newbie questions regarding t60p

[blueblood]

Hi,

i just got my t60p and have been trying to customize it to my taste.
i have a few newbie questions and comments so please bear with me and help me out if you can

my system is a 8744-j2u, C2D 2ghz, 2GB ram, 256mb firegl, 100gb 72k drive, DVD burner, 15.4" sxga screen et all.
the os is vista buisness

1. i got a vista upgrade cd with the thinkpad, is that normal? even thou vista came installed on the machine

2. office 2007 came pre installed wiht a 60 day trial, is that normal and if i restore my system will it be there again?

3. right now my FireGl is showing 1GB of memory, i want to change it to 256mb which is the actual physical memory it has, how do i do that. i did some search on the forum and net but no luck so far.

4. every time the system recovers from a screen saver the brightness goes down to 1 bar (for a lack of a better word to describe it) how can i set it to keep the last brightness setting. all this is while the system is plugged in, not on battery

5. the panel on the immediate left of my keyboard, above the stickers and below the speakers is kindda loose. its not that its flexing, it just has a bit of 'play' in it. and is a bit irritating, especially when the rest of the system is extremly well built.
can i fix this myself , or is it a known problem? anybody else have the same concern?

6. need some advice on this one.

generally i am quite disappointed with vista. having used it for just 12hrs now and my first impresison is that its all 'eye candy' and its basically a system hog. i am seriously thinking of burning the recovery disks, wiping the HD and doing a clean install of XP.
maybe in another few months i'll give it another shot.

the fact is that i dont mind the eye candy its just that the system is not as 'fast' right now as i would want it to be.
i am really going to be running some heavy duty applications on it , so i want every last bit of speed, and memory i can get out of it
i'm a grad student, and i tinker a lot with my pc and settings and try out new applications every other day, so am not exactly looking for bullet proof reliabilty a road warrior might be expecting

7. I ABSOLUTELY love the keyboard, yes its my first t-pad

8. The screen brightness seemed a bit low at first (even at max settings) maybe its just my eyes getting old or i'm used to CRT monitors

9. if i do switch to XP, are there any driver issues i should be aware off before hand? and i'm assuming that the thinkvatage apps do have an XP flavor readily available.

10. also if i do ever have to call lenovo service or send the system back for some warranty related thing, would they make an issue out of the OS being changed?

11. i have the 9 cell battery and the right end of it ( by right i mean when ur looking at the screen and keyboard) is kindda loose.
if i pull on the battery it comes out a fair bit. like about 1/8th of an inch. is this typical? the other side is fine.
i ask this because i'm tempted to handle the tpad by holding the battery portion sticking out.


would appreciate your feedback and advice in this regard.

thank you

Blue

[jeffm]

5. I had similar issues. I disassembled to the keyboard bezel level and put everything back together. It was a big improvement.

6. I find Vista to be very snappy but I did a clean install. You should consider that, or start removing all the processes you don't need (i.e. google toolbar).

8. Mine is bright enough to hurt my eyes on full brightness in normal lighting. I typically keep it turned down 2-3 notches.

11. Check to see if your battery is being recalled. I hear the replacements fit better:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ATT-LENOVO

[Superego]

4. I know you can change the brightness settings for different power modes (you unplug and it dims, plug back in and it brightens, etc.), but you say this is when it's plugged in, so that may not help. Just as an experiment, check out the LCD settings in the Display tab of Thinkpad configuration and see if that does anything.

7. Completely agree!

9. If you do a clean install, then one of the first drivers that you'll want is the Intel Matrix Storage driver:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62909

Before you do a clean install of XP from CD you'll need to switch the SATA setting in BIOS to compatibility mode. Otherwise you'll get an error like "Hard disk not found" (can't remember exactly). Once finished with the install you can install the driver and then change your SATA setting back to ACPI.

After that I'd probably just get the ethernet driver and system update (or software installer, whatever your taste may be) and let that do the work of updating.

