flutter) intermittantly. Should I be worrying about the inverter board? It hasn't seemed to happen since...

- How do I make the Thinkpad button do what it is supposed to do? (What is it supposed to do anyway??)

- Any other tips for a new Thinkpad owner?

Thanks!
Chris

Thinkpaddict · #2 Post by **Thinkpaddict** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:38 pm

Hi,

Congratulations on your acquisition of that great machine, and welcome to the forums!

Regarding the memory upgrade, you probably did the right thing, specially if you are running Windows (as opposed to Linux), and depending on what apps you plan to run. If I may say so, you would probably find that upgrading your HD to at least a 5k drive (if not 7k, since now these are even relatively affordable) would improve the performance of your T23 quite a bit. However, don't upgrade unless you are unhappy with the performance that you have right now, since there is no sense in spending 25% of what you paid for the whole computer in a HD unless necessary (my philosophy anyway).

About the LCD flutter...I don't know what to tell you about that. Maybe just a fluke, but keep an eye on it (no reason to worry hopefully).

The Thinkpad button activates a help module from which you can gather information about your system, look at help files, etc. This should be setup if you go to IBM's site and download the Software Installer. Once you get this program, you should be able to start it, and it will search your computer for different drivers and modules, suggest installations, and manage the installations of whichever modules you choose to install.

You might want to hold off in installing too much stuff though, as long as you like the way your system is working. To tell yo the truth, I would only install essential drivers and would hold off on putting in your computer too much stuff (even if it is IBM stuff).

You have a very nice and capable computer there (I have a T23 too, and still use it often despite having a T41p also). Enjoy it.

ambientscape · #3 Post by **ambientscape** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:55 pm

0rion wrote:First, I'd like to thank you all for this great site, it really helped me make a decision in purchasing this off-lease T23.

From what I read, the way to go with this model for the best 'XPerience' is to up the memory to at least 512mb and a 5400rpm drive. But I am really amazed at how well this lappy is running with just 256mb and the stock 30gb 4200rpm drive! I was just playing with Google Earth (on battery power no less) and it was doing just fine! (regardless, I have a 512 chip on it's way from an ebay win...)

Questions - I noticed the first time I began playing with it on battery power (brightness at 3) the LCD would flicker (more of a flutter) intermittantly. Should I be worrying about the inverter board? It hasn't seemed to happen since...

- How do I make the Thinkpad button do what it is supposed to do? (What is it supposed to do anyway??)

- Any other tips for a new Thinkpad owner?

Thanks!
Chris

-I wouldn't worry much about the inverter thingy looking at the age of T23. The inverter is available easily on eBay.

- The Thinkpad button is a HELP button customized by IBM. It contain information about your thinkpad and tutorials on removing some specific hardware from your thinkpad. However you need to install an application to make it run. Follow this link to get the installer :
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41811

- Keep it away from WATER!!

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0rion · #4 Post by **0rion** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 8:48 am

I had a 'boot-off' contest with a friend yesterday - he has an Asus Centrino with 1gb ram, sata hdd and a relatively fresh build of XP. My T23 not only beat him to the XP desktop, it smoked him! Both of our jaws were on our palmrests...(I am aware of the many factors that could have influenced the outcome, but it was a really fun test anyway!)

ambientscape, I didn't realize how inexpensive the inverter board was for this model on Ebay. I guess that is a perk of going with a popular model. Oh, and thanks for the tip on the Water. I'll be sure to avoid using it while scuba diving...

Thinkpaddict, I thought about going up to 7200rpm, but I heard somewhere that the faster the rpm the more heat generated. Have you noticed heat being an issue? I think I'd do fine with the 5400 anyway.

I do plan to play with Linux on this lappy. I'm waiting until Mepis is out of RC and officially released, I'm hearing good things about it.

dsvochak · #5 Post by **dsvochak** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:46 am

carbon_unit pointed out some time ago that a hard drive is one of the few items in a T2X machine that can be used in T4x machines, for example. I've concluded a 5400 rpm drive in a T4X is probably not the optimal configuration.

Hitachi 7k100's are about 1.5 times the price of a same sized 5k100. But an 80G 7k100 is about 1.25 times the price of a 100G 5k100. So there are a lot of factors to consider.

Regarding heat (and noise) the common opinion is there isn't much, if any, difference between a 5k100 and a 7k100

dsigma6 · #6 Post by **dsigma6** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:33 pm

my r40 came with a 4200rpm (much to my chagrin), and at first i assumed it had a 5400. i dont do any photo editing or things like that, so really i havent noticed it. compared to my other computers with 5400, i dont notice a difference. i did install a 5400 in the r40 and the temps reached 65C. i got a replacement for the 5400, another travelstar 4200, and it hasnt gone above 45C...and thats where id like it to stay.

ambientscape · #7 Post by **ambientscape** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 8:57 pm

0rion wrote:I think I'd do fine with the 5400 anyway.

I would rather go for the larger capacity drive than 7200 rpm. There's not much difference from 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm.....a much larger capacity would be more bang for the bucks!. Its still a laptop anyway.....

_erazor_ · #8 Post by **_erazor_** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:30 am

NS wrote:Hard Disk speed 5400RPM and 7200RPM is abit different. A bit slower and i am sure you won't notice it if you use it for normal work not intense downloading.

I second ambientscape's opinion. I always go for larger disk space rather than the speed. As long as it is 5400RPM and it does not need to take ages for me to download or read something from the HDD will do fine. I am using a 40GB 4200RPM toshiba HD as my external source. The speed did not hinder me in downloading anything at all. Works fine but require 1 - 2 minutes more to download compared to 5400RPM and 7200 RPM.

Don't take your laptop for a dive

lol, harddisk speed affects downloading speed? that`s funny news

even the slowest of the slow 4200 upm drives manage 15mb/sec ... I wanna see you downloading from the internet with 15mb/sec or more before I believe that a harddisk hinders downloading. omg.

0rion · #9 Post by **0rion** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 8:26 am

I think what NS was referring to was not downloading from the internet, but a large data transfer download off of the hard drive.

I would agree with the consensus that drive space is more precious than speed (for general purposes). But it sounds like 5400 is the 'sweet spot', and that the gain in performance of 5400 from 4200 is more significant than 7200 from 5400...(wow, I hope that makes sense). It would be interesting to see benchmarks from the 3 types of drives from the same laptop!

BTW, pertaining to my original question regarding the Thinkpad button...I found this post that has an application that will let you customize the button to launch any application, or lock the pc, shut down, etc. Works very well, and is what I was expecting to be able to do when I installed the IBM Keyboard Customizer Utility!!

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19581

-Chris

JHEM · #10 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 9:05 am

0rion wrote:I think what NS was referring to was not downloading from the internet, but a large data transfer download off of the hard drive.

Correct. Substitute the word "transfer" where he used the word "download".

Language/semantics problem

Regards,

James

dsvochak · #11 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:37 am

Orion wrote

I would agree with the consensus that drive space is more precious than speed (for general purposes).

I agree with that to some extent. But as I mentioned before, there may be other considerations. According to the first post, the machine has a 30G drive.

How much space do you really need? Buying a 100G drive if you only expect to have 50G of software and data might not be the best choice. A 100G 5400 is about the same price as a 60G 7200.

If there are no financial constraints, buy the biggest, fastest drive available. If there are, how much can you spend? What else do you want (extra battery, CD r/w, etc)

How long do you expect to use the machine? Longer than the warranty on a new drive? Would you sell the machine with the new drive or move it to a newer machine?

The factors to consider could go on at great length.

Questions about my 'new' T23

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