[ltp] New Thinkpad and First Steps

[Paul Michael Reilly]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 10:58:28AM -0500, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
>> I am expecting a shiny new Z61p any day now.  Of course, it comes with 
>> Windows installed by default.  Past experience tells me that this time I 
>> had better generate the disk backups (and verify them) BEFORE I wipe the 
>> disk and install Fedora Rawhide --- I plead guilty to living on the 
>> bleeding edge, with much blood already spilled and more to come ... it 
>> hurts so good, :-)
> 
> What is your time worth?  You can get a new 100G, 7200RPM SATA drive
> from Provantage for $118.43, and then if you really want be able to
> potentially use it in another system as a primary drive, you can buy
> the hard drive caddy for $29 (model TP-60, from
> http://newmode.us/caddies/IBM.htm).  If you are just going to use it
> in an Ultrabay SATA driver carrier, you don't really need the caddy; I
> just substituted a piece of paper to prevent the circuit board from
> shorting against the metal of the Ultrabay carrier.  And if you don't
> have the carrier, you can buy one for around $45 or so.   
> 
> The new SATA drive works just fine in my T60, although it is missing
> the IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD, which means it won't unload the head
> as quickly when the hdaps software notices that your laptop has been
> dropped.  But as a backup medium, that may not matter.  Just do a
> disk-to-disk copy from your pre-installed hard drive to the newly
> purchased SATA drive, and now if you ever need to boot the Windows
> system to install some firmware upgrade or enable your EVDO card, you
> can just insert the Ultrabay carrier, and then configure your grub
> bootloader to boot the Windows partitions, and you're all done.  Total
> cost of doing this way is under $200, and if you already have the
> Ultrabay carrier and you don't care much about the hard drive
> caddy/bracket, you could do it for around $120.

Is it possible to boot to either the disk in the Ultrabay or the main 
disk with the Z6* line?  I seem to remember not being able to with my A31p.

What are the compelling reasons for keeping Windows available at all? 
Is it required to support any IBM/Lenovo features (I'm thinking 
ThinkVantage but I don't really know what this is)?  The only concrete 
reason I can come up with is for equipment repairs.  If something should 
happen during the normal warranty cycle, IBM/Lenovo will not deal with a 
Linux installed laptop and have threatened great expense to me in the 
past to re-install Windows in order to be able to diagnose the device.

I've plenty of other Windows/XP systems to access so dual boot is hardly 
necessary for my use.  But if it were as easy to keep it as to kill it 
I'd probably keep it.  I loathe the idea of becoming a Grub expert when 
I know that the only time I'd need Windows is if the machine breaks, 
Granted the breakage scenario introduces another set of complexities but 
I'm willing to punt on those second order effects for now.

-pmr