X41 Tablet performance issue

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redskin · #31 Post by **redskin** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 4:29 am

the mouse pointer only studder when the hard drive is fully loaded or when you have not letting the hard drive to boot up completely. the only complaint i have with the x40, x41, and x41 tablet is the boot up time when you turn on the computer, and IBM didn't help either with a bunch of their junk applications that came with the computer, and those hinders the boot up time as well.

The X40, X41, and X41 Tablet all have 1.8" 4200 rpm slow hard drive. it only suffers during booting up. once everthing is booted up, i don't see much of a performance difference for my kind of usage at least. what i did was i made a windows bootable cd that the laptop came with pre-installed windows, made a 7 recovery CDs incase i would use it in the future, backed up all the drivers, and the softwares to an external hard drive, and formatted the entire hard drive including the 5 gig hidden elisa partition, and split the hard drive into 2 partions with equal capacity. one partition being c drive from windows and applications, and the other partition as being d drive for backing up datas. after that i installed windows from scratch, and then install IBM software installer. that application will self install all the drivers for you, and you can pick and choose which ibm applications that you want to install. once i have installed all the necessary drivers, ibm and 3rd party softwares, i finally defrag both drive c and d.

now i have a clean drive without all the junk that ibm computer came with preinstalled. and i am able to use d drive for back up datas too. as before ibm preinstalled only came with one partition. the splitting up of partition i find useful because incase my c drive got messed up or not bootable then i still have my d drive intact with all of my important datas in it. now windows boots up so much quicker. it cuts down the boot up time in half, and also i gained 5 gig of hard drive space from the hidden partition. i doubt that i will ever use the 7 recovery CDs that i made because if i use it, it will install the computer back to the stage that the manufacture came with.

as far as the spec for the X41 tablet. i don't have any problem with it. tablets target students and professional people that do a lot of word processing, hand note taking, and doing presentations, and even photoshop works fine on the X41 tablet. i already have a kick [censored] desktop that does 3D rendering, video editing, photo editing, autocad, and game playing. so i don't need a laptop to be that powerful, and that's not the reason why i got the laptop for.

battery life and portability are the 2 most factors for tablet market. i hope in near future tablet market can do it all, for battery life, portability, 3D graphic rendering, game playing, hand note taking, muti medias all in one unit, but i don't see that's happening. because if it does then everybody will get tablet and then there will be no segments of specific consumers. all of which is for the practice of business gain in consumer market.

PRGeno · #32 Post by **PRGeno** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 12:19 pm

redskin wrote:.......
as far as the spec for the X41 tablet. i don't have any problem with it. tablets target students and professional people that do a lot of word processing, hand note taking, and doing presentations, and even photoshop works fine on the X41 tablet. i already have a kick [censored] desktop that does 3D rendering, video editing, photo editing, autocad, and game playing. so i don't need a laptop to be that powerful, and that's not the reason why i got the laptop for.

battery life and portability are the 2 most factors for tablet market. i hope in near future tablet market can do it all, for battery life, portability, 3D graphic rendering, game playing, hand note taking, muti medias all in one unit, but i don't see that's happening. because if it does then everybody will get tablet and then there will be no segments of specific consumers. all of which is for the practice of business gain in consumer market.

I would agree that this machine is not appropriate for a power user. But I would think it could handle mouse movement without the hicups. My less powerful TC1100 tablet doesn't have a problem like this.

The replacement HD and restore disks just showed up from ThinkPad support. I will try a clean install on the new drive to determine if it is a software load problem, or a hardware problem. But now that I hear I'm not alone, I'm more inclined to believe it simply is an X41T overall problem.

By the way, my coworker has now decided to give the unit back to me because it is "too slow" for him to do even his "basic chores". I'm ordering him an X32 instead. I wonder what unsuspecting stiff I can unload this X41T onto next?

PRGeno · #33 Post by **PRGeno** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 12:29 pm

Yotam wrote:I have this "problem" too. I don't mind it. It happens very occasionally, only when disk is working hard or there is not enough memory (or both). I think upgrading the memory (which I didn't do yet, waiting for some offers from some resellers here) will improve this to be a very minor problem.

I knew what I'm going to. 4200 HDD is SLOW. I was prepared for this.

So live with it. I think that the mouse pointer problem is not the worst problem caused by the HDD.

One person's "minor problem" is another's showstopper.

Personally I believe a modern computer ought to be able to handle mouse movement properly. This was an expected anoyance on an old 368 machine running Windows/386. This is not acceptable for any modern PC.

This isn't the only problem the X41T has that makes it unacceptable for me. It's just the most embarrasing.

beq · #34 Post by **beq** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:00 pm

I should repeat that while my longtime X40 uses the same type of 1.8" 4200rpm HDD as my new X41T, the X40 has never had the mouse pointer stuttering problem per se.

Sure the X40 can be slow as well, but even when I move the mouse pointer around while it's still booting up or during heavy disk access, it just turns into the hourglass. But the pointer movement itself is always smooth.

Unlike on my X41T, where I've seen the pointer stuttering even when the disk doesn't necessarily seem to be overloaded (ie. pointer is not an hourglass, no particularly heavy disk trashing, etc). That's why I had thought that this problem on the X41T is not simply due to just the HDD as many people have surmised...

With that said though, I can live with it. Again, I might've just accepted it as an inherent drawback of the tablet pc design/overhead, had I not been absorbed into focusing on the problem after reading this thread

I'm even learning to live with the whirring fan noise problem on my X41T (which also does not occur in my older X40), although I find it even more annoying. I don't suppose any other X41T owners here experience the same fan noise problem when moving/tilting their unit?

