I'm Back and so is my X41!

Ok well I didn't really go anywhere but if you actually read this blog you know I'm on spring break and have promised to update this all week, especially with info regarding my experience with MindManager. Well before you get all frustrated with me let me tell you I have not forgotten what I said and still plan on doing those updates but I have also not been sitting around doing nothing. In fact I've been working a lot with my tablet!

Anyone that has a Tablet PC knows the difficulty of not being able to do a clean install. For whatever reason Microsoft has decided to not release the Tablet PC edition disks with every new computer like it does for nearly all its other desktops and laptops. Well to be fair you don't even get just the OS on the disks anymore and manufacturers like putting all that info in a hidden partition on the hard drive, but the ability to obtain the disk does exist. This all makes sense for the average PC user but for those that really love their machines or are just dorks like myself, we like to make our PCs perform at their best.

One of the first things I do on any new machine is reformat and install a fresh copy of windows. Now a lot of manufacturers include a very nice bundle of software with the original purchase and a lot of it is very nice. I even love some of the IBM applications that Lenovo throws in but I would rather start from a base OS and install everything at my discretion. This prevents any "crudware" from finding its way on to my PC and hampering it's performance.

This is all very easy to do on just about any other machine as you can often borrow or use a OEM disk for the OS and simply type in your own Product Key and perform a "fresh" install. For me I notice a great increase in performance when performing this procedure on the many other machines I have worked with. With my X41 already taking a hit on performance with its slow hard drive (4200 rpm is just too slow in my opinion) I really saw this as something I should do. But like I said the procedure is much more difficult because you can not borrow the Tablet PC OEM disks since they don't exist to the average user.

If your lucky enough to have an MSDN account or if your a student that goes to a school that allows access to one, then your ok and you can just simply download the image files for yourself. But for the rest of us that don't have an account or go to a school that provides the very minimum to MSDN accounts (exclude any access to such Tablet files) then we are usually out of luck until Microsoft reasons up and offers us the option to obtain such disks.

However with a little work you can make yourself a set of Tablet PC OS disks from your own Tablet since just about all those files have to be stored on your machine somewhere. Well as much a computer dork as I am and with all that I know, performing such a operation was still beyond my skills. Especially since my tablet is my digital notebook and I can't really afford to scramble its brains and end up screwing up my machine.

Well this all changed thanks to a wonderful post at TabletPCBuzz! A VERY awesome member posted an incredible article on how to do a clean install with the X41. Procedures like this had been posted about before with other machines but I should could not risk that it would work seamlessly with my machine. What was special about this post was this it was designed with the X41 in mind. This member went into great detail with a step by step procedure and even ran down the many X41 tablet specific drivers that ones need to worry about. He also went through many of those IBM ThinkAdvantage programs that are very useful but not entirely essential. He talked about which ones he installed and uninstalled and more importantly WHY he did so. It is really an incredible post and he has been so helpful on the forum with other user's questions that this guy really deserves some kind of award or something.

Well with my lack of knowledge I was able to perform the "clean" install and I sit here amazed at the difference. I always knew it was a great benefit on all my other machines but none compare to the difference that I now enjoy.

I can remember about two weeks back sitting in Kinkos inquiring if they would be able to print out my ebooks for me. Well when they wanted to see the file I took out my tablet and we waited for the computer, which I had turned off earlier (for whatever reason) to load up. Then we waited...and she went and helped two other customers then we waited some more and I sat their staring at my slug of a computer take its sweet time to load up. I don't have many applications loading up and keep a key eye on all the changes made to the registry that could effect my start up but I was incredibly embarrassed by the performance of my computer. I pride myself on my tech savvy and with a computer that is not even a year old she must have though I knew nothing about computers and that its slow loading time was due to my lack of knowledge.

Well now I stand in hand with a computer that loaded up into windows in less than a minute initially after the "clean" install. This time soon went up as I installed my Antivirus software, Office, the ThinkAdvantage programs that I consider important and a few other things. However, even with just about all my key software applications hoisted onto the shoulders of my machine (including my new MindManager software :) the machine was able to handle the additional burden and still boot into Windows with a respectable time that cloaked in just under 2 minutes. Now this is still slowed compared to my desktop, but this feat was like a World Record for my tablet compared to the humiliating 5 minute boot time it use to take.

Even with a "fresh install" from my IBM recovery disks, which restore the hard drive to its original state, it still took about 2 minutes to load up. When I started throwing in all my other programs this time kept growing. And even though start up times are really not an issue since I leave my computer in stand by most of the time, the real-time performance of the machine always felt sluggish to me. And in the rare occasion that the computer would crash during class (I don't think it has at all this semester but I do recall once last semester) the 5 minutes that you have to sit there and watch your computer load up again is not only frustrating but once again embarrassing. Students that sit behind me could observe my ill computer screen fade away and have to restart. I feel it may have even discourage them from dipping into the world of Tablet PCs as I scavenged through my book bag for paper and pencil so I can take notes on the material as I wait an eternity for my Tablet to once again be resurrected.

Well with some time in my hands I created my Tablet PC disks, performed a clean install, and now have a machine running better than I could have ever imagined. This pushed back some of my original plans and postings but I hope you can forgive me as my Tablet required this operation and now is recovering nicely and is finally ready to perform at its true potential!

Again I owe this all to the TabletPCBuzz forum and one incredibly helpful member!

posted by Jason Dorko at 6:45 PM 0 comments links to this post