T420 w/ Optimus Now online - Questions...order now or wait?

[masterbeat]

I've been waiting to get the new T420 and see it is now finally available with Nvidia Optimus. I have a few quesitons I'm wondering if anyone can help shed some light:

- I'm assuming because it is "Optimus" that this means it is switchable graphics? Lenovo is doing a horrible job of explaining this lately. Also it says Optimus N12P-NS1 - what the heck is this? Everywhere else Optimus has been described as 3100/4100 series...

- They adverstise all over their site about EE (Enhanced Experience) with Intel RapidBoost drives in some models, but there are still no models that have them. Should I wait, or is this something I'm going to be able to add myself? From another post on here, I see a user did an mSata upgrade himself, which I'm completely capable of, so my quesiton is - is Lenovo's "Rapid" technology basically this - an Intel mSata drive? If I do it myself, will I be able to achieve all or most of what they are going to do if/when they finally make it available?

- Is it true that USB 3.0 is ONLY on the T420s? Makes no sense. Bizarre. Anyone know if it will evenutually make it to T420?

Seems like T420 is only slowlyg getting everything it's "supposed" to have. I want one now, but not if everything it's supposed to or can be is going to happen in the next few months. So I'm wondering if I get one now if I'll be able to self-upgrade it to everything they currently seem to be leaving out.

Thanks!

[Colonel O'Neill]

All discrete Tx20's are Optimus enabled, which does indeed mean switchable graphics. You can switch it manually in the BIOS to always discrete or always integrated for OS compatibility issues.

The mSATA SSD is something you can add yourself, but the RapidDrive software may or may not be installed by an end user.

USB 3.0 is on the T420s and W520. Dunno why it's not on the other ones, nor is ExpressCard 2.0

Full configurability will slowly get added. The integrated graphics were available slightly after mid-March, and discrete models just became configurable.

[ThinkRob]

Personally I avoid Optimus like the plague, as it's sometimes buggy under Windows and completely useless under everything else...

[davidhbrown]

[...]- is Lenovo's "Rapid" technology basically this - an Intel mSata drive? If I do it myself, will I be able to achieve all or most of what they are going to do if/when they finally make it available?

Depends on how hard you're willing to try and what Lenovo is willing to give us. Lenovo claims that they've made the two drives appear seamlessly as one, dynamically placing data on the mSATA drive or on the HDD as appropriate to its use. (This sounds like Microsoft's ReadyBoost on steroids.)

The much simpler approach of putting Windows and at least most of your applications on the mSATA as C: and then having the HDD as another drive letter for data would not achieve that elegance.

There are a few other tricks I'll probably try while waiting to see whether I can use RapidDrive.

Windows/NTFS has the capability to mount a drive/volume to an empty folder rather than assigning it a drive letter. This however means you have to put the entire partition/volume on a single folder. My first thought was to assign the HDD to C:\Users -- though I don't imagine Windows would be very happy if I emptied that folder! Hmm... perhaps what I'll try logging in as an admin, creating an empty folder C:\Users\Dave, mount the HDD to that, and then create the user.

Could just right-click My Documents and move it to the HDD (on a drive letter) using normal Windows features, but there's a lot of data left behind in your user folder that's not in My Documents. Like Outlook pst files, notably.

There also exist symbolic links and junctions which are a little like shortcuts but integrated into NTFS 3.0 and later. These can redirect requests for a particular path somewhere else. For example, if you enable viewing hidden folders/files and look at C:\Users\<you>, you'll see what looks like a folder named "Application Data." This is actually a "junction" with C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming created for compatibility with older Windows programs. (It also has a special deny permission set so you can't open it from the Windows Explorer.) These can cross from one local volume to another (but not over a network), so they should be a great way to make things that are actually on the HDD to appear as if they are on the SSD. I like a utility called HardLinkShellExt to manipulate junctions without having to create them on the command line.

I would guess that it would be entirely possible for Lenovo to get Intel to sell them mSATA SSDs with a specific code in the serial or something and refuse to run the RapidDrive code except on those drives. They would almost surely at least lock it to a Lenovo BIOS. I suppose if they wanted to license their patent, it could appear on other machines, too, but I sort of doubt that.

So, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Lenovo decides to do!

[davidhbrown]

Another thought I had after posting the above... given the absolutely miserable experience I have had with Intel Turbo Memory in my T61p, I am *not* interested in being an "early adopter" of anything that puts an extra driver in-between the OS and the hard drive.

So, even if Lenovo does provide their RapidDrive software/driver in such a way that I could use it with the third-party mSATA SSD, I will hold off for a while and just do the separate boot/data drives with some junctions I create by hand.

[Mack]

USB 3.0 is on the T420s and W520. Dunno why it's not on the other ones, nor is ExpressCard 2.0

So despite Sandy Bridge supporting PCI-E 2.0 (5 GT/s), no higher speed can be achieved via the ExpressCard port (it's still only 2.5Gt/s?) In such case, what a pointless wait for people wanting to use vidocks with Sandy Bridge and ThinkPads...

[penartur]

Depends on how hard you're willing to try and what Lenovo is willing to give us. Lenovo claims that they've made the two drives appear seamlessly as one, dynamically placing data on the mSATA drive or on the HDD as appropriate to its use. (This sounds like Microsoft's ReadyBoost on steroids.)

Hmm, maybe this is why mSATA SSDs are not offered as an option on ThinkPads now, because the technology is not really proven yet?

Could just right-click My Documents and move it to the HDD (on a drive letter) using normal Windows features, but there's a lot of data left behind in your user folder that's not in My Documents. Like Outlook pst files, notably.

The benefits of SSD are speed, random access time and low power consumption. There is only one benefit of HDD in the dual-drive setup: its capacity.
So, while moving HD porn to the HDD is perfectly understandable, Outlook .pst files are better to reside on SSD, because such files are not so large and Outlook really makes use of fast random access. The same thing is with Temporary Internet Files etc.

[davidhbrown]

Outlook .pst files are better to reside on SSD, because such files are not so large and Outlook really makes use of fast random access. The same thing is with Temporary Internet Files etc.

Good thoughts; I'll certainly keep that in mind as I play around getting things set up in a week or two. 80GB really is a generous amount of space. While all of my active PSTs take over 4GB (5% of 80GB), two of them are archives (going back to the mid 90s) and could certainly sit on the HDD. And considering Outlook is running essentially all the time the machine is on, it probably does make sense to keep its data on the SSD.