Yotam · #35 Post by **Yotam** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:28 pm

beq wrote:Unlike on my X41T, where I've seen the pointer stuttering even when the disk doesn't necessarily seem to be overloaded (ie. pointer is not an hourglass, no particularly heavy disk trashing, etc). That's why I had thought that this problem on the X41T is not simply due to just the HDD as many people have surmised...

How much memory do you have? Maybe it's a combination between HDD load and memory lack or something like that. What are your power settings? On "best battery life" settings the cpu runs on 600MHz only, so it can make the diference. I really don't feel this problem unless the computer has a really hard work to do. Mostly it happens when opening programs and I think that when my memory arrives it will be better. I did not work with it a lot on battery yet.
Also, I DID saw problems like this on a DESKTOP with 1.5MHz and 5400rpm HDD - when it was really loaded - the mouse didn't move smoothly. I don't say it's ok, but I just think that we should live with it. I also can't explain the difference between X41T and X40 in this problem.

beq wrote:I'm even learning to live with the whirring fan noise problem on my X41T (which also does not occur in my older X40), although I find it even more annoying. I don't suppose any other X41T owners here experience the same fan noise problem when moving/tilting their unit?

I checked especially for you, again, shaked my X41T and moved it around, but couldn't hear any fan noise except the silent breath.

Greg Gebhardt · #36 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:32 pm

My X41 tablet does have a little mouse stutter while booting up but have not seen it after. I pretty well use mine all day long, on and off and use the sleep function when not in use. I ma coming home with no less than 50% of the battery left at the end of the day.

Fan noise? I can not hear mine even in the most quiet of conditions. ZERO, no fan noise. I do feel a little warm air from the vent but not a peep out of the fan.

My Wakefield Sleeve arrived today and boy is it nice. Thoe people at Wakefield know how to make a great sleeve. I now leave my X41 in the tablet mode all day even when transporting.

I had my doubts about going from a T43p to the X41 tablet, but I am not even looking back any more.

beq · #37 Post by **beq** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 6:38 pm

Yotam, my new X41T (1866-6TU) has 1GB RAM and 1.5GHz CPU, while my X40 (2371-H9U) has 512MB RAM and 1.4GHz CPU, FWIW. The extra RAM for the X41T is the official IBM one that I'd ordered at the same time as the tablet.

I set the CPU power setting to adaptive (not low) on battery, and maximum power on AC. But from what I recall the mouse pointer stuttering had happened even when plugged in to AC mains...

And thanks for the testimonials guys, although it's disconcerting to me to hear that you all don't have the fan noise problem at all (while an old discussion linked from my previous thread showed others with X41 also having the fan noise problem, weird)

I'm now thinking I will contact Lenovo/IBM tech support after all...

pphilipko · #38 Post by **pphilipko** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:41 pm

Greg Gebhardt wrote:My X41 tablet does have a little mouse stutter while booting up but have not seen it after. I pretty well use mine all day long, on and off and use the sleep function when not in use. I ma coming home with no less than 50% of the battery left at the end of the day.

Fan noise? I can not hear mine even in the most quiet of conditions. ZERO, no fan noise. I do feel a little warm air from the vent but not a peep out of the fan.

My Wakefield Sleeve arrived today and boy is it nice. Thoe people at Wakefield know how to make a great sleeve. I now leave my X41 in the tablet mode all day even when transporting.

I had my doubts about going from a T43p to the X41 tablet, but I am not even looking back any more.

Hmmm...I have yet to see a "Wakefield sleeve".

#39 Post by **BillMorrow** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:00 am

beq wrote:I'm really curious if any other X41 Tablet owners also notice the occasional mouse pointer stuttering problem and it's not just isolated to PRGeno and myself. Just so I can know whether to follow up with IBM support/repair/exchange, or just live with it...

i, too, notice the cursor "stuttering" just after bootup..
it goes away once all the apps, drivers and so forth are loaded..
my 1866-6SU (which i am using as a sort of review subject) exhibits no other issues..
no noticable fan noise and no unusually hot areas..

and

yes, the HDD is slow compared to what we expect in 2005..
so i ran norton speed disk and defrag'ed it..
it was a help.. not much, but it DID prodice a bit better response..

so far, the X41 tablet is a neat little thinkpad..
well thought out, well executed..
i would have liked a bit more speed but this is the long life ultra portable, not the big hulking G series..
IMO the X41 (and tablet) is well balanced between speed and battery life..

Greg Gebhardt · #40 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:22 am

pphilipko wrote:
Greg Gebhardt wrote:My X41 tablet does have a little mouse stutter while booting up but have not seen it after. I pretty well use mine all day long, on and off and use the sleep function when not in use. I ma coming home with no less than 50% of the battery left at the end of the day.

Fan noise? I can not hear mine even in the most quiet of conditions. ZERO, no fan noise. I do feel a little warm air from the vent but not a peep out of the fan.

My Wakefield Sleeve arrived today and boy is it nice. Thoe people at Wakefield know how to make a great sleeve. I now leave my X41 in the tablet mode all day even when transporting.

I had my doubts about going from a T43p to the X41 tablet, but I am not even looking back any more.
Hmmm...I have yet to see a "Wakefield sleeve".

My second Wakefield sleeve. Quite nice and very protective.

X41 Tablet performance issue

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