System restore time on newer Thinkpads?

[MikeM]

I'm a bit concerned about the new EE 2.0 that has Lenovo supposedly tweaking the Windows 7 installation so that if you were to step on the OS install with an OEM copy of Windows 7 Pro, you'd possibly be looking at losing all of that tweaking. I'm also concerned about how long it takes to do a system restore using the system restore media vs. installing an OEM version of Windows.

The XP and Vista restore disks that came with my T61p take literally hours to install with all of the scripts and batch files and whatnot. I'm not too much in the market for a machine that is going to require me to jump through hula hoops filled with gasoline and set ablaze to install the OS with unknown tweaks. I also program and I want to be dealing with an untarnished version of the OS for testing purposes vs. something that may not be. Is the re-installation of the OS still a major undertaking like it is on the T61p with factory restore disks or has Lenovo started to distribute slipstreamed images so that batch churn nonsense can be avoided?

And on current vintage machines how is the bloatware situation on a re-install of the OS? Can you ditch the cruft or ??

I'm slowly drifting back to the idea of building my own desktop if I need to deal with too much nonsense. Or getting the MBP....

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Colonel O'Neill]

The Enhanced Experience tweaks pertain to the preload only.

System Restore media is faster than a retail install, personally, especially if you restore directly from the partition. With Windows 7, it restores everything at once; no scripts or batch files that I can see.

There's nothing wrong with wiping everything and installing your own retail copy of Windows 7 (make sure to make recovery media anyway), but there's also nothing wrong with using the preload copy of Windows 7 either. There's not much bloat except for some DVD burning software.

Besides, isn't building your own desktop more work?

[MikeM]

Yes, building my own desktop is more work, but I feel the need to split open a knuckle or two from time to time.

Thanks for the reply. Since the restore of the OS sounds like Lenovo quit with the python scripts and all, I don't have as unpleasant of a disposition as I did towards the idea of having to use a set of Lenovo factory restore media as I did of late. The T61p restore media was a joke. Thanks for your time in clearing this up for me.