Thinkpads Forum

Hello fellow ThinkPad owners. well after many years using a desktop and still do in the office (XP PRO) the need arose to get a laptop and after much research I settled on the T60P. After much thinking I settled for Vista Business with the 1.8 GHZ CPU, 2 GB Ram, the 7200rpm hard drive, DVD burner, ATI Mobility FireGL V5250 graphics and the 15.4 widescreen. Here are my first thoughts. My 8 month old custom built desktop with XP Pro screams with speed but the laptop is much slower. Since this is my first laptop I am not sure what to expect. Immediately when recieving the T60P I uninstalled Norton and also cleaned the remaining pieces with regedit and removed the google toolbar. I installed AVG anti-virius Pro which works great. Everything went well and it is running smoothly except somewhat slow with a bootup time of around 1 to 1 1/2 minutes which isn't too bad.
Here is a question I do have. This evening I made backup disks and had to use 1 CD and 2 DVDs. I was surprised because I read it would take only 1 CD and 1 DVD. I have loaded on it Microsoft Word 2007 so maybe that is the difference. I thought and assume d it would only copy the the hidden partition with the factory software. Your thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated. I really appreciate all the help from this forum which helped me decide on the T60P which I believe is a very well built laptop. I was surprised too that it only took 1 1/2 weeks after ordering it from Lenovo to receive it and being the fact is was built in China. Thanks Bill

I'm unsure if R&R make backup of the service partition known as IBM_SERVICE. To my likings, I rather clean install Windows XP (I use a Lite version which is much more faster than the unmodified SP2 version) and then make a image of my entire HDD using Ghost or Acronis. As long as your recovery disks work then there's no need to worry about.

And a great way to go buying a Thinkpad!! Welcome to the club

Ive messed with the backups in xp pro, and I hope they apply in vista. In xp, a recovery set only requries 1 cd+1dvd, whereas a backup can require 1cd+ multiple dvds. The backup does NOT include the service partition, so if you had a completely blank hd, you would need to run the recovery set first, then the backup set; for some reason, the backup set doesnt always boot like it should, so I found it best to run the recovery stuff and install the service partition.

Ive run vista on my thinkpad for a little bit, and it seems to run plenty fast. Ive noticed on many of my laptops, startup performance seems to lag behind desktops...I dont know exactly the reason, but Ive been able to boot a thinkpad x24 in 16 secs, a t41 in 23 secs, and im still working on the t60 to go below the current 38 secs while maintaining all of its extra features!

XP is faster than Vista.

So, I think comparing your desktop running XP to your laptop running Vista won't be fair. My friend bought a laptop that has Vista. Performance was so so. I can feel the lag when I drag the window around the screen. Emptying the trash seems to a long time. We wiped out Vista and installed XP. XP is just so much faster.

gerate444 wrote: Here is a question I do have. This evening I made backup disks and had to use 1 CD and 2 DVDs. I was surprised because I read it would take only 1 CD and 1 DVD. I have loaded on it Microsoft Word 2007 so maybe that is the difference. I thought and assume d it would only copy the the hidden partition with the factory software.

Well, I suspect you made a Recovery media (backup disks) and read instead about Recovery disks that takes less media space.

38s bootup you're kidding right. do you mean to tell me that it takes 38s to get from pushing the power button untill you're logged in Vista? I would love to know how as it takes my t60p almost 3 minutes. what starts up for you when vista starts? do you have AV or lenovo apps that start upong logging in? I would like to shorten the booting time and I am willing to try your setup.

gt5l wrote:38s bootup you're kidding right. do you mean to tell me that it takes 38s to get from pushing the power button untill you're logged in Vista? I would love to know how as it takes my t60p almost 3 minutes. what starts up for you when vista starts? do you have AV or lenovo apps that start upong logging in? I would like to shorten the booting time and I am willing to try your setup.

I have about a 45s boot time to my windows destop. I start counting when I swipe my finger across the fingerprint reader as the initial stage of boot. The only thing special about my set up is that I installed Windows XP from scratch and I use "msconfig" to disable any startup items that are not actually needed during system startup - things like the office launcher, adobe launcher, ect are disabled. But, I also leave McAffee Virus scanner running.

Also, in bios I have the system set to maximum performance while on AC.

i find it hard to minimize startup processes because there are so many lenovo ones

i dont like how my fresh startup environment has almost 70 processes , but it's for all the stuff like the active protection, ultranav, tablet drivers, etc

dsalyers wrote:I have about a 45s boot time to my windows destop. I start counting when I swipe my finger across the fingerprint reader as the initial stage of boot. ...

when do you stop counting, how do you know when vista is completly launched?

My T60 takes less time than my desktop, both with XP Pro; still too long. My friend has a Sony laptop and installed Vista...it boots up in SECONDS compared to the XP that was on it before.

He is probably not really shutting it down but using the "advanced" hibernation vista does when you hit the power button in the Start menu. The real shut down button is to the right under the > button along with restart, suspend, etc.

carbon_unit wrote:He is probably not really shutting it down but using the "advanced" hibernation vista does when you hit the power button in the Start menu. The real shut down button is to the right under the > button along with restart, suspend, etc.

That little sneak, ha! I will ask him and see what he is doing. He showed me the bootup and I commented on how fast it was and he said, ya, thats one feature he really liked about VISTA, but he never mentioned the "advanced hibernation."

this even beats sleep which takes few sec longer, I will use this option form now on.

gt5l wrote:

dsalyers wrote:I have about a 45s boot time to my windows destop. I start counting when I swipe my finger across the fingerprint reader as the initial stage of boot. ...

when do you stop counting, how do you know when vista is completly launched?

Sorry didn't realize you were referring to Vista, I use XP, I have never installed Vista on this machine.

I was also referring to XP Pro boot up, from the time the power button is pressed to the time my desktop shows up, and is ready to go...I run bootvis to record the times, and I also use a simple stopwatch to verify.

I really havent messed with vista yet because it still feels so strange, but I suspect with enough time, it will be whittled away to speed it up too!

I trimmed the stratup program list (removed office & Adobe stuff) left Lenovo and Kaspersky AV alone and here is a detailed startup time.
Satrting from zero (the computer is completley off)

From pushing power button

• Showing Lenovo flash screen 5 sec
  Showing Win scroll bar 19 sec
  Showing Win Vista round logo 50 sec
  Swipe finger 51 sec
  Fingerprint swipe processed and accepted 106 sec
  Taskbar shown with Win Vista basic processes 128 sec
  Showing Lenovo Access Connection also connected to network 135 sec

I don't think this is bad, 2 min & 15 sec to fully start Win Vista is not bad I think.