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Lenovo Announces ThinkPads Preloaded With XP
BBCWatcher writes "Lenovo just announced new ThinkPad T61 models preloaded with Microsoft Windows XP. Ironically they're called ThinkPad T61 'TopSeller' models. Lenovo says they're aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. The XP TopSellers are available immediately, and the part numbers are 6465-03U, 7658-04U, and 7664-06U (PDF links). "Lenovo recommends Windows Vista Business"? Not so much."
When you pull up their laptop page, there are two links. "Customize with Windows XP" and "Customize with Windows Vista". Same price.
Maybe I'm missing something, but we've been buying T61's with XP for months now, without any difficulty at all.
And we're not some large megacorp either -- we buy maybe 2-3 computers every 6 weeks.
So the news is that a company selling computers is selling something that the consumer's been asking for? Who'd've thought it? While I'm glad that another company, following Dell and some others, has bucked the Microsoft line, I'm not sure that it's particularly astounding.
On the other hand though, kudos to them for doing so. Now if only they'd lose the '$Company recommends Windows Vista $model' branding I'd be even more impressed. Why claim to recommend something that you fairly obviously don't? I'm aware that there are provisos from Microsoft for supplying lower-cost OEM software to these companies but, surely, at some point the marketing/PR departments are going to realise that trying to play on both sides of a particular game isn't going to look too good for them?
Ah, me and my optimism...
I am surprised that MS doesn't allow you to purchase a Vista license that allows the use of XP if you would rather. I bet then they could really beef up their Vista sales numbers, even if only on paper. Who would be able to say that 75% of users purchased Vista but installed XP instead? Looks like they could "win" the numbers game.
Haha! Microsoft will surely die now, what with all these companies choosing Windows XP instead of Vista!
Wait a minute....
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At first I didn't really see the point. It is a laptop with windows XP. How was that news-worthy? Then I kind of remembered that vista is the new ME and it seems a lot of people think so too.
I been using a ThinkPad X60 with Vista Business for six month. Generally I had no major issues and like how Vista works. Here are a few notes though:
1. By default the CPU is set to run at half the speed. My notebook came with a 1.8Ghz Core2 Duo, but by default the power settings are set to run it at 900Mhz. In fact thats the only speed the laptop does not get hot as hell. Even at the lower speed most desktop apps work fast enough.
2. I did a few tweaks myself like disable shadow copy and windows defender. I decided to leave the indexer on since I actually like what it provides.
3. With the most recent updates I think a few annoying things got fixed. The laptop comes out of sleep faster and copying seems to be faster.
4. Wireless networking sometimes is flaky. I don't know if Vista is responsible or its due to the interference where I live or its the lenovo wireless utils that are sluggish.
5. I really like the minor UI improvements in Vista like the new resource monitor. I don't see why it cant be back ported to XP.
Try looking for XP in a regular store. You will not be able to find it. I have asked about having XP placed on the computer instead of the crappy Vista and was told that it was impossible. If you want XP preloaded on a machine anymore, you need to go to a website based business it appears. By the way, it was Circuit City that told me it was Vista only. I told them no way, I would go with Linux long before I would go to Vista. They told me I could get a Mac in that case and I told them I wasn't made of money it was XP or no way. They said no way.
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Check out Emperor Linux, they have T60s and T61s preloaded with a custom kernel so everything works out of the box. Been around for a few years and have had very good reviews from Linux Journal and others.
Try http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/lenovo/toucan/
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I just received my brand new Lenovo T61 preloaded with Vista home basic. What a disaster... but not because of Vista, but instead because of all the pre-loaded junk. The taskbar had 7 icons in the notification area in addition to the ones from the OS, plus a useless battery power gauge that took up another big chunk of real estate (this side-by-side with the already existing Vista power gage, so I'm getting duplicate data). I actually took a screenshot since I couldn't believe it. I did a quick registry check and counted 30 executables set to auto-start on login. On every log on I got nagging pop-ups about turning on some lenovo software. Launching IE brought up two tabs, one set to always load the lenovo page. It was a slow, annoying mess...
I flattened the machine and installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate. With the all the cruft gone, things are now flying on the machine, and I'm quite happy with the OS. The difference is astounding.
All these negative comments I kept hearing about Vista make sense now, but it's clear that at least some of the disenchanment is misdirected. Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out?