Thinkpads Forum

I plan to purchase a x61t in a couple of months and I'm having trouble deciding whether to order the laptop with Vista or XP Tablet Edition. I'm mostly worried about battery life and performance. From what I've read in the forum and some reviews, running Vista will result in having a shorter battery life and a less-responsive system due to Aero and other background tasks that are constantly running.

My gut instinct tells me to go with XP, but as I don't have a computer with Vista installed, I don't know if I'll miss out on something.

Does anyone know if Vista has any important/useful Tablet features that are not included in XP?

Thanks!

Vista by a mile. The improvements in Tablet features is worth any niggles, which I've experienced none so far.

Aero can be disabled.

However, the DRM stuff cannot. Rather scary, that is.

Between that, Vista's newness, and the fact that Vista is different (and many of the staff members are VERY resistant to change... one change at a time makes it better, and makes it harder for higher-ups that want the project to fail to torpedo it ,) my company ordered XP Tablet for the X61ts we're getting.

All the scaremongering aside, I fully expect that the DRM stuff will have zero impact on me as a Windows user. But of course Mr Gutmann and anyone else is free to use Windows XP -- or Linux, or Windows 3.1, which didn't have any DRM in it.

I'm getting Vista and will be using it for the first time (although I have seen it and done a bit of exploring on other computers).

One thing that I've noticed promptly was disk usage - constantly spinning HDD. What do i need to disable once i get my new system?

I'm guessing disk indexing should be disabled? Anything else?

tomh009 wrote:All the scaremongering aside, I fully expect that the DRM stuff will have zero impact on me as a Windows user. But of course Mr Gutmann and anyone else is free to use Windows XP -- or Linux, or Windows 3.1, which didn't have any DRM in it.

I've personally seen, in Vista, performance degradations due to Microsoft's DRM implementation.

Copying files to another drive, or a network path, is dreadfully slow... I couldn't believe how long it took to populate a 512MB flash drive with photos, on a friend's Vista system. It took a good... 30 or 40 minutes. It would've taken 5 minutes on the same drive on an XP system.

bhtooefr wrote: I've personally seen, in Vista, performance degradations due to Microsoft's DRM implementation.

Copying files to another drive, or a network path, is dreadfully slow... I couldn't believe how long it took to populate a 512MB flash drive with photos, on a friend's Vista system. It took a good... 30 or 40 minutes. It would've taken 5 minutes on the same drive on an XP system.

What's the spec of the mentioned machine? Is it because the system has not enough RAM/CPU? Vista is well-known for being a RAM sucker. You'd need about 2GB to run smoothly.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of the specifications - however, I do know that the system was reasonably responsive. I'll guess it had a gig of RAM.

When I placed my order in June, the Lenovo rep mentioned that 80% of his customers were asking for XP. (I realize this isn't necessarily saying much.) I didn't want Vista so his comment just confirmed my decision. I didn't want to weather all the Vista-related issues I was hearing and reading about.

ToeKiller wrote:Vista by a mile. The improvements in Tablet features is worth any niggles, which I've experienced none so far.

ToeKiller: How has Vista's tablet features improved over XP's? My understanding was that Vista handled tablet functions better than XP, but maybe not that much better.

I think I'll go with XP Tablet Edition and later upgrade to Vista.

Service Pack 1 is supposed to be released before the end of the year so I think I'll wait until next year at the earliest when the Service Pack, along with the patches for the things the Service Pack breaks, are all conveniently slipstreamed into the CD or DVD.

I figure it would be best to have XP as the factory installed OS and keep it as a reliable fallback, should I discover down the road that some odd program or driver isn't compatible with Vista. If I were to order the X61t with Vista I wouldn't be able to downgrade to XP because as far as I know XP Tablet Edition isn't available for purchase by consumers.

You can actually purchase Tablet PC... and, I've looked around, and there's downgrade rights from Business to XP Tablet, not just Pro. So, it's actually CHEAPER to buy Business and then downgrade.

And, I found out today that there's a way to install XP on a ThinkPad with SATA without needing a floppy drive or slipstreaming drivers. (I called Lenovo, expecting them to send XP recovery CDs, but they told me how to do it this way (go into BIOS, go to SATA, set it to Compatibility for long enough to get into XP and install the Matrix storage drivers...) works for me! )

Of course, the ethical issues with just pirating Tablet, when you're LICENSED to do so, are weak.

XP Tablet Edition all the way.

Vista consumes more power (even with all the visual enhancements off) and is slower on equal hardware.