When I purchased my Quad Core XPS-720, I was excited to be able to purchase a major vendor's system with over clocking built into the default BIOS. Unfortunately, the promise has never been fulfilled. The system has locked up regularly since I purchased it and Dell's only support response: reinstall the OS. Given the amount of work and uncertainty of the fix I never did. Since Dell has released the XPS 730 and failed to certify the XPS 720 for Windows 7, I suspect that a hardware design issue may be causing the lockups, but given my options (this system was too expensive to dump after 2 years) I have decided install a clean copy of Windows 7 64 bit to see what happens.
I used my Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate upgrade DVD and installed using the fresh copy installation option (vs. the in place upgrade). This allows me to dual boot my machine (Vista or 7) in case something goes horribly wrong. The down side is that I have to recreate my environment.
The installation went fine and all the hardware drivers were detected found. The only issue was the failure of a critical Windows Update patch for the NVidia GeForce 8800 GT video card. Since, I could not find a valid Dell Windows 7 driver for the video card; I decided to try the Vista 64 bit driver. This driver solved the issue and actually provided more control panel functionality than the one found by the installation. I now need to install the NVidia RAID drivers to add the disk management functionality to the NVidia control panel.
I have started the application reinstallation process with Office 2007 Ultimate and SQL Server 2005 with all associated Service Packs. So far so good; I will add applications day by day and update this blog. I will start testing over clocking today by setting the processor to 3.2GHZ.
A Major Reason I Love Lenovo ThinkPads
I have been using ThinkPads since the late 90's and have always been very happy with the design, durability and IBM service. I feel I am probably in the minority but I love the trackpoint, it works for me not to have to raise my hands while typing to use the mouse functions.
I have not had to use the depot warranty service for several years now. At the beginning of this year the middle latch of my 2 ½ year old X60 tablet fell out and I lost it. The latch pushes up and down through the LCD panel case so you can lock the panel to the keyboard base in either standard clamshell mode or reverse tablet mode where the LCD is exposed.
The reversible latch (at the top of this picture).
I finally planned some time where I was not going to need my X60 tablet; I was going to be away for the weekend and planned on using my VAIO P. I called Lenovo/IBM (IBM currently provides the service in the US) on Tuesday, they shipped a return box which I received on Wednesday. Thursday evening I took my machine to the local UPS store; IBM received the machine on Friday, repaired and shipped it back on Saturday for delivery on Monday morning. This level of service makes the rather dull but business looking ThinkPad a winner and the fact that Lenovo has so far kept IBM's design philosophy and build quality is what keeps me coming back.
My X60 is 2 ½ years old; it has worked very well with Windows Vista and is working even better with Windows 7. At this point I have no need to move to a newer model for the foreseeable future…
Posted by sskarlatos on November 13, 2009 at 08:36 AM in Commentary, Lenovo, Thinkpad X60, Windows 7, Windows Vista | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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