Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
I've just bought an X61 off ebay.

1. It has Vista business installed but no discs. Will Lenova supply me with any, if so how much.*sorted*
2. I'd like a new keyboard as this one has some shine. Any tips on where to buy one. Genuine Lenova or are there some decent replacements available.
3. Is any sort of manual available apart from the downloadable one.
4. As its under warranty should i do some tests on it to check it out. First view, everything seems okay.
4. One gig RAM. I'd like 2 gig for Vista. Ebay seems to have lots, any tips.*sorted*
thanks in advance.

I look forward to moving from the Legacy forum to the X6 series one.

Here's at least a few answers:

1: Short answer: yes. Shouldn't be extremely expensive, although personally I'd consider getting x64 Vista install media and loading that(with the COA key)... these machines have 64-bit processors so I like the expandability. Here in the US, install media runs $40 or so USD direct from Lenovo, so it's not too expensive.

2: Look either here(preferred) or eBay. Not sure how much the keyboard runs, but you shouldn't have to spend a mint on one, either.

3: You'd have to ask Lenovo, to be honest. I'm not even sure if they make printed manuals for these anymore.

4: I'm not sure. from what I've seen not much goes wrong with these systems except for the battery(which is most likely out of warranty anyway). They're simple and robust.

5: Another reason I recommend a 64-bit OS on this system is because you can run up to 8GB of RAM in here. Since prices on two 2GB sticks are pretty reasonable you can reap the benefit of 4GB of RAM without the 32-bit OS memory cap. However, if you want to run 2GB due to cost issues you won't have any problems.

paul*robertson wrote:1. It has Vista business installed but no discs. Will Lenova supply me with any, if so how much.

They will supply disks only for the OS specified on the CoA that was attached to the ThinkPad when new. If your X61 serial number parts lookup shows Vista Business as the factory supplied OS, then Lenovo should sell you a set of install disks for it.

As to cost, you need to ask Lenovo as it varies from country to country.

Cheers,

Bill B.

1.1GB ram ordered.
2.According to the guy at Lenovo you can create your own restore disks. Is there any disadvantage of doing this, rather than getting them from Lenova.
3.Genuine UK keyboard from IBM is £48.

One thing i have noticed is the screen quality. I have to say i'm not overly impressed. The resolution is 1024 x 768 which is the same as my 600x, but i dont think its as sharp or as clear. Is this a common thing with the X61, or X6 series in general.

Genuine UK keyboard from IBM is £48.

You can get a brand new, genuine keyboard on eBay for less than that.

One thing i have noticed is the screen quality. I have to say i'm not overly impressed. The resolution is 1024 x 768 which is the same as my 600x, but i dont think its as sharp or as clear. Is this a common thing with the X61, or X6 series in general.

It's hard to say. "Not as sharp or as clear" is pretty subjective. I can say that I've compared the screen on my X61s and my X60s to my X40 and a random no-name 1024x768 LCD I had lying around, and I didn't really see much of a difference in "sharpness". Just my 0.02c

I wonder if the size of the screen has anything to do with my perception of its quality.

Another question re thinkvantage/rescue and recovery/restore partition/discs. Could someone give me a quick explanation of what each is, how you install them, or how do i tell if i have them already.
(i tried pressing the thinkvantage button but nothing happens)

In Windows, your ClearType settings have a major influence on the perceived quality:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/Cle ... /tune.aspx

Thanks

Vista installation discs are free from lenovo if in warranty. Ordered today.

can anyone comment on the advantages of running 64 bit on this machine? I'm about to upgrade MAYBE to win7, and can go either way.

Another question.
What does everyone think of the keyboard quality. Having been used to a 600x for the last three years maybe i've been spoiled. I'm going to replace it anyway due to the shine.

They keyboards kick butt. If it isn't as good as your order machine, I can only really say to suck it up and get used to it Reason being that there are very little alternatives to a thinkpad as far as laptops with decent keyboards. That is one of the biggest drawbacks to many of the major brand laptops in stores like best buy..IMO.

GL.

Cunha wrote:They keyboards kick butt. If it isn't as good as your order machine, I can only really say to suck it up and get used to it Reason being that there are very little alternatives to a thinkpad as far as laptops with decent keyboards. That is one of the biggest drawbacks to many of the major brand laptops in stores like best buy..IMO.

