Thinkpads Forum

I bought my T60 in November 2006. Vista hadn't shipped yet and my XP Pro supplied laptop was supposed to have a free upgrade to Vista (Vista Business, I suppose), cost to me just shipping and handling fee of something like $10-20.

Is this still available to me, and how do I go about it? Is there a time limit on this?

Doing a quick search I found the following:

If you buy any Laptop or PC from us running Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or Windows XP Professional anytime between October 26th 2006 and March 15th 2007 you will receive a FREE Upgrade to Vista. And if you buy any computer with XP Home, you will receive a ½ price upgrade to Vista.

The last date to submit an upgrade is March 31st 2007. However, all computers must have been purchased no later than March 15th 2007.

Muse wrote:I bought my T60 in November 2006. Vista hadn't shipped yet and my XP Pro supplied laptop was supposed to have a free upgrade to Vista (Vista Business, I suppose), cost to me just shipping and handling fee of something like $10-20.

Is this still available to me, and how do I go about it? Is there a time limit on this?

Many people (me included) suggest avoiding the "upgrade" type of installation. Instead, do a complete install over a bare hard drive. Too many problems lurk when installing Vista on top of existing XP.

Also, read this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/busin ... ref=slogin

This is an article from the NY times published in March of this year. It is about how two top Microsoft execs got burned by Vista on their own machines. Most of those shortcomings have since been corrected, but you will want to download the appropriate apps and drivers from the Lenovo site for your Vista install.

Vista runs well on a T60. I have it on three of them, but each is installed on its own separate hard drive, not co-mingled with XP.

As with XP, Vista will require some tweaking and tuning for max performance.

Have two gig of RAM for proper performance with Vista.

Tried vista, hated vista. That was a copy of a stripped down custom install geared for performance without all the extra worthless junk included. I paid extra to get XP Pro rather than Vista Business on my T60 and even then, the first thing I did was a fresh re-image to remove all the lenovo junk from the system. Never had a problem

Maybe I'll just keep running XP Pro. I'd like to see and play around with Vista but it seems like it's no easy task getting it and setting it up. Perhaps I can't even get the free Vista promised, it seems uncertain. I suppose I can call Lenovo support and find out where I stand with that.

If you have Vista installed on a separate HD, I'm wondering how you do that. Can you have more than one HD installed in a T60?

Is it possible to multiboot a T60?

I have just 1.5 GB RAM in this, so maybe it wouldn't support Vista nicely. I haven't been having major problems. There are some peculiar things that happen, but don't know what the issues really are. So far I've been able to work around the issues.

Muse wrote:Maybe I'll just keep running XP Pro. I'd like to see and play around with Vista but it seems like it's no easy task getting it and setting it up. Perhaps I can't even get the free Vista promised, it seems uncertain. I suppose I can call Lenovo support and find out where I stand with that.

If you have Vista installed on a separate HD, I'm wondering how you do that. Can you have more than one HD installed in a T60?

Is it possible to multiboot a T60?

I have just 1.5 GB RAM in this, so maybe it wouldn't support Vista nicely. I haven't been having major problems. There are some peculiar things that happen, but don't know what the issues really are. So far I've been able to work around the issues.

Vista would run just fine with 1.5 gig of RAM. Two gig is optimal, but 1.5 will do the job unless you have some memory intensive programs that you run.

Yes, you can have two hard drives on a T60. The main drive and then one for the Ultra Bay enclosure, but that drive would be used for files and things and not another operating system.

Yes, you can dual boot XP and Vista, and Vista does install nicely in dual boot configuration with minimal fuss, but it's still best to spend a few dollars on a separate main drive and just slide it into the main slot and install Vista and your programs on it. Switching drives involves just unscrewing one screw and sliding the drives in and out.