Thinkpads Forum

Good afternoon,

I feel like my wonderful tablet could both be faster and have longer battery life. I currently have 72 processes running in Windows 7 and think it is too much. Do you guys install the Thinkvantage stuff or just go with what Microsoft already has? I installed power manager because I thought it would give me longer battery life. I want a list of everything you power users have installed on top of the base Windows 7. SumatraPDF or Adobe? Also, does disabling Aero or anything else give me more battery life? If so, how do I do it?

Thanks!

PS - Coming from an x31, I'm not used to having the system fan on all the time. Is this normal for my x200T?

I don't bother with the majority of the thinkvantage stuff and my machine is super quick - self made EE on steroids I suppose. hehe. To take full advantage of Lenovo's "Enhanced Experience" you need to do a factory install of their software/OS, which negates running a clean system without all the worthless stuff that tends to tag along...

Only Thinkvantage drivers/software I installed (installed in order) on my X61 are:
- system interface driver
- power management driver
- hotkey driver
- WLAN driver (not the software)
- bluetooth driver
- fingerprint software
- APS (Active protection system)

I install in that order over a fresh install of Win7 and never had a problem yet.
From cold boot to full working desktop in under 14 seconds, shutdown in less than 4.

-Total 37 running processes* after the machine completes booting. Figure it's not bad. Would like to pear it down more, but Win7 still uses up a lot of resources.
-Total battery run time on my machine is approx 7 hours - if I reduce screen brightness all the way down, select "power saver" energy profile (which is already tweaked with the lowest settings). Same settings in XP would get me 7:45-7:52 running time ...
-Disabling Aero may result in more energy savings, but never tried it. I'm not looking to squeeze every last ounce of Lithium Ion energy out of the battery. 7 hours is good enough for me, particularly when comparing to some poor sap sitting next to me with a monster 15in "laptop" with a tiny battery.
- I use Adobe, but that's because I own the suite of applications (CS4). No issues whatsoever. Never tried SumatraPDF, never even heard of it.

* Used vLite to trim down the fat off Win7 installation - does wonders on how much faster the OS runs without extra, unused libraries.

14 seconds is pretty amazing. I saw a new X200 with the 2.66 processor in it which had a clean install of Windows 7 with nothing else added and it still took around 50 seconds to a full boot. I am puzzled on how you managed to get full boot in 14 seconds.. My Macbook Pro with a 2.53 Processor,4GB RAM along with a Vertex SSD takes around 28 seconds for a full boot. Your time is half of what my new Macbook Pro gets which has pretty high end specs in it.

Mostly delving into various tweakable parts of the system:
- services
- group policies
- registry tweaks

I've never really written down all the various tweaks that I do, but there are many processes, policies and other components that run from the start which aren't required for your system to be fully stable and fully usable.

Keep in mind any Microsoft OS installation will include tons of features/components/services that aren't required for your particular system - it's very generalized so that people who don't know much about operating systems can just install any of their products and have everything work. If you tweak the installation right from the start by ripping out any component not required for your personal needs/use, then you'll enjoy a leaner and much more responsive system. Further post-install fine tuning will help a lot as well. Same thing applies with drivers, etc...

A fast HDD will help, so will good quality RAM, disable BIOS features you don't need (AMT, for example), disable GUI boot, keep the HDD clean (defrag)... Install only INFs not the whole driver "setup". Biggest boot resource hog are system services on startup.

Tons of things can be done to speed up a system.

I suppose this "pearing down" comes from years of experience compiling BSD, UNIX and Linux operating systems from scratch.

Keep in mind the 14 seconds startup doesn't include login -- it's boot-up straight into the OS (using auto-login). I suppose there's some fine print involved in everything...

EDIT: here's a good resource for selective services start for Win7 (any version). Like I mentioned, not all services are required on boot and Win7 has this nice new feature which enables the user to delay the startup of services until after booting is complete... i.e. faster boot times. Check here -> http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm

fudgy wrote:Good afternoon,

I feel like my wonderful tablet could both be faster and have longer battery life. I currently have 72 processes running in Windows 7 and think it is too much. Do you guys install the Thinkvantage stuff or just go with what Microsoft already has? I installed power manager because I thought it would give me longer battery life. I want a list of everything you power users have installed on top of the base Windows 7. SumatraPDF or Adobe? Also, does disabling Aero or anything else give me more battery life? If so, how do I do it?

Thanks!

PS - Coming from an x31, I'm not used to having the system fan on all the time. Is this normal for my x200T?

Just do a clean install win7, my setup include only
a) Power Manager
b) Fingerprint

I have been using foxit reader for ages, best I found so far and for PDF creation, nothing beats PDFredirect in my opinion...no watermark, free etc.

For window 7, and coming from a X31 too, it is pretty [censored] fast already and works well without tweaking. I used to tweak my system down to the last running process, services etc....even schedule the startups/services using a program (can't remember which one), so that it can boot 14 secs....but whats the point? Plug in 3GB and win7 works so well, I leave it alone to save me all the headache