[steveh]

Item 1,I did not receive the upgrade disk, and have the same machine (shipped with Vista). Just assume it's a mistake.
2. Yes, it has the trial version of Office. If you do a selective reinstall, you can prevent this from being installed.
3. This s a Vista 'feature'. It informs you of the maximum VRAM that it can use (includes sharing system ram). It is not used unless needed, and in point of fact with the FireGL V5250 card it will probably never get called. There is nothing to turn off.
4. Go to control panels, power options, change advanced power settings, scroll down to display, then display brightness, ensure plugged in is set to 100%.
5. You can fix this yourself. Download the Hardware Maintenance Manual for the T60p and there will be simple instructions to accomplish this.
6.Vista business is actually a bit faster than XP Pro, but it suffers greatly with the addition of certain programs. Also, the first day of so it will appear slower as it indexes it metadata for very fast searching. You also need to get rid of Google desktop and Norton Internet security (which are part of the standard build, as they greatly influence the sped of Vista. You might want to do a selective restore without these items. Vista should not be slower than XP if it is done properly (even using Aero).
7. Yes the keyboard is very good.
8. The brightness should be more than sufficient on AC, check the settings that I have referenced above.
9 & 10. I would leave Vista on this machine, but if you switch to XP, make sure you get all the drivers from the Lenovo site.
11. The battery can move a bit. I would not be concerned about it.

HTH,
Steve

Note from Moderator: Snipped overly long quote.

[jeffm]

9. If you do a clean install, then one of the first drivers that you'll want is the Intel Matrix Storage driver...

If you're installing Vista, you won't need this.

[Superego]

If you're installing Vista, you won't need this.

My apologies on the driver reference, I'm not using Vista.

[blueblood]

thanks for the replies guys, appreciate it.

i just installed windows XP,
my backup didnt work so i just wiped the drive clean (i'll deal with that later)

am in the process of updating the drivers and applications, but there is something immediate i needed to ask if anybody knows about it.

my display is somewhat grainy. noticebaly grainy.
i have installed firegl drivers from the lenovo site,

i am using the driver version 8.293.1.0


any clue as to whats hapening.
the system is running just fine, its just the grainy display

i can send you a picture of my desktop which shows what i am talking about. its one of the default backgorunds that comes with xp[/img]

[newbie1983]

easy you have your setting to 16bit medium instead of high 32 bit. Check in display control panel

[blueblood]

nope its at 32bit

[skibbz]

Congrats on the new T60P, I ordered the same exact model yesterday so it was nice to read over your first impressions and comments. I would definitely agree with all the previous posts that recommend doing a clean install of Vista without all of the miscellaneous bloatware - it should be markedly faster afterwards.

What are your first impressions of the screen?

Is the 9 cell awkward?

Any dead pixels?

Congrats! I am so anxious to get mine next week

[blueblood]

can i paste an image file here?

i want you guys to see the grains on my screen.

its definitely a driver issue, but i'm already using the driver form lenovo's site.

is there anything else out there?

please help

one more thing, i have a dead pixel which comes and go's.
is that normal?

[hoplite]

6.Vista business is actually a bit faster than XP Pro, but it suffers greatly with the addition of certain programs. Also, the first day of so it will appear slower as it indexes it metadata for very fast searching. You also need to get rid of Google desktop and Norton Internet security (which are part of the standard build, as they greatly influence the sped of Vista. You might want to do a selective restore without these items. Vista should not be slower than XP if it is done properly (even using Aero).

Can you provide a link that would elaborate on this? I only ask because the benchmarks I've seen show that Vista is slower than XP. I'm running Vista Business and am trying to convince myself not to rollback to XP...

[steveh]

Sorry, I can't. I am relaying my real world usage of Vista, alongside similarly equipped machines running XP Pro. I find that it is substantially faster (assuming indexing is finished).

Vista is VERY affected by drivers and non compliant software, and this can really drag it down.

Steve

Can you provide a link that would elaborate on this? I only ask because the benchmarks I've seen show that Vista is slower than XP. I'm running Vista Business and am trying to convince myself not to rollback to XP...

[hoplite]

@steve ok thanks for the input. i'll wait and see i haven't done away with vista yet but if i can't get these annoying little niggles out of running visual studio 2005 i'll have to rollback.

@blueblood out of curiosity did you create a set of resuce and recover discs before you did a clean install of XP? you can call and order a XP rescue and recover CD from lenovo it costs around 45 bucks and should come with the latest (when the cd was created) drivers. it might save a bit of time...but then again it might not.

[blueblood]

is there anyperson here who's done a clean xp install on a thinkpad t60p with the Ati Firegl 5250 card?

IBM tech support didnt have an answer.
i'm hoping someone over here can help.

go here to look at a screen shot from my desktop.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mylaptoppic ... 8968660098

please help!!