What to Do with Brand New TP

[ArtShapiro]

A new X61 is on the truck for delivery, a day earlier than UPS projected. Never got an email from Lenovo Outlet, but they gave me the good news yesterday when I called to see if the order had even been processed. Needless to say, We Were Happy.

Everyone talks about immediately burning recovery disks. Could we talk about that for a second?

First of all, why? I never thought installation of an OS was a big deal, especially with Thinkpads and the excellent driver matrices and software installer.

Second, I assume this guy will have a recovery partition. (Correct?) Does the existence of that partition effect whether or not I want to burn recovery disks?

Third, I won't have a USB CD for a while; it's on its way from China. Can I burn these disks as ISO images to another machine on my home network? And it's "only" a CDRW / DVD-read device; is that a show-stopper?

And last, is there anything else I should know about this newfangled X61 before I take it out of the box and start adding a couple user accounts for my wife and for myself?

Pontification welcome.

Art

[mgo]

Everyone talks about immediately burning recovery disks. Could we talk about that for a second?

First of all, why?
Second, I assume this guy will have a recovery partition. (Correct?) Does the existence of that partition effect whether or not I want to burn recovery disks?

Third, I won't have a USB CD for a while; it's on its way from China. Can I burn these disks as ISO images to another machine on my home network? And it's "only" a CDRW / DVD-read device; is that a show-stopper?

And last, is there anything else I should know about this newfangled X61 before I take it out of the box and start adding a couple user accounts for my wife and for myself?Art

The recovery disks take two hours plus to create. It's quicker to use Acronis or some other imaging program. 15 minutes or less and you have a recovery image.

The recovery partition on the hard drive is used by the Thinkvantage program (blue button) to restore factory settings. If the factory partition gets deleted somehow (hard to do because it is hidden), the recovery disk set will restore your machine to factory original.

I am not sure about creating an ISO for from the factory partition. It might not be possible due to the software limitations.

If you don't mind installing the OS from scratch and then grabbing the necessities from the Lenovo site, that would work, too. But it's more work than just re-imaging with a 3rd party application.

Some people like to use the Thinkvantage button to re-install the factory image, but opt out of the unwanted Norton or other programs that may come on the new machine.

If your machine is coming with Vista, it may be a bit slow at first till the indexer settles down and the Superfetch "learns" your habits.

I use "Classic" mode with Vista rather than look at the useless Aero thingy. It's faster, too. Also, just like XP there are Performance settings in Vista and I use the performance settings for best speed.

I also prefer using Windoes Explorer in Classic mode, because it is simpler and quicker with less "jumping around" when you navigate.

I would "pontificate" more, but the Pope wants his hat back...