ThinkPad 3GHz [[ alledgedly]]

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, Gary Kline wrote:
 > 	Well, for a change I'm not writing dub questions to the main
 > 	list!  This time, just some advice and maybe hand-holding ...
 > 	with a pat/back and "That's all right; you didn't have any
 > 	choice."
 > 
 > 	I just bought the last pre-Lenovo [?] IBM ThinkPad.  I would have

Gary, what model & type is it?  Exactly?  Doesn't sound like a T43, they 
have a touchpad I think, and - we've been here before - I haven't heard 
of any single-core Thinkpads clocked faster than about 2.2GHz.

 > 	much preferred the computer *without* an OS, but hell will freeze
 > 	over before that happens.  Nutshell, it's got XP on it and I'd
 > 	like to know if I can scrape it off and either give or sell it.

Scraping it off is as easy as deleting its slice in sysinstall.  I doubt 
you can (legally) sell or even give it away, and who'd want it anyway?

 > 	And if so:exactly how.  It *is* old-fashioned as some reviewers
 > 	wrote in '05, but it has Only the trackstick or stictrak to move
 > 	the pointer.  No scratch-and-sniff pad where I'll rest my palm.

I'm waiting for some guinea pig to try an Adesso Easy Cat external 
touchpad on one (U$40 or so).  I've asked several times, but noone so 
far admits to having tried one of these on any FreeBSD box.  I gather 
that at a minimum they emulate standard PS/2 or USB mice, with tap, 
double-tap and drag and possibly right-click-tap, out of the box.

 > 	Built-in wireless and built-in cable jack.  

Before you wipe anything you could boot off disc 1, or -bootonly, and 
save a dmesg so we can see what all the hardware is, though given the 
model and type numbers, someone will likely already have [had] one.

 > 	So: should I just drop in 7.1-R or Ubuntu-XYZ over the Windows
 > 	or what?  The ONLY use I'd ever have to use W is to play my
 > 	French CD's. O/wise it's useless.

If the HD has plenty of room, you could shrink the doze slice down to 
enough to boot and use it if need be, maybe 4-6GB for XP, using one of 
the various tools such as Partition Magic.  Depending on its model, you 
may need to boot windows to do the BIOS and Embedded Controller updates, 
though many more recent(?) models have bootable ISO images available.

cheers, Ian