Thinkpads Forum

Just a brief thanks for all the advice here when I was looking for a used "T" thinkpad. I got one from, of all places, Craigslist, and it was like new. The owner got it for his daughter and the screen was too small for her movies so... it was in great condition. Even Outlook hadn't been set up or used. (Problems with it now but that's in another section).

Anyway, I love the SXGA screen because it's so crisp, and now just have to add some RAM to speed it up. But it's got XP and is loaded with Microsoft Office and other programs.

Again, just a thanks for all your advice and help.

Julia

Congratulations on your new ThinkPad. It has been said before but I will just repeat it here again that 14.1" SXGA+ ThinkPads (assuming yours is a 14.1" not the 15" SXGA+ model) do define the sweet spot for the ThinkPads.

I would highly recommend adding more RAM (to at least 2GB) with the RAM prices be as they are nowadays. You will notice a sharp improvement in the overall performance.

Sounds like a nice unit. How do you like Office 2007, in comparison to earlier versions for your work? I actually like Word 2000 for creating documents quickly.

Yes, it is the 14.1". Bought it on instinct, not really knowing much about these differences. It has 1.8 RAM. Do you think 4 would be too much? I'll have to pay to have it done but it definitely needs a boost.

Re Office 2007. Not as bad as I thought but you have to be careful when you save for the first time to "save to" a .doc file and avoid the insidious .docx. Just an added step. I have no idea why they created the .docx file format. If you import your own .doc file however it doesn't convert when you save, so that's a blessing. I'm getting used to it...

P.S. Where did you get that quote, syedj, "Long you live and high you'll fly..." It's beautiful!

julia wrote: P.S. Where did you get that quote, syedj, "Long you live and high you'll fly..." It's beautiful!

Pink Floyd, DSOTM, 1973

sktn77a wrote: Pink Floyd, DSOTM, 1973

Pink Floyd has some amazing lyrics ... one of my favourites is 'High Hopes' from division bell.

And julia, you got a nice machine, enjoy it!

julia wrote:Re Office 2007. Not as bad as I thought but you have to be careful when you save for the first time to "save to" a .doc file and avoid the insidious .docx.

You don't have to live with that - just change the defaults.

I envy you a bit because of your T60 I begin to realize that 15.4 inch widescreen is slightly too big for me. Anyway...
The docx format is supposed to save disk space, particularly when some more complex formatting is present. Also, regarding formatting I believe there are a few new features as well as some improvements in old ones introduced with Office 2007 that can be properly "stored" only in docx format (not that I come to use any of them ).

Cheers and enjoy your TP

Marin

julia wrote:It has 1.8 RAM. Do you think 4 would be too much? I'll have to pay to have it done but it definitely needs a boost.

If you're just going to run XP, it won't recognize more than 3gb anyways so it would be a waste to go with 4gb (unless you plan on upgrading to Vista anytime soon). Also, you shouldn't have to get ram installed. It's very easy and I think there are some tutorials on the IBM/Lenovo site as to how to replace/add memory.

nonny wrote:

julia wrote:Re Office 2007. Not as bad as I thought but you have to be careful when you save for the first time to "save to" a .doc file and avoid the insidious .docx.

You don't have to live with that - just change the defaults.

Yes, that's how I recently set up a new system with Office 2007, and they're now very happy with the standard .doc default.

julia wrote:It has 1.8 RAM.

Please forgive my ignorance but how is this possible?

Perhaps that's 1.75 GB, or 1792 MB, rounded up.

Yes, how do you get that with only two slots? Are there 768MB SODIMMS? According to Lenovo, the T60 accepts "256MB, 512MB, 1GB, or 2GB". Or is someone confusing the processor speed with the RAM?

The T60 will only use 3GB of RAM, ever; even with a 64-bit OS. And be sure you have a Core 2 Duo if you want to do that. Many T60's have just a Core Duo. If yours is running at 1.86GHz, I suspect it is a Core Duo.

However, before you buy any, you should see if it will help. To do that, start Task Manager (taskmgr.exe) and look at the Performance tab.

If the commit charge total is greater than physical memory total, you don't have enough RAM, and the machine is swapping to disk right now. More RAM will help with whatever it is you're doing.

If the commit charge peak is greater than physical memory total, the machine has done swapping since you started task manager (that's why it's in my startup folder), and RAM would help during that portion of whatever it is you did.

If you never get a commit charge peak above physical memory total, then more memory will not help you at all.

how much did you pay for your t60?

julia wrote:Just a brief thanks for all the advice here when I was looking for a used "T" thinkpad. , and now just have to add some RAM to speed it up. But it's got XP and is loaded with Microsoft Office and other programs.

Again, just a thanks for all your advice and help.

Julia

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Congrats on your terrific choice in the T60, Julia!

The T60 hardware will not work with more than 3 gig of ram, so that's the max you would want to install. It's a motherboard limit.

1.8 gig of RAM is really enough if the machine is tuned for "Performance" rather than "Appearance". but it would be simple to plug in a 2 gig RAM stick along with the 1 gig in the other slot.

Keep the drives defragmented and you will get max speed.

You are just beginning to touch the capabilities and versatilities of the T60. The Ultra Bay can be used for a 2nd hard drive and some of them will also run Vista 64 bit if you enjoy a little "experimenting".

Vista and Office 2007 play really well together, so you are in for some fun productivity.

Although my backup program of choice is Acronis, I have found that the native Vista backup and restore (whole drive) works quite well, and can get the user out of a fix if necessary to recover the entire system due to virus or other catastrophe.