Thinkpads Forum

This is my first post. I came here to learn a little about thinkpads because I got a T410 yesterday. It is work issued. So far I am totally dispointed because I think my employer disabled or removed a lot of features. So far I can't seem blackberry as a modem connecting through bluetooth (i can withwife's mac book). This thing won't even play a dvd. I ams ure its a good computer, but mine seems very limited now.

It is running XP Pro 2002.

I may need to just buy another Laptop for personal use

I'm sure a major part of your difficulties stem from your employer's idiotic decision to put XP on a T410. Any late-model (like the T410) laptop is designed to take advantage of Windows 7, which has many built-in capabilities that XP doesn't have. XP isn't even supported by Microsoft anymore.

raydabruce wrote:XP isn't even supported by Microsoft anymore.

Microsoft supports Windows XP now and will continue supporting it until April 8, 2014.

Employers usually value compatibility, reliability and familiarity more than other features.

FredGarvin wrote:Employers usually value compatibility, reliability and familiarity more than other features.

That's for sure. When you're supporting 10's or 100's of thousands of desktops running hundreds of in- house apps, you pick and choose your upgrades and test them thoroughly before starting a roll-out.


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canvasback13 wrote:I may need to just buy another Laptop for personal use

Well, yeah.

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TTY wrote:Microsoft supports Windows XP now and will continue supporting it until April 8, 2014.

Okay, I apparently read some bad info then. Perhaps what I meant was that it won't be "feature updated" anymore. Just security updates.

I'm self-employed and sticking with XP on a T410s, which I find far from idiotic. Windows 7 (64-bit) was two steps forward, two steps back for me. Some of the good things:

Task bar with preview - very good!
Searchable start menu - very good!
Touch-screen support - very good!
Better support for (font, icon etc.) scaling. Still not perfect though; some dialogs remain small, e.g. my anti-virus software.

However, against Windows 7:

Start menu itself - horrible!
Hopelessly convoluted control panel for someone who knows XP.
Windows color management fights with Intel display driver for control. End result: doesn't work reliably.
Instability: Machine blue-screened twice. Haven't seen that in XP for years. Looks to be the display driver.
Cisco VPN not compatible (with 64-bit).
Various older Oracle software that I still need to support: not compatible.
Ridiculous disk space and memory requirements. XP mode just a virtual PC, with all the clunkiness and performance implications that brings. Winsxs directory hopelessly large. Together with my own stuff I was liable to run out of disk space on an 128GB SSD.

There are solutions to some of these issues, but in the end I couldn't be bothered. Windows 7 was just a drain on my time, better spent elsewhere.

Granted, it depends on your needs and what software you have to run and the time you have available to learn the ins and outs of the new OS, not to mention time to get accustomed to a new interface.

I guess it seems dumb to me to run XP on a late-model laptop because you're just not taking advantage of the capabilities of the new hardware in it. To me, that's just waste. If you're going to run XP, stick with a T60 or even a T42. Why spend money for hardware you don't need? I need the new hardware and the new OS to do all the many various things I do with laptops. I'm not a strictly a "business" user. I own ThinkPads for their overall build quality and everything that is associated with that (reliability, durability, keyboard, on and on). So, my point of view is different and I don't have to worry about any corporate compatibility or upgrade issues.

Can you get me a T60 or T42 with the low weight of the T410s, a Core i5 processor, an eSATA port, built-in 802.11n, Bluetooth and HSPA? All things I will take advantage of, regardless of the OS. I'm sorry about the screen of the T410s, other than that I have no regrets.

And how many of those features is XP designed to support? I don't think XP can even take advantage of multi-core processors, let alone the other features. Yes, you can get XP drivers for some of them but drivers is another whole can of worms when it comes to XP. I don't need the headaches. Driver support is pretty much seamless in Windows 7. Plug it in, the OS finds and installs driver -- done.

It does make sense to keep things consistant in a big company. My company probably has 100,000+ computers. Keeping most on the same OS certainly simplifies support.

Would the company have any problem with you installing another OS for personal use, and dual booting XP for work? That way you could have one machine that could be compatible with your companies software, and after a re-boot a full featured new OS (of your choice) to do personal stuff.

raydabruce wrote:And how many of those features is XP designed to support? I don't think XP can even take advantage of multi-core processors, let alone the other features.

OK, now I know you are trolling. Even Windows 2000 supported multi-core processors. I haven't seen NT in a while, but I think it did too. Multi-processor machines have been around long before multi-core came along, you know. Sorry I swallowed the bait, but at least you made me laugh. Nice one!

FragrantHead wrote:Even Windows 2000 supported multi-core processors. I haven't seen NT in a while, but I think it did too. Multi-processor machines have been around long before multi-core came along, you know.

"Multi-core" and "Multi-Processor" are two very different setups. Look at the task manager graphs in both OSes and you'll see what I mean. XP will run services and applications on the same core. Do some research before calling someone a "troll".

OK, I didn't expect that reply and I have to admit that I don't keep up with the subtleties of OS optimisation for multi-core processors. So I did some research, like you said, and found the following article:

http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/ge ... 3?page=0,0

From that article:

Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 all support Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) out of the box, a trait they inherited from their Windows NT lineage. However ... multiprocessing across discrete CPUs is not the same as multiprocessing across integrated cores within the same CPU. Current-generation software products incorporate additional optimizations to allow them to perform at their best in the low-latency, shared-cache world of multicore. This includes Windows Vista and Windows 7, but not Windows XP. ... Windows XP's aging kernel, though SMP-aware, has never been fully optimized for multicore computing. By contrast, both Windows Vista and Windows 7 have benefited from years of tuning and tweaking to allow them to better exploit all those additional CPU cores.

So far so good, like you pointed out. However:

[Windows 7 and Vista have a] scalability advantage, [but that] doesn't erase XP's performance edge on today's dual- and quad-core systems; even on tomorrow's eight-core CPUs, XP should remain unchallenged. ... Windows 7 performs very much like Vista. In fact, during extensive multiprocess benchmark testing, Windows 7 essentially mirrored Vista in almost every scenario. Database tasks? Roughly 118 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 92 percent slower) and 19 percent slower than XP on quad-core (identical to Vista). Workflow? A respectable 38 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 98 percent slower) and 59 percent slower on quad-core (Vista was 66 percent slower). ... As Microsoft insiders such as Mark Russinovich are quick to point out, the benefits of these changes won't be felt until core counts climb well beyond today's dual-core and quad-core implementations.

I don't see the point in continuing the XP debate, I think the OP gets the point that it's difficult to go against the grain in a Corporate environment, and why his IT staff might have chosen XP over W7. Also, we don't call folks 'trolls' here unless we see trolling behavior, and I have not seen that in this thread. So please refrain from personal attacks. If anyone else has a comment pertaining to the OPs first post then I'll allow it...further XP discussion is not productive.

I can see why they may of "crippled" it, and locked it down to that degree if you work with sensitive information. I know someone who has a company laptop locked down so much that they have disabled the wireless card in the bios (then put on a bios password). I guess their thinking is that you should buy your own computer for personal stuff, use the hardware they gave you to do what they want you to do.