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    Lenovo software worth having?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by Darunium, Feb 21, 2008.

  1. Darunium

    Darunium Notebook Enthusiast

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    So I've bought a T61 with vista home basic on it, but I'm installing a new HD (thanks for the advice on that before guys), and so will need to reinstall the OS. I have, however, a copy of Vista Business on DVD that I'd prefer to have over the home basic. What I'd like to do would be to swap the HD's and pop in the VistaBusiness DVD and install that OS, but this would mean I wouldn't have any of the preinstalled lenovo programs from the old HD. The second option would be to burn a recovery CD from the first HD, install that on the new HD, then upgrade that OS to business (which I believe would preserve all the programs). The second process seems 'messier' for the computer so I'd like to avoid it if possible, which begs the following question:

    How worthwhile is the preinstalled lenovo software?

    Thanks in advance!
     
    Darunium, Feb 21, 2008
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  2. tennismaster

    tennismaster Notebook Consultant

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    use it for a few weeks and decide what you like...i like the battery manager over vistas...the hard drive suspension system...and that's about it.
     
    tennismaster, Feb 21, 2008
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  3. jim6172

    jim6172 Notebook Evangelist

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    some of it seems pretty nice i like the connection manager fairly well
    you might try to do an upgrade with the business dvd, just use a hard-drive cloning tool such as acronis or ghost and then boot to the dvd and choose the upgrade option if its offered this will save all of the lenovo tools and partitions for later
    jim
     
    jim6172, Feb 21, 2008
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  4. morphy

    morphy Notebook Deity

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    Or you can download any Thinkvantage utils you may want onto a thumb drive, swap in your new HD, install Vista on it, then load the utils from the thumb drive.
    If you're unsure of which drivers you need, refer to the first section of Stallen's guide.

    I use Thinkvantage's Power Manager ( I like it better than Vista's) and Hotkey utility so my hotkeys will work, and FP reader software.
     
    morphy, Feb 21, 2008
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  5. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    If you do it the first way you'll lose the recovery partition which some fine useful. All of the software installed on your machine is located in the SWTools folder on C:\. You may wish to pick and choose what you need. By all means make the recovery discs , if only for when you sell it.
     
    ZaZ, Feb 21, 2008
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  6. Darunium

    Darunium Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the advice, I'll copy over all of the software onto a thumb drive and add them as I wish! I read Stallen's guide and will likely follow his instructions, although the issue of changing versions of Vista complicates things a bit. I continued that thought on the forum for the guide.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783&page=111

    Many Thanks!
    Darunium
     
    Darunium, Feb 22, 2008
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