frustrated with x40...what should i do?

[hippojam1]

i've had an x40 for almost 2 years now. i love the hardware. i think it's a great piece of engineering and perfect for me. (big keyboard, thin, no cd drive, long battery life...perfect for offline word processing, which is what i need it for.)

however, i'm wayyy frustrated. my base model x40 is super slow, and all the thinkpad software hogs resources and makes it slower. plus, it seems like while i've had the x40 i've had to check online all the time for updates to drivers and thinkpad software....and since i don't want to be online much, it's very annoying.

but the worst thing is that recently the hard drive failed and i had it replaced (thinkpad warranty support is great, btw), and it took me all day to update windows xp security fixes and thinkpad software. an entire afternoon, and that's even before i installed any of my own software!

the slow speed and all the thinkpad redundant software really get annoying. so what should i do? should i upgrade to a faster thinkpad? should i just manually get rid of all the rescue/recovery partition junk? or should i switch to a manufacturer like panasonic that doesn't have these problems?

any advice would be much appreciated...

[christopher_wolf]

Sounds like you are in need of a severe cleaning of your system; get rid of everything you don't use, and when I mean "get rid of" I really mean blow it off your HDD. At this point, you might benefit from a clean install. The same thing happened to my friend with his X40 until we got rid of all the junk (cruft build up and blot in software applications is the #1 growing enemy of smooth and flawless computing). Make the R&R set, save your important data, then do a fresh install of Windows XP and reload all the drives you think you need or want. At that point, setup a healthy defrag schedule, and use CCleaner or the like to clean out your registry and temp staging areas periodically. Scan your drive for errors and do surface scans periodically to catch problems before they have a chance to manifest themselves and cause trouble. Also, try and get as much memory as you think you will be needing into that X40; more can never hurt.

If that still isn't enough, you might want to think about an X60.

[hippojam1]

thank youl. i think i'll look into increasing memory first. turns out i only have 256 mb!

[dorin]

hi there,

i also have an x40 and i'm more than happy with it. i considered getting and x60, but my x40 satisfy all my current needs in a very very good way, so i said i'll wait till x70 or whatever name will have. plus warranty till 2009-06...

so, the thing which gave me a very nice speed diference was upgrading it to 1.5gb ram! ok, still slow in starting up, but rest just perfect!

stick to it, as long as you use it only for word!!! and indeed get rid of all, but all software you dont need! run msconfig and cut the not needed startup programs.

dorin

[trax]

thank youl. i think i'll look into increasing memory first. turns out i only have 256 mb!

256 is WAAAAAY too little for Windows XP. Linux on a 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, you might be ok. But definitely not XP.

My old A22e maxes out at 256 MB, and the machine would just grind and grind all the time. My X22, which has about the same CPU speed, is noticeably faster even with just 384 MB. I will probably max it out to 640 pretty soon just to have more breathing room.

Like others have said, I would just tear off all the unnecessary software that IBM installs. If you don't need it or use it, just remove it. Should cut down boot time considerably.

[christopher_wolf]

thank youl. i think i'll look into increasing memory first. turns out i only have 256 mb!

256 is WAAAAAY too little for Windows XP. Linux on a 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, you might be ok. But definitely not XP.

My old A22e maxes out at 256 MB, and the machine would just grind and grind all the time. My X22, which has about the same CPU speed, is noticeably faster even with just 384 MB. I will probably max it out to 640 pretty soon just to have more breathing room.

Like others have said, I would just tear off all the unnecessary software that IBM installs. If you don't need it or use it, just remove it. Should cut down boot time considerably.

A Purdue Boilermaker, huh?

The way some linux distros are headed today with GNOME and KDE, 256MB is going to be way too little as well unless you do some custom trimming and use a WM, like Fluxbox, that isn't as huge as GNOME or KDE.

As said before; the more memory the better! Especially in an X Series Thinkpad as they are on the border of light ultra-portable, thus requiring almost solid-state-like speed. 2GB should be more than enough; I even bet you could get by with 1.5GB or 1GB.

Also, I haven't seen much of the IBM software increase boot time; now, login time? Yes, the wireless configurator can increase that significantly...but that is mainly a problem with Windows. If you don't use them much, they take up space and maybe load themselves into the background sometimes.

[RoxyRose]

Ram is definitely important and also check the speed of your hard drive...you ned to go to at least 5400rpm if there is a 4200 sitting in there. I have been quite satisfied with the speed of my X24. With many different programs up, it can get sluggish, but with one or two its quite zippy. I try to keep start-up programs to a minimum.

[tfflivemb2]

Ram is definitely important and also check the speed of your hard drive...you ned to go to at least 5400rpm if there is a 4200 sitting in there. I have been quite satisfied with the speed of my X24. With many different programs up, it can get sluggish, but with one or two its quite zippy. I try to keep start-up programs to a minimum.

Unfortunately for the OP, the X40 is limited to a 4200rpm drive, because the drive is a 1.8" and not a standard 2.5" drive.

[christopher_wolf]

Ram is definitely important and also check the speed of your hard drive...you ned to go to at least 5400rpm if there is a 4200 sitting in there. I have been quite satisfied with the speed of my X24. With many different programs up, it can get sluggish, but with one or two its quite zippy. I try to keep start-up programs to a minimum.

Unfortunately for the OP, the X40 is limited to a 4200rpm drive, because the drive is a 1.8" and not a standard 2.5" drive.

This has been the thing about the 1.8" HDDs for awhile now; trouble is, not too many people make them, especially in the faster versions as there is either small enough demand or they assume that, the smaller the platters, the more they can get away with lower and lower RPMs on the motors.

[daeojkim]

Like it has been mentioned by many, just pulg in an extra 1GB stick or at least another 512MB stick and you will see a huuuuuuge increase in performance.

256MB RAM with 4200 rpm HD will make your computer crawl with Windows XP and all the applications that are running in the background.

After you upgrade the RAM make sure to come back to tell us how happy you are...

[Gee]

I just retired my X24, had it since December 2002. So it has been a good performer for 3.5 years. Was going to wait and get an X60 with Vista. But I got a good deal from IBM direct for an X40.

First thing I did was upgrade the RAM to 1 Gig, remove all the Symantec crap. I then tried to upgrade the 40 Gig hard drive.

What do I find? 1.8" drive. The largest they make is 60 Gigs. The 40 Gig only has 32 Gigs available as the service partition takes up 8 Gigs on its own.

The thing that slows down the X40 is the lack of RAM for XP and the hard drive. Not that I am complaining, but we all purchased an X series for a reason. IBM still makes the best notebook out there.

This unit is not that much faster than my X24, but it does what I need.

[daba]

I originally had 512MB installed and I found that even this caused my X40 to be sluggish. Once you change the memory to 1GB, you'll rid yourself of most the lag.

Processor speed only comes into play when you do heavy computations, but it sounds like you won't be doing any of that. Good luck!

[airfang]

My X41 had 512 RAM, which I saw isnt big enough, so I bought a 1G RAM chip and added it to X41, then disabled pagefiles in order to decrease harddrive I/O's, its now flying compare to what I have experienced be4.

u can also use software like Virtual Harddisk to load your most-frequently-used programs to your ram directly (since you have such big ram)...u'll find that rocks!!!

[asiafish]

1.5HB ram on my X41, and Windows set to not use a paging file. It still takes a while (almost 3 minutes) to boot, but it could be shortened if I was willing to get rid of the Access Connections and fingerprint software, which I am not.

Once booted up the X41 (mine is the 1.6GHz model) is generally quite fast.