Thinkpads Forum

I'm in love with my new Thinkpad X60s, never had such a great piece of hardware in my hands before.

As I don't have an external optical drive, I'm stuck with XP a few weeks. I have a few questions I hope you can answer for me.

1. Any recommendations regarding power management? Battery life is very important to me, so any help is more than welcome. I was thinking of installing NHC, but I'm not sure if it is better than the preinstalled software. Also, can I run both programs at the same time?

2. Does it drain more power by having a all the presinstalled programs running in the background? If it does, what programs would you say I could safely remove without losing too much functionality?

3. Need a good carrying case that is small, but also very durable. www.sfbags.com looks really good, but is a bit too expensive. Must be something available in the EU.

4. Can remove the annoying XP and Centrino Duo stickers from my Thinkpad without leaving ugly marks?

Thanks in advance!

Spif wrote: 2. Does it drain more power by having a all the presinstalled programs running in the background? If it does, what programs would you say I could safely remove without losing too much functionality?

In short, yes. You would probably be best off doing a complete wipe and reinstall of XP, then installing ONLY the programs you need. Check out http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=3827 for more info. If you aren't up to that, you can type "msconfig" in the run box, and deselect items you don't need after clicking the "Startup" tab. This will prevent a lot of programs from starting up. You might also want to go through TweakHounds super tweaking guide and disable unnecessary services which hog CPU time. See http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm Also, don't install Windows Defender because that will periodically peg your CPU at 100%, running down your battery in short order.

4. Can remove the annoying XP and Centrino Duo stickers from my Thinkpad without leaving ugly marks?

There are tons of threads on this topic, here is one of them...
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=24614

I think the general consensus is to remove all but the IBM one that is recessed using your fingernails, and then use WD-40 or something like Goo Gone to remove the adhesive residue. Also, people say that you should do this as soon as possible before there is wear in that area.

Enjoy your new machine! I should be purchasing one soon too!