New thinkpad T500 questions.

Hello All,

I recently bought a THinkpad T500 and everything seems to be good, but I have two questions.

1) I notice a slight flexing of the keyboard, but its not that big of a deal. I just wanted to know if it would cause any problems in the future such as loss of keyboard sensitivity or cracking of the keyboard.

2) There seems to be a lot of programs running and would it be advisable to do a clean install?

Thank you in advance for all the help. THis site is a great resource.

 

1.) If you have a Thinkpad built after March, the fix should have been built in and you have what you have. The old fix which is slightly heavier involves a t61p keyboard. PERHAPS you can talk them out of one if you call the warranty number.

2.) I always did a clean install, but I don't think that's what's going on. They have many vista services turned on that don't need to be. I don't know what to tell you about that.

-Renee

 

1.- If you're fine with the slight flex, then everything will be okay. The keyboard will not develop issues due to flexing. Some people have successfully convinced Lenovo support reps to send them a replacement keyboard; you can try to do that if the flex still worries you.

2.- I do not think you need to do a clean install. I would just uninstall the pieces of the ThinkVantage suite that you do not need (ie: Client Security Suite, Access Connections, etc.), and disable some unnecessary startup items. In general, though, Vista will have more processes than XP.

 

I'd install CCleaner (free) and run their startup inspector. With this program you will be able to see what's running at startup and disable what you don't want.

 

1 - There is some flex in my t400 as well. You can either buy a t61 keyboard from ebay or call Lenovo and complain until they send you a new one. Personally, a bit of flex does not bug me at all.

2 - I always do a clean install with all new computers. The new t400s come with 100+ processes running at start-up. A clean install brings it down to 40-50 if you use the DVD straight from microsoft. Definately worth it in my opinion.

 

Really? That seems a bit drastic. My new T500 had around ~90 processes, which, with all my system monitoring tools and AV and after cutting down some processes, dropped to the low 70s at boot.

 

Between disabling certain things, uninstalling unwanted software and doing a Ccleaner pass or three you should be fine.