When Buying Your New ThinkPad...

[archer6]

When you configured your new ThinkPad did you choose Win 7, 32bit or 64bit?

Or did you choose XP Pro?

Let us know what you chose and why?

If you plan on wiping the drive and performing a clean install, tell us which OS and Why?

Cheers...

[ZaZ]

It's been a while since I bought a brand new ThinkPad, about three and a half years ago. The last one I bought about a year ago was used from eBay with a COA, but no hard drive. A clean install was required as I did have the recovery discs and couldn't find a set here. My last new ThinkPad I dumped the IBMTools folder onto an external drive, made the recovery discs and did a clean install, which I prefer.

[Doctor Device]

I don't buy my thinkpads new, but I've long since decided that any laptop I own will not run windows.

my reasoning being that windows is advantageous exclusively for gaming, and I won't be gaming on my laptop.

[emeraldgirl08]

I see most of us think alike when it comes to the hard drive. The only Thinkpads inlcuded an OS were the T400 and my old T30 (oh I find myself missing it sometimes). One had Vista Business which wouldn't connect instantly to our router. I wearied of it and had the recovery discs anyway so I wiped it and am dual booting with XP Pro and Karmic. I generally do not like all the bloatware that comes with preinstalled OS'.

[t140568]

I selected "I chose to wipe the drive" as 99% of the time I'm in Ubuntu. My T500 came with Vista-32bit when I ordered it from the Lenovo Outlet. I suppose if given the option, I would have gone for 64bit, simply because it can address more RAM from what I understand. Either way, Windows is not a selling point for me.

[dr_st]

If I was to buy a new Thinkpad now, I would definitely get one with license to Win7 64bit.

Then I would most likely wipe the drive upon arrival, and install Win7 afresh from my own disk.

[AMATX]

Win7, 64bit. Was also the only option offered at the time I spec'd out a W700.

I did want to wait until the Vista stock had run out, and for once, I wanted to go with a stock Lenovo
load(including bloatware), which I'll prune back a bit.

Easy version this time around. Have been there, done that on the build-ur-own boxes.

[tannerj]

I just bought a Thinkpad T61p and when it arrives i plan on loading 7 64bit. The unit is coming with 2GB RAM, but I plan on upgrading it to 4GB down the road and I'm not interested in reloading 7 to be able to do that

[zhenya]

All our new Thinkpads are being purchased with Windows 7 64bit, which has been excellent in our testing and production use so far. I prefer to use the Lenovo OEM installs, as I always have trouble getting every driver working perfecting when using my own disks.

[archer6]

All our new Thinkpads are being purchased with Windows 7 64bit, which has been excellent in our testing and production use so far. I prefer to use the Lenovo OEM installs, as I always have trouble getting every driver working perfecting when using my own disks.

Going forward I too have begun ordering each new laptop with Windows 64bit, as I do find it an excellent OS as compared to Vista, and indeed better than XP Pro, if only incrementally so at this particular point in time.

I also like using the OEM Install. I simply remove the few bloatware, or trialware elements, and I'm set to go. There really isn't that much, and it takes less time than doing a clean install and then going out for all the drivers etc. The end result is a great running machine.

Cheers...

[Temetka]

The only Thinkpad I had "new" was purchased from e-bay with 1 year warranty left on it, my old T41p. I didn't get to configure it per se, but it did come with a set of restore discs and a fully factory restored hd. The first thing I did was to re-image it using the provided cd's to verify they did work. Then I filed the discs away and wiped the to load XP in the proper, clean manner.

I have never rolled with a factory installed pre-build as my main OS for any amount of time longer than 1 week. I prefer to wipe to pre-loaded OS and install my OS of choice and configure and tweak it to my liking.

It's a geek thing.

[Utwig]

I bought all my Thinkpads used. If ordering new, I'd go with 64-bit Windows 7. For incompatible stuff there's virtualization and I had no incompatibilities with 64-bit Win 7.

On my X61t I wiped the drive when it came and installed Windows 7 64-bit beta, which I then upgraded to full version.

[sarbin]

on my "new-to-me" t60p, i installed x64 win7 ultimate. clean install from retail media onto a zeroed-out hdd.

so far, i'm quite impressed! i plan to give it a thorough shakedown and then install the x86 version to compare performance, etc. i'm curious to see if my experience matches what i've read elsewhere comparing the two.

[ThinkRob]

I buy whatever's cheapest, remove the drive, install a good drive, and install Debian stable + my own kernel (latest vanilla stable + rthink patchset).

[jvarszegi]

I just chose Windows 7 32-bit for my X100e, at time of purchase and when I reinstalled. This was due to concerns about being able to run all of my software, and the feeling that I will never upgrade to 4 GB or more of RAM for this budget machine, which doesn't leave much in terms of potential performance gains with the 64-bit version anyway.

I performed a clean install. This was due to advice from another user (Wiz) that it was best to do when I installed an SSD, due to concerns that the Windows file system would not be properly aligned with the physical storage, resulting in poor performance. In the end it was remarkably easy even without a CD drive, after I located a downloadable ISO file for the OS. Updating the SSD firmware from a thumb drive was a little more difficult, but not terrible.

In the end I am happier to have done a clean install. Beforehand, I found it impossible to cleanly uninstall all the trial software. Afterward, I have a noticeably snappier machine. Eh, I guess the SSD doesn't hurt.