Just got a X41 - couple of questions/problems

[carl3]

This is a off lease X1 with nearly a year of warranty left. Has XP Pro, 1.5GB memory, the X4 base with CD-RW/DVD. The 4-cell battery is marginal, at best.

As noted in other threads, the thing is so slow to boot up and rather slow to bring up programs. I suppose the 4200 rpm disk is the main culprit, and doesn't appear much can be done for that.

As delivered, there is no recovery partition. It was formatted and XP Pro and necessary drivers loaded, along with Thinkpad utilities.

I bought a third party 8-cell battery, which after charging, only shows 3+ hours. I thought 8-cells would last longer than that?
Should I return and bite the bullet for a IBM?lenovo battery? Bought this one from Titan - made in China using Panasonic cells.

One other problem involves logon. Regardless of combo settings in user accounts and fingerprint utility, I cannot get it to asj me for a password. I am admin, and it boots straight into Windows with no pw entry required (or fingerprint swipe - i haven't set that up).

Thanks for any insight into these matters. I have been happy with my T42, and looks like may be disappointment with the X41, except for size/weight. I don't do heavy processing, so maybe it will work out in the long run.

I do need longer battery life for using in meetings where can't count on AC being close by. I need about 4 hours to be on the safe side.

[ErikD]

I find the 4 cell battery fine for my needs, but I am never very far from a charger and mostly want the extra savings in weight/size. I would only use IBM batteries, runtime is one reason but so is quality. I have read bad reports of cheap batteries damaging laptops. I can get pretty close to 8 hours of light use (surfing, word processing, etc.) on my X40 with 8 cell battery.

The not asking for a password is a Windows thing. Did you create a password for your account? Go to control userpasswords2 and choose to always require a password to login?

[ThinkPad]

I think you may have to get an original battery if you want extended battery life. The one you purchased may be of inferior quality.

[carl3]

Thanks, guys. I have requested a RMA for the battery. It has a 30-day money back.

Yes, I set up a password as you pointed out. I think there is something I am missing between the fingerprint setup and XP setup. Haven't tried using the fingerprint reader yet.

[pgoelz]

As noted in other threads, the thing is so slow to boot up and rather slow to bring up programs. I suppose the 4200 rpm disk is the main culprit, and doesn't appear much can be done for that.

Maybe I'm easy to please (my previous laptop was a Thinkpad 600) but I find with some reconfiguration, the X41 is VERY responsive and fast to boot.

To get there, I did the following:

1. Uninstalled the IBM rescue and recovery stuff (I use Acronis). I found that R&R did things in the background that really slowed things down.

2. Brought my RAM up to 1.5GB

3. Disabled virtual memory (not needed with 1.5GB RAM unless you open LOTS of programs).

4. Turned off indexing service

5. Jettisoned EZ Antivirus in favor of AVG (that made a big difference).

6. Disabled automatic Windows Updates.

7. Disabled automatic IBM update checking.

There may be more but those are the ones that come to mind.

I haven't timed a full boot but it is very reasonable. Probably well under a minute until it is usable. Resuming from standby is maybe 5 seconds, IE comes up in maybe 3 seconds, programs start very quickly and overall I find the X41 to be very satisfactory. I am sure that a faster hard drive would speed things up even more, but really, the X41 is just fine if you don't bog it down with useless stuff that eats hard drive and CPU resources.