New X60 Owner with Comments and Tips

[think2much]

Hi everyone. I just received a new X60 2.0GHz C2D and I thought I'd share a few comments and things I've learned so far:

1. I ordered this over the web, and it was configured to order ("CTO"), so the machine is a 1709CTO. I did not get the WWAN PCI Express card installed, but the machine came with what appears to be a WWAN antenna on the LCD bezel. After talking with Tech Support about this, no one had a clue as to why the antenna was there. Someone suggested that the factory was lazy and just took a WWAN card out of an existing machine. I think I may have a different answer after researching on the Web. This machine has an Atheros 802.11a/b/g/n card. I think the antenna is a third antenna used for MIMO (802.11n). Can anyone confirm this?

2. Uninstalling Symantec software is a PITA. Whatever I did caused the system to take way too long to boot up, so I had to reinstall the operating system from the recovery partition. I uninstalled Symantec again and used their own utility for insuring a "complete" uninstall. (There are still lots of registry entries referring to Symantec, but I'm going to leave well enough alone.) The machine boots fine now.

3. I ordered an Ultrabase with a 6X DVD burner. The burns were very slow -- only at 1X. I discovered that the EIDE channel was set to PIO and not Ultra DMA. I uninstalled the EIDE and rebooted. It's now set to Ultra DMA and works fine. I think the culprit may have been the Sonic software installed on this machine, so I uninstalled all of that.

4. Thanks to this forum, I learned that a BIOS entry could be changed to increase default LCD brightness while running on battery. I thought the display was too dim, so I made the change. I'm willing to sacrifice some battery life for more screen legibility. Plus I can always reduce the brightness after the machine has booted up.

5. Sales and support is slow to answer and not very helpful. That's been my experience so far. I ordered the machine with 1 GB of RAM with two 512 MB modules. Two days after placing the order I asked a sales person to change it to a 1 GB DIMM in one of the slots so I could add another 1 GB later in the empty slot. They said they would take care of the change. It didn't happen and the machine arrived with both slots used. Lenovo refused to correct this by shipping me the correct memory as an exchange. They insisted the entire machine had to be returned. I was tempted to tell them to take the machine and refund my money, but I've cooled down a bit since then. After all the trouble I went to installing the software and configuring the system to run the way I like, I'm going to chalk this up to a learning experience about Lenovo customer relations.

6. My previous computer was a ThinkPad T23, which has not so much as hiccuped in five years of use and travel around the world. It's time to retire it, and I think this new X60 is a pretty sweet machine.

7. This is a great forum and I'm glad I found it.

[gmaniac]

thanks..great post... very informative... I know that will save me loads of time because you did all the stuff I would have done. I'm anxiously waiting for my new x60. I haven't visited the forum nearly as much recently.... my old T40 gave up the ghost several years ago.

Can you please post the bios change for the screen brightness

thanks!

GM

[think2much]

Press F1 during bootup. That will take you into the BIOS settings. Look for the setting for LCD brightness on battery power which will provide a brightness setting that's the same as on AC power. It will probably warn you that changing the setting will "significantly" decrease battery life. Follow the instructions on the screen for saving the setting. I haven't bothered comparing the battery life on the two settings since the 8 cell battery gives me plenty of runtime and I can always drop the brightness with the shortcut key at any time.

[Ken Fox]

Hi everyone. I just received a new X60 2.0GHz C2D and I thought I'd share a few comments and things I've learned so far:


5. Sales and support is slow to answer and not very helpful. That's been my experience so far. I ordered the machine with 1 GB of RAM with two 512 MB modules. Two days after placing the order I asked a sales person to change it to a 1 GB DIMM in one of the slots so I could add another 1 GB later in the empty slot. They said they would take care of the change. It didn't happen and the machine arrived with both slots used. Lenovo refused to correct this by shipping me the correct memory as an exchange. They insisted the entire machine had to be returned. I was tempted to tell them to take the machine and refund my money, but I've cooled down a bit since then. After all the trouble I went to installing the software and configuring the system to run the way I like, I'm going to chalk this up to a learning experience about Lenovo customer relations.

In reality you aren't out much. Getting the 1gb RAM in one stick from Lenovo would have cost you about as much as simply buying another 1gb stick of RAM from Newegg, Mwave, Zipzoomfly, or any of the other usual suspects. 1.5gb of RAM (total) will probably be enough especially if you run WinXP. Just buy yourself a 1gb stick of DDR2 Sodimm RAM for about $95-$105, swap it in for one of your 512s, then either sell the 512mb stick here or on ebay for whatever you can get ($30-$50; maybe towards the high end since some people will overpay for parts with FRU stickers on them).

Good luck and welcome to the forum!

[think2much]

Thanks Ken. I ordered 1 GB from Crucial. It was a bit more expensive, but I've always had good results with their products.

[GomJabbar]

In addition to the method that think2much gave for changing the brightness setting, you can also do this with the ThinkPad Configuration program (Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > ThinkPad Configuration). Click on the LCD icon in the upper right and you will see the menu choice.

[fbrdphreak]

2. Uninstalling Symantec software is a PITA. Whatever I did caused the system to take way too long to boot up, so I had to reinstall the operating system from the recovery partition. I uninstalled Symantec again and used their own utility for insuring a "complete" uninstall. (There are still lots of registry entries referring to Symantec, but I'm going to leave well enough alone.) The machine boots fine now.

I've used this program for years with great results. It helps completely remove traces of uninstalled programs as well as clean up the registry in general:
http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-downlo ... ner4.3.htm

Never had any errors or problems after using it, even removing the terrible Symantec stuff.