Thinkpads Forum

A first time poster...

I just purchased and received my new T60. I would appreciate any and all advice from experienced users about what they would recommend that I do first (maybe a top five list?)? Software configurations? Essential Downloads? Vista suggestions?


Specifications:
Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium
RAM: 2Gig
Chip: 1.66 Core Duo.


thanks in advance to any and all replies.

Clarque

Clarque,
Congratulations on your new purchase. My first Thinkpad T60p arrived a few days ago so I am not the expert on what to do first. But if you search under "new Thinkpad" you will find lots of valuable info here. I am also not a power user, but already I've done the following based on the great info on this site:

1) Downloaded system update #3 from the Lenovo website
2) Deleted via Windows (I am still running XP) Diskkeeper lite. It is superfluous as windows does all the essentials re: maintaining your hard drive
3) Looked into replacing the Symantec Client Anti viral etc... It is only a 3 month license and many others have suggested alternatives such as Avast and Bitdefender that are better (and cheaper)
4) Replaced Adobe Reader with FoxitReader (free version). For some reason, I was having problems opening pdf files with the Reader 8.0 I had downloaded. Some embedded OEM software kept wanting to install an earlier version of Adobe Reader and then froze when it discovered that 8.0 was installed. I deleted 8.0 and installed foxitreader. End of problem.

I've kept all the Thinkvantage software as I'm not sure what I'll wind up using. I do like the fingerprint reader (if you have that). Otherwise the only other issue I've encountered is that I had trouble enabling both the trackpoint and the touchpad at the same time. When they were both enabled, the pointer would occasionally freeze for minutes at a time. Downloading the latest drivers didn't help. Since I use the trackpoint the vast majority of the time, I decided to disable the touchpad. No problems since.

I'm sure others will have much more experienced suggestions but I hope these will help. Again -- congrats. Hope you enjoy your T60 as much as I am mine.

Also, don't forget to make those rescue and recovery discs.

Yes as ryengineer said. This is sort of a first commandment for a new ThinkPad before you do anything else which I think most members will agree with. This will allow you to tinker around with the new machine for a while without worrying about mistakes.

Personally, I would clone the whole drive prior to doing this because sometimes, you may still encounter errors while burning the recovery discs. This way, I would still have a fallback incase something goes wrong. This will require you to have another spare hard disk though and maybe not recommended by the some. (EDIT -- like this one)

Second step for me would be to remove symantec/norton AV and replace it with another AV solution. Third would probably be to register the product to be eligible for updates, warranty claims, etc.

Aside from the Rescue and Recovery disks (my system created 4 DVDs), be sure to actually run system update 3 after you download it. When I did, it upgraded the bios and about 500 meg of other OEM software. (took a few hours to download and install) I never would have guessed that a new machine would have needed that many updates straight from the factory.

Thanks for your suggestions. I realize that this is an oft-answered question on this forum and I appreciate your responses! They have been most helpful.

clarque

@bontistic: I agree that the recovery disks are important. And I have an image of the hidden system partition and a backup of all driver folders etc.
I just reïnstalled my thinkpad from the 6 recovery cd's and it gave me a shock when I got an error reading one of the disks and later on an error the system couldn't be restored. Luckily, when I tried reïnstalling again (and cleaned every cd before putting it in the cd drive) all went well.

@turnerpr: If I remember right you need to first uninstall system update before you install system update 3. It's important to install SU3 in the beginning as I didn't the first time I installed my thinkpad and when I later wanted to use system update it just wouldn't work. I assume it had something to do with software installer, which I did use before reading on the forums one should use SU.

When updating the system, take care you deselect the components you don't need. For example deselecting some of the multimedia software makes a difference of more then 100MB.

As earlier said I would just throw open the windows software configuration and remove everything you don't need.

@turnerpr: If I remember right you need to first uninstall system update before you install system update 3. It's important to install SU3 in the beginning as I didn't the first time I installed my thinkpad and when I later wanted to use system update it just wouldn't work. I assume it had something to do with software installer, which I did use before reading on the forums one should use SU.

Thanks for the heads-up. I didn't uninstall system update before downloading system update 3 directly from the Lenovo website. When I open system update now, it does say version 3 and I was able afterwards to run update and download and install all the latest drivers etc... Can I assume that it is all working correctly?

I think you can .