new to thinkpads: is the thinkpad software good?

i just ordered a T61 with the nVidia gfx.
I'm thrilled, as I've never been able to afford one before, but have always dreamed of getting one.

In the past, I've always formatted my laptops, and done a clean install.
I know lenovo's don't come with much bloat, but how good is all their software. Is is worth having?

 

I recently ordered a T60 with XP Pro and it was Bloatware City, like 85 processes and 485 megs of ram after all the apps loaded. The only software worth anything were the Thinkpad utilities i.e. Thinkvantage, System Update and Diskkeeper Defrag. Everything else was just bloatware.

 

I personally get rid of most it. I do a clean install and dump the recovery partition as well. Other than the drivers I only keep:

1 Easy Eject
2 Hard Drive Protection
3 Rescue and Recovery
4 Power Manager
5 UltraNav

I also use PC-Doctor and Diskeeper Lite that some with it. For everything else I use my own software. I get it set up the way I like it, then use Rescue and Recovery to make a back-up to restore my system if needed. I personally have no need for any of the other parts of ThinkVantage like Client Security, Presentation Director, Access Connections, etc. You certainly can pick and choose what you want.

Before you start, burn off the recovery discs. They will allow you to restore your T61 to its factory state if need. Also burn off the IBMTools folder, if it is still called the IBMTools folder. I haven't seen the new T61 yet. It contains all the drivers and applications installed on your ThinkPad. You can install some or all at a later date if you want.

 

The only bloatware on my R60 was Google. Did you get something else?

 

I got Norton's Security and a bunch of other stuff I had no use for. I pretty much did what you mentioned in the previous post. I did a full backup of the drive and just started over. I'm now running Vista U and it's running amazingly fast on 1 gig of memory. I'm waiting for the other gig I ordered from Mushkin and i'm curious to see if it will get even quicker. My Vista performance score is 4.0, not bad for a business lappy.

I've been messing with Vista and those turkeys are still using prefetch files.

 

My experience was similar to Rodknee's (heck, our T60's probably had the exact same drive image on them), and aside from removing Symantec and a couple of other utilties I didn't need, there wasn't a whole lot else. Granted, I wouldn't call the factory install "bare essentials" but nothing on there was really crap. Just a lot of stuff I personally was not going to use.

I'm still debating what to do with the recovery partition; I already burned the recovery DVD's but I still need to check to see what they actually *do*. Also, anyone know if the pre-boot "Recovery & Restore" environment is on the hidden partition? I would think so because it's a just a preinstall variant of Windows, but I want to make sure. Maybe I'll just see about deleting the restore image and leaving the pre-boot environment there.

 

I just did a full backup of my hard drive as soon as I booted into the desktop. I deleted all my partitions and yes if you were to boot off of a XP disc you'll see the hidden partition labeled as Drive C: (I forgot what it was called, sorry).

I did perform a restore of the hard drive and it works just as advertised. Although if all you do is a backup of the hard drive don't delete the hidden partition because you won't be able to call up ThinkVantage on bootup.

What ticked me off was I found a critical keylooger when I installed ad-aware. I don't know how it got there because allI did was to install my updates and I was infected with spyware. Did it come from the factory, who knows.

I've moved onto Vista U and the T60 is screaming which surprised me. Very happy with my purchase although I wish the screen were a little brighter.

 

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt for the screen to go one or two notches brighter, however it is sufficient 99% of the time. Heh, I actually wish it went one or two *lower* as well, as the lowest setting is actually pretty darned bright in low light conditions when compared to other notebooks lowest settings. Aside from that though, it's probably the best all-around notebook LCD I've used (other panels were better in some ways, way worse in others).

 

I got rid of the norton stuffs from the T60.

 

It might depend on the machine or the version of R&R, but on my R52 that didn't come with a pre-installed OS and hence no R&R, when I installed R&R, it still worked when booting, and I didn't even manually create the preboot partition.

The spyware could've been installed by worms that get through from Windows' security holes. Even with my updated Windows XP, if I get online without Windows' firewall set on "Don't allow exceptions", it crashes after 10-15 minutes from worms.

 

thanks for the help guys.
I guess I was asking more about the Thinkvantage suite stuff
I plan on using linux 90% of the time, but if the tools are cool, i'll use windows for a bit