Windows 7 Release Candidate on a Lenovo X41 Thinkpad Tablet PC
After reading a few blog posts about installing Windows 7 Release Candidate on the Lenovo X41 Thinkpad Tablet PC (which I happen to own), I decided to try it out. After all, I still have all the media to roll it back if I don’t like it.
It was amazingly easy. Everything appeared to work right out of the box, so to speak. Pen support is built in to Windows. The system seems fairly responsive.
The video card showed up as a “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter.” But it works fine, so I’m not complaining, yet. I like the Windows 7 pen calibration utility better than the one that came installed on the Thinkpad, though both are effective.
I timed the boot sequence before and after the update. With Windows XP Tablet Edition (with all the Lenovo add-ons), it took 2 minutes and 6 seconds to load the desktop. After that, it took another 3 minutes and 16 seconds for the CPU to drop below 10% utilization. Those of you who have one of these PCs know what I mean. The mouse is nearly unresponsive and jumps dysfunctionally around the screen for the first five minutes after a cold boot; I think it may have something to do with all the Lenovo software.
After installing Windows 7, it took 2 minutes and 12 seconds to see a login prompt. About the same as Windows XP. After that, the CPU only pegged for about another 60 seconds. In short, I regained about two minutes of my life every time I cold boot. This alone is probably worth it.
Got any questions? Post them in the comments.
Update: Since posting this article, I have installed Ubuntu 9.04 in place of Windows 7. This is mainly due to performance seeming to go down hill with Windows 7 over time. I am happy to report that Ubuntu is holding up well.
Category: Hardware, Software | Tags: tablet, thinkpad, Windows 7, x41 9 comments »
September 15th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Did you install from an external DVD-drive or from a USB-stick?
September 15th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
From a DVD. I purchased a docking station with the laptop.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Very informative post…I am planning to build a website and host it.After reading all these I am in dilemma that which language I should choose, PHP or Java. Whats your suggestion?
My idea would lead to a user intense / data rich application ..Please suggest a platform
October 12th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I will refer you to an article by Joel Spolsky on the topic. In summary, he says that choosing between Java, PHP, or .Net is a matter of sticking with what you know, as all three are perfectly capable of handling any large scale endeavor. Joel sums it up by saying that no project ever failed because it chose one of those three platforms. If they failed it was due to other factors.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
Do you have any idea on the reason why your x41t performance went down hill over time?
Maybe it’s the HDD (1.8″, 4200rpm). What do you think?
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I think the slow hard drive is half the problem; Barely meeting the minimum memory requirements is the other half, I think. Once I exceeded the memory limits, it started paging to (my slow) disk. And it was all downhill from there…
November 12th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
were you able to get the hotkeys to work? i’ve installed win7 on my x41 and everything is great except that the hotkeys are not working (except for the volume buttons)…
November 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I never did get the other buttons working. And then I installed Ubuntu and stopped worrying about it.
March 22nd, 2010 at 3:31 am
I can attest to the night and day difference experience on the Thinkpad x41 with Windows 7 installed on it. It’s comparable to replacing the internal drive with one of the 1.8″ SSDs. There’s no need!! Windows 7 rocks. Well.. in this case anyhow lol. One tip is to avoid the fingerprint drivers as they can cause sluggishness. -Ravi Shanghavi