just purchased x41 tablet

[superlyduper]

I accidentally won an x41 tablet while ..um.. carelessly bidding, and not wanting to be a deadbeat bidder, I would like to outfit it as cheaply as possible for web surfing and MS office. I'm going to migrate a third party brand wi-fi mini-pci card from my old(er), I already have a 2.5" to CF adapter, and am looking to buy a cheapest reasonably fast card. I have vista business, and can obtain a copy of win xp tablet.

Questions:

I know all about vista vs xp in general, but I do not know anything about the differences in tablet-specific functionality. What are the exact differences between tablet functionality between both?

I know XP will install on 8gb, will XP tablet and Vista Business install comfortably on 8gb? I have no files to be stored on this machine.

8gb 133x CF cards seem to be the cheapest at ~$20. Is 133x fast enough (would it be faster than a 4200rpm drive)? I don't know if $40 for a 266x card is worth it. Is it literally 2x as fast in real life performance? I'm not sure I need more performance, since I never close my programs and only use sleep mode.

How do I install the OS without an optical drive and without a large USB drive (the largest I own is 1gb). I do have a 40gb external usb hard drive.

[sjthinkpader]

No, 3rd party WiFi cards don't work in X41/X41t.

You can read comments about 133x cards in this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=78470

As for USB CD drives, there many solutions. Cheapest is a slim USB housing plus a Ultrabay2K DVD drive with the caddy removed.

[superlyduper]

i understand 233x, 266x, 300x cards are faster, but is a 133x card faster or comparable to a 4200rpm?

is it possible to install windows from usb hard drive? If so, i have no purpose for a cd drive.

do all x41t come with wifi? I remember my x31 did not come with it.

[sjthinkpader]

removed

[sjthinkpader]

133x cards are painfully slow for OS use. Biggest problem is the write speed. 233x are reasonably priced.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 1&start=30

Both my X41t came with WiFi.

[superlyduper]

am I reading something wrong in your chart, from my interpretation the 233x ridata has slower write speeds than the 133x kingston? also, sandisk extreme II is faster than both. Does extreme II exist? Is it extreme III or ultra II? From what i've read, I *believe* extreme IV is 233x, and III is 133x

[superlyduper]

also, can anyone elaborate on the differences in tablet functionality between vista business and windows xp tablet on an x41t?

[plympton]

"I accidentally won an x41 tablet while ..um.. carelessly bidding, and not wanting to be a deadbeat bidder..."

I just got a chuckle out of this. I've done the same a few times myself.

[K0LO]

also, can anyone elaborate on the differences in tablet functionality between vista business and windows xp tablet on an x41t?

Tablet functionality is much, much better in Vista, especially handwriting recognition. However, Vista is a bit marginal on the X41T. Instead I would recommend Windows 7 which ran pretty well on my ex-X41T (sold it earlier this year). Win7 ran better, faster than Windows XP and has even better tablet functionality than Vista. The Win7 RC is still available for free download if you want to experiment.

[superlyduper]

Win7 runs faster than XP and vista? Thats incredible. Will I run into driver problems?

Is it possible to make win7 run on an 8gb drive? is the minimum requirement 16gb strict?

[sjthinkpader]

am I reading something wrong in your chart, from my interpretation the 233x ridata has slower write speeds than the 133x kingston? also, sandisk extreme II is faster than both. Does extreme II exist? Is it extreme III or ultra II? From what i've read, I *believe* extreme IV is 233x, and III is 133x

Thanks for the comments.

Tim S did the Sandisk CF tests so I cannot answer whether there is a Extreme II or Ultra II.

The write speed in a almost full card as in the case of 8GB can involve some erase. In that case it can take longer than just simply write into blank cells. The solution is to do a secure-erase before conducting the test, which I have not done religiously. SSD and cards supporting TRIM in Windows 7 do the erase-reclaim automatically to eliminate erase at write time.

You can shoe horn Win7 into 8GB but some adjustments will be needed such as smaller page file. It does use flash based storage better but not all adjustments such as defrag, superfetch, file indexing will be turned off automatically.

X41/X41t is supported by Win7 pretty well but X40 is not.

[superlyduper]

cool, so win7rc won't give me a hangup about having only 8gb hard drive when min requirements require 16gb? do all drivers autodetect?

[sjthinkpader]

You may have to install the intel 955 video driver yourself. The Vista driver should work.

[loyukfai]

The tablet functionality is better in Vista than XP. And while I haven't tried Win7 myself, I read that its tablet support is even better.

But Vista might be a bit too heavy on the X41T, so Win7 might be a better choice. But that's only available in RC at this moment now.

Slow CF issue can be partially mitigated by using a program called Flashpoint but the latest beta only supports XP, and public distribution has been suspended. (see this thread)

Cheers.

[K0LO]

The public availability date for Win7 is October 22, so plan accordingly. The RC version is still available for download until August 20, will function until June 2010, but it starts reminding you of pending expiration after March 2010.