Bought a refurb T61; ordered XP pro received Vista business

[chsu74]

Hello All,

Just like the subject heading. I am complete Vista noob and have been a XP pro user forever. Is there a down side because Windows 7 is coming out? I will post the machine type when I get home later.

Is there a way to skip the password login and fingerprint verification on start up?

There is also this annoying giving permission to open new drives and applications. Is this a new security feature that XP does not have?

TIA

[sktn77a]

Call Lenovo and let them know they sent the computer out with the wrong OS. If you just bought it, they should send out the XP disks no problem.

[RealBlackStuff]

FYI:
Windows 7 is nothing else but Vista SP3, don't fall in that trap!

[Marin85]

FYI: Windows 7 is nothing else but Vista SP3, don't fall in that trap!

I think you have somewhat oversimplified things here Judging by the beta release, Win 7 promises to be an excellent OS (for the M$ scales...) if M$ doesn´t get it screwed before, which I hope won´t be the case. However, I would agree that they should offer it at no expense (i.e. SP3-wise) to all users having Vista installed, just because of the big failure Vista is as released OS.

Just my 2 cents

Marin

[Marin85]

Hello All,

Just like the subject heading. I am complete Vista noob and have been a XP pro user forever. Is there a down side because Windows 7 is coming out? I will post the machine type when I get home later.

Is there a way to skip the password login and fingerprint verification on start up?

There is also this annoying giving permission to open new drives and applications. Is this a new security feature that XP does not have?

TIA

In general I second sktn77a suggestion. Still, let me tell you a similar experience I had in the past. I once had to receive recovery disks from Lenovo for my system which was at that point of time an XP Pro setup. But I mistakenly received DVDs for their Vista preload. At the beginning I thought I would call them back to request the proper ones, but I didn´t do that anyway due to other circumstances. Later on I decided to try them out, at least it wouldn´t have hurt after having backed up everything I needed to. Surprise! I still have Vista, though not Lenovo preload image, but a clean install of it. Anyway, I´m very glad with it and what is more important, for some reasons the XP setup I had had before was a pure nightmare on my ThinkPad. I later tried a clean install of XP (I already had upgraded my HD to a 7200rpm drive) and it was just the same nightmare Anyway, other certainly have different (and more positive) experience. For me, Vista performs on my ThinkPad much better than XP ever did. A few things to consider about Vista:
1. Vista eats a lot of resources (RAM), but if you have 2 GB or more of system memory, Vista can utilize it better than XP (my experience);
2. Vista still (that means after SP1) has some bugs, some more annoying than others, but XP isn´t much different in that sense, other OS - other bugs;
3. Vista offers some fancy animation, actually somewhat user-friendly if you stay all day before the screen, just something different for the eyes;
4. Vista is not going to improve any much further;
5. Vista needs to be somewhat tweaked by the user (in my mind even more than XP needs to);
6. Vista still has some software incompatibility issues, to be somewhat cynic, your software from the '70s won´t run on it...
And yes, as a software product, which involves unity of some minimum of features and requirements, Vista is a failure unlike XP, still not that big failure that I wouldn´t prefer it over XP. Now I really started sounding like a M$ Ad I would suggest you to search a bit in the Vista subforum and then decide if you really want to get rid of Vista.

Back to your questions: yes, there is a way to skip the login screen and the fingerprint prompt. It´s a setting in Client Security Solution (CSS) and probably also in the fingerprint software, it partly involves the login screen option due to password settings as well. Apart from this, you will have to check out User Acounts in Control Panel for that option as well as under Global Power Settings in Lenovo Power Manager. The annoying permission prompt is called UAC (User Account Control) and can be also disabled within User Accounts under Control Panel.

Hope this helps

Marin

PS: I don´t really want to turn this into an OS discussion. XP vs. Vista has been discussed here and everywhere so many times, and OS wars are anyway against the forum rules. Also, I think the Vista subforum is a better place for this thread anyway

[chsu74]

Thank you all for your responses. Its interesting how the hardware performs better on Vista as opposed to XP on these machines. When I bought the refurb, they did have the option in buying it preloaded with XP or Vista Business. I do not want to turn this thread into a OS war. I am starting to warm up to Vista but don't like the how memory hungry the new OS is.

My issues are as follows:

1. Uninstalling the preloaded Office 2007 and reloading it with 2003 and still get a compatability issue error notification at start up. Once I ignore it, Office 2003 runs fine and appears to be stable but I don't know for how long. I am not ready to upgrade to Office 2007 yet.

2. I have other software like Acrobat 6.0 and Quicken that I bought and works fine for XP but not Vista. These software upgrades are expensive. Since my other machines are XP, upgrading seems to be not worth the expense right now.

[RealBlackStuff]

I think you answered your own question.
Get rid of Vista and insist on the XP disks that you ordered.

[sktn77a]

Having done this myself a couple of times and based upon general experience on this forum, I think Marin85's experience with the XP downgrade was atypical. Not to say that it wasn't real, but most people see a dramatic improvement in performance going to the leaner XP setup. Just call Lenovo and tell them they sent you the wrong disks - they'll replace them and you get to keep the Vista disks in case morbid curiosity ever gets the better of you!

[chsu74]

Excellent advice folks. Many thanks for taking the time to help!!

[Marin85]

Having done this myself a couple of times and based upon general experience on this forum, I think Marin85's experience with the XP downgrade was atypical. Not to say that it wasn't real, but most people see a dramatic improvement in performance going to the leaner XP setup.

Maybe you are right. I have never really understood why things went this way for me, but my little research on that topic makes me think that either my Z61p is totally fuccked up or the simple observation applies, namely that installing all additional drivers needed and the consequent M$ updates which are nothing more but patches can noticeably slow down XP to the ridiculous extent that one starts asking himself what the hell happened to my Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM and 7200rpm HDD which are actually supposed to outperform my 5 years old desktop PC in real-life tasks but do so only in some stupid synthetic benchmarks or under heavy load (then how about every day use?...) - a good point to think over...

Just my 2 cents

Marin