Is Lenovo's Windows 7 different?

Hello all,

Just wondering - is the version of Windows 7 that's shipped from Lenovo any different to you normal out-of-box, off-the-shelf type of copy?

The reason for my asking is that I have to wait for it to be shipped 2-3 more weeks, I guess, but I do have another "normal", non-branded copy of Windows 7 that I haven't installed anywhere yet.

Would I be better off just using my own copy? Can I download any Thinkpad-specific stuff later?

Thanks in advance!

 

yeah, the lenovo disk just comes with the bloatware, depending what you classify all the utilities and other stuff as...

if you do your own install you can choose what you wish to install, which i would do. keeps the system clean

 

not different, just with more stuffs that is specific for Thinkpads, also it has an on disk recovery partition, so that you can recover the entire system from scratch, if anything happens to the active OS installation.

 

Thanks - I prefer a clean install. I would like to have some Lenovo-specific drivers, I suppose (if there are any), but I don't need any bloatware really.

I'm not worried about recovering the system, as I backup regularly (my source code) and the rest I can re-install easily, so no dramas there.

So, there's no real advantage to wait for it, right?

 

not really. Most of the drivers and Lenovo specific softwares can be downloaded off the web, when it is ready to be released.

 

well, you dont have to download all drivers by yourself, altough i even think Win7 will find a lot of drivers for you already..

go for a clean install.

 

I know of one difference, I think it is in the killing of processes. I'll check on it and let it be known if it's real.
Renee

 

Thanks for the quick replies! I'll do that, as my wife wants to get my HP and I can't give it to her till I transfer my stuff to the Thinkpad and I didn't want to do that until I installed W7, so that I wouldn't have to re-install things twice And things aren't looking like they're moving with the shipment of that W7 from Lenovo.

 

What do you mean? You can kill anything from the task manager - is that different on W7?

 

You wife wants you HP Dragon? It is war.... no man should part with their beloved laptops, even to your better half....

 

It was part of the deal when I got the Thinkpad for myself Nah, I'm happy with it - the Dragon is great, but I sort of never felt like I was properly using it, my wife on the other hand, is an interior designer and uses CAD and PS and whatnot, so she'll benefit more from the bigger screen. And she likes glossy things

 

interior designer can't get enough of glossy things.... careful she would try to wrap you in cellophane..

 

umm, sounds kinky Having a glossy surface is actually a PITA in terms of keeping it clean. And seeing your fingers as you type (as a reflection at the bottom of the screen) is a weird feeling too

 

i like the thinkpad keyboards better, since i use them everyday. I have replaced all my desktop keyboards with the Thinkpad laptop style keyboards.....

 

I have yet to use the Thinkpad's keyboard, so can't compare at the moment.

The one small issue I see with it, and I'm not sure if it'll be an issue or not, are the small arrow keys. Why did they have to make them so small, when there's so much space around? Maybe I'll have to teach myself to use the numeric pad keys instead, not sure yet.

 

because lenovo use the same keyboard across their R400, R500, T400, T500 and W500, W700 range.

 

Yes, that's what I would've guessed. I use the arrow keys a lot, but my fingers are on the thinner side, so maybe it'll be all right - time will tell (I'm getting ready to install W7, so it'll be at least a couple of days till I fully transfer everything to the TP).

 

"What do you mean? You can kill anything from the task manager - is that different on W7?"

I can't find it on the ms board and it may or may not make a difference with killing your processes. This is a close to boot time kill for the purpose of killing unneeded processes I believe,
Renee

 

Ok, frankly I'm not sure what you mean, but I'll keep it in mind if I come across anything during my installation and later usage.

 

All I can get is generic information:

"For Windows 7 specifically, Lenovo has performed some low-level tweaks on its latest ThinkPad machines to ensure that Microsoft's latest OS boots and resumes as quickly as possible.

For example, the BIOS hides some hardware devices from Windows 7 so that they don't need to be detected when the system boots up, speeding boot time. And on the software end, further boot time speed increases were realized by delaying the startup of unnecessary application loaders and updaters.

More obviously to the end user, Lenovo also provides a suite of ThinkVantage-branded utilities and services with its ThinkPads. The company replaces the built-in networking and battery life widgets, for example, which I'm normally not a huge fan of.