GL.

Not totally true. The Samsung R60 is a decent keyboard, but nothing like the 600x which is rock solid.

I will have to try to find that samsung.

I am not tryng to say there are no alternatives, just very little. The X6x is a sweet machine.

Okay, thanks for the help. Its now in the condition i want.

1. Restore discs from Lenovo.....free
2. New Vista and dual core stickers...£1 ebay
3. New keyboard....£29 ebay
4. Ram upgraded from 1GB to 2GB...£20
5. Genuine 65W charger.....£10 ebay

Photo's.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul123/paul123/011.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul123/paul123/007.JPG

bananaman wrote:In Windows, your ClearType settings have a major influence on the perceived quality:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/Cle ... /tune.aspx

+1

I had a problem with the fonts also with my R51e. Compared to the fonts in Ubuntu the fonts on W7 looked unpolished. I know your on Vista Business but essentially Font settings and tunings are similar. With my situation the Cleartype wasn't enabled. Adjusting the Cleartype will lead you through steps to get to the desired sharpness or fuzziness that you wish.

Thanks.

Compared to the fonts in Ubuntu the fonts on W7 looked unpolished

.

Strange. The quality of font rendering is a usual problem in any major linux distribution I have used. The only way one can get a decent fonts in linux is to install MS fonts as the original linux fonts look like crap on the screen.

Eudoxus wrote: Strange. The quality of font rendering is a usual problem in any major linux distribution I have used. The only way one can get a decent fonts in linux is to install MS fonts as the original linux fonts look like crap on the screen.

Hmmm... when was the last time you tried? Sub-pixel isn't always enabled by default, but it's been *many* years since a major distro shipped without support for it.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "original Linux fonts". To the best of my knowledge, Linux has no affiliation with any collection of fonts.

The last time I tried linux is some months ago. It was 64-bit opneSuSE 11.2 KDE version. I have been a linux user for some 2 years; the distributions I used were Debian Etch and openSuSE 10.2 SuSE 10.3 was the last distro I used as my only OS and then I decided that it is enough. I tried also bunch of other distributions and on all of them out of the box fonts were plain crap. May be now the things are different but if so it is too late as far as I am concerned.
Yes, I know there is not such thing as 'linux fonts'. By using that title I wanted to refer to the default font that is used on almost all major distributions out of the box (it seems that there are some exceptions).

Eudoxus wrote:The last time I tried linux is some months ago. It was 64-bit opneSuSE 11.2 KDE version. I have been a linux user for some 2 years; the distributions I used were Debian Etch and openSuSE 10.2 SuSE 10.3 was the last distro I used as my only OS and then I decided that it is enough. I tried also bunch of other distributions and on all of them out of the box fonts were plain crap. May be now the things are different but if so it is too late as far as I am concerned.

Well I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I would encourage you to try some other distributions though, rather than write off several hundred of them all at once. I can't speak for SuSE (not having used it in some 6+ years), but the version of Debian that you tried was quite old. Things change very quickly in the Linux world -- far faster than with Windows -- so using a distro from 2007 (the packages in which were from c. 2005) won't give you an accurate depiction of what modern desktop Linux can be like.

For the record, I've used Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, Centos 5.4, Debian 5.0, Linux Mint 7, Linux Mint 8, and Fedora 10, 11, and 12 all within the last six months, and have yet to encounter notably bad font rendering out of the box. I did have to change the anti-aliasing preferences from grayscale smoothing to sub-pixel smoothing on some of those distros, but that took literally just a single click to do.

Thanks! It seems that two years on linux is pretty enough for me. In fact the experience was not particularly bad. I tried to use Ubuntu for a while but Debian turned out to be better for me. Then I switched to openSuSE which seemed quite good. But finally I got tired of all this linux thing. I had problems of compatibility between OpenOffice and MSOffice which I had to use in job and some other little linux specific annoyances including inconsistency of all the linux-ecosystem. As a consequence I just switched to Vista and now Win 7 which seems more user friendly almost in all the aspects I can imagine.

Sorry for stealing the thread.