After 4 years with my Dell Latitude D600 (b-school was on Dell contract during my enrollment 
), I have returned to the Thinkpad fold. Previous to the Dell, I had the Thinkpad A21p (thanks to Justin for hooking me up back then), which was a beautiful machine. The best review comment was “If Darth Vader had a laptop, this is what he would get.” Now, after some build and shipping fiascos, I finally have my Thinkpad T61 [review].
It didn’t take long for me to get used to Vista, the latest version of Windows (not much different, prettier). And since I have moved more web-based with my applications and storage, setting up was mostly just installing Firefox + plugins and opening my personalized Google page (I can’t bring myself to call it iGoogle, just sounds too Apple-ish).
As for the applications that I do need to install locally, I am trying out more open-source and / or free apps to save some money and see how they hold-up to their commercial competitors. Here’s a list of finds that I have installed:
- Firefox: browser
- Open Office: office productivity
- Avast: antivirus (thanks Elijah for the recommendation)
- uTorrent: downloads
- 7-zip: file compression
- VideoLAN: multimedia
- Synergy: desktop workspace sharing (deserves a post of its own)
For some Thinkpad link love and resources:
- Thinkpad Support Community
- Lenovo Blogs
- ThinkWiki (for when I am ready to make the switch to Linux)
[...] have had my Thinkpad T61 for over 2 years, and for the first year Windows Vista worked just fine. But in the last few months, I have been [...]
[...] the different open source software applications that I have been using. This started primarily when I got my Thinkpad last year, and since then the applications have continued to improve in their feature sets, usability and [...]
[...] from camera this has become more convenient with my new Thinkpad since it has a built-in SD card reader [...]
dj: most of the modifications I made were more about usability which I found on lifehacker. I just made sure I got a really fast system with plenty of RAM, so haven’t experienced the slowdown problems. Have you disabled Aero (the UI eye candy)? Here’s a tweak program that might help (I haven’t had to use it myself). Beyond that, you’re probably out of luck until the first service pack comes out.
winkipinki: yes, it has been very useful on this trip. much nicer than my old notebook
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i am happy to see you FINALLY receive your new toy!
maybe you can help with this: have a friend who has a new (HP) laptop with Windows Vista, but everything runs so slow out of the box! Is there some tweaking needed to get Vista to run faster?
The build quality and design is still quite good. But their order fulfillment needs some work :p. I didn’t get the fingerprint reader because I didn’t see the need. And yeah, I got a discount
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That’s a sweet looking laptop. I guess Lenovo has been doing a pretty good job of maintaining their workmanship and quality after purchasing IBM’s notebook division. Looks like it has a finger print reader too. Cool! Enjoy the new toy! (hope you got a deal, because I still have my IBM connections!)