But Lenovo's utilities go well beyond the capabilities of the built-in tools. The battery life utility is connected to Lenovo's excellent Power Manager tool, which provides far more granular--and on the fly--control over the system's power management capabilities.

In fact, thanks to integration with hardware that’s unique to ThinkPads, these machines provide much more accurate battery life estimates than much of the competition and can be configured to "stretch" battery life to accommodate certain needs, like the remaining time on a flight.

There are other useful tools, like a password manager for auto-login of both websites and applications. And if you have an optional fingerprint reader, you can integrate the password manager with that, as you can with the main Windows logon.

And Lenovo was among the first to provide "airbag" protection for onboard hard drives, essentially an active shock protection feature that helps prevent hard drive disasters in the event of a shock to the system, such as being dropped off a table.

" But most of Lenovo's bundled apps and utilities were quite welcome, even though some appear to require Java, a self-updating mess of a technology I'd rather exorcise from all of my machines.

And Lenovo isn't necessarily alone in providing the right computing environment to its users; this is just the company with which I'm most familiar. In the weeks and months ahead, I hope to evaluate how the competition is doing in reducing crapware, especially on their Windows 7 PCs.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has done a wonderful job of minimizing the system footprint, speeding performance, and simplifying. It's nice to see a PC maker not screwing that up for a change. "

You will not recognize it, just using the code.

Renee

 

I understand now Thank you for that - I can see what they could've possibly done, but personally to me it's not a very important issue (I prefer to reboot as less as I can, my systems run 24/7 normally).

 

@DennisV, so how much did you pay for the W700, also why didn't go with the Quad Core instead?

 

It came out to roughly $2900 AU, including delivery (2 business days).

One reason for going with the T9900 is price, I would need to pay an extra $400-500 or something like that to get the better of the quad-cores available and I couldn't justify that.

I also have my doubts whether in a real-world situation the quad-core will perform better or not. Ok, in theory, a process runs at a certain speed utilizing all 4 cores at once (provided Windows manages that properly) this is good and is possibly noticeably faster than that process running on a dual-core (with more GHz). What happens when you add a second, third, fourth process? Then, they each start occupying one core, but each of those cores is approximately %25-30 slower than the 2 cores I've got. I'm not sure what happens in this case, to be honest.

I'd love to be able to compare the 2 identical laptops side-by-side with just different CPUs, but I can't afford another W700 just for that right now

 

2900 for that spec is not too expensive.

 

Yep, that's why I grabbed it - and getting it locally here would cost lots more (customizing a system on lenovo.com.au with same specs makes it around $5900).

 

oh, you didn't get the system in Australia? Did you get it in the states?? God, then the W700 DS with the Quad Core would be 7000 dollars if i get it in Australia..........

 

Yep, I've ordered it from the States - prices here in AU are ridicolous (because of our relatively small and distant market, but it doesn't make it easier for consumers).

 

oh well i guess my W700DS have to wait to next year.......

 

Most of it. To be precise: eveyrything except the lenovo-specific tweaks to W7. But if you prefer a clean install, it doesn't matter anyway.



http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/

 

Thanks! I wonder if one can apply those tweaks, I don't think MS actually modified any source code for Lenovo, have they? If not, then it would be bios/registry/drivers based and I would assume that it's reproducible?

 

It seems that lenovo really did spend some money in those w7-optimizations, so i don't think they will publish what exactly they did at the moment.

 

Typing this from the fresh install of W7 on the TP.

I was wondering about the drivers - I've gone through the list on the Lenovo's web site and downloaded/installed some of them, however my W7 had pretty much all the drivers available when I installed it.

Question: I've downloaded Lenovo's Update Manager 4 and it downloaded a bunch of stuff and now says there's nothing left to update - can I assume that it's all right and my system is actually running as it's supposed to be? Or should I go manually through the drivers on Lenovo's site and download/install all of them?

Question 2: do you know if the "upgrade" W7 which is shipped to those who purchased Vista system is the W7 EE or the normal one?

Thanks!

 

1. If there are no unknown devices shown in the device manager everything should be fine.
2. I was told that Lenovos Upgrade-DVD will contain all enhancements that are avaiable at the moment. So probably: yes.

 

Thanks! I'll wait for the DVD and see, maybe I'll reinstall again