Windows 7 on a ThinkPad T40
I’ll provide some instructions but they are incredibly minimal (just to get the Radeon 7500 driver installed which most Thinkpad T40s have) as much of the hardware is recognised when Windows 7 installs.
I can’t really lament much on the installation as nothing went wrong and it all went as you could expect. After plugging in my LAN cable, Windows 7 appeared to download some updates and drivers as it then installed the Intel 2100B wireless card’s drivers. So now it’s all up and running.
Thankfully I can report that the taskbar whilst it does in some ways resemble the OS X in working (e.g. pinning non running applications and shortcuts together) you can configure it to use small icons as Windows does at the moment in Vista and earlier, and to display a text label by the icon too, like all other release versions of Windows – see the screenshot on the left for the full idea. When the taskbar becomes full, like windows are grouped together and hovering or clicking on the grouped taskbar icon allows you to switch to which window you want much as you do in XP or Vista at the moment.
Hallelujah!
The real benefit is you can move the order of the windows around in the taskbar so if you have a workflow say three Firefox windows, one which might be your CMS editor window, the second your preview window and the third your upload to the main web webserver window, you can keep these in a left to right order for a clean workflow. Unfortunately in Vista, XP and earlier, the order of your window tabs can’t be moved around.
I also really like the large show desktop bar on the right of the taskbar, it’s much easier to swipe down to it, click and show the desktop than move to a small QuickLaunch ‘Show Desktop’ icon.
So far my impressions are very favourable! Stay tuned for much more in depth discussion.
I installed 7 on T43p and actually was little pit amazed how smoothly it goes. It tooked about one hour to get used to the new taskbar and after that it feels brilliant.
Looks promising, considering that it runs really fine on older laptop already in beta version.
gncd
January 13, 2009 at 4:28 am
It does take a little adjustment but I am just glad that it’s not too much like the OS X Dock. In fact, Apple could improve the Dock by looking at what Microsoft have done with the taskbar — well according to how I use a computer that is!
I have a feeling I will be upgrading to 7 when it is released.
That said, I may also have to consider a newer laptop by then as unfortunately even though the XP Radeon 7500 driver installs, it does cause BSODs which I don’t get when using the standard VGA driver.
It’s certainly not a major priority as I do want a week’s holiday in the sun this year!
lilserenity
January 13, 2009 at 4:17 pm
can you run the full windows 7 UI on the thinkpad? i have been thinking about installing this on my t40 but i would not do it if the graphics were not good enough to run the whole thing
tom
January 24, 2009 at 7:35 pm
It is not like the MacOsx Dock, maybe the look similar (in some way) but in use they are very different. I really like the new Windows 7 taskbar.
Congratz from Perú!
Hades
January 28, 2009 at 6:35 am
So what about the Radeon 7500 driver? Did you use the Windows XP one or what?
Marco
January 30, 2009 at 4:16 am
I too installed on the T40, but, my video didn’t install properly and now it doesn’t matter how hard I try, just can’t get it to install. Any idea how I can install the driver so I can try the video features of W7?
Any help would be appreciated.
Roy
January 30, 2009 at 4:49 am
I’d really like to know more about its performance. I have a T40 with lowest hardware specs (bought in middle 2003). Now Windows XP runs very slow on it, but stupidly I was expecting Windows 7 will run faster on it!!
frank
February 1, 2009 at 3:21 am
[...] night. There were, however, a few I had to figure out for myself, most importantly the wireless. Others have written about other T4x series machines and drivers, but I haven’t seen one for the T43. [...]
Windows 7 on a Thinkpad T43p | periphery.
February 1, 2009 at 10:21 am
I just installed Windows 7 on my Thinkpad. Oh yes, it IS faster!
Startup faster; firefox 3 starts faster!
Now I feel that my old laptop is usable again!
frank
February 2, 2009 at 5:53 pm
The UI looks OK. Better than XP at least although the video card is very low end but it is still be able to drive a decent UI. I have installed Ubuntu on my laptop as well, and I feel Windows 7 is better in terms of looks and feel. Now Microsoft finally has done something good for the Windows users!
frank
February 2, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Has anyone gotten the corect video drivers for the T40 working with Win 7?
Ray
March 13, 2009 at 1:53 am
I just installed Win 7 RC on my TP T40, 1.3Ghz, 1.25GB Ram, 80GB Seagate 5400 drive.
It went really smoothly. The one trick is to install on the wired lan, pick up the updates (which adds drivers for the A/B/G card) and then switch to wireless once all the updates install. Defaults to 800×600 on install but switches to 1024×768 without error. Running Basic interface, no Aero.
My initial impression is that it behaves better than XP SP3, which is what was runnin two days ago.
Doug
Doug
May 10, 2009 at 2:41 am
Does W7RC have a proper driver for the Radeon 7500 video chip, or is video the super-slow generic display driver?
Marco
May 18, 2009 at 7:51 am
I installed Windows 7 RC on a Thinkpad T40 (1.5Ghz, 1GB Ram, 40 GB disk) without any problem – after connecting it via wired LAN it got the updates to get Audio and WLAN working and the performance is actually very acceptable.
I just wonder: have you installed any special drivers manually for the machine under Windows 7 or just left all the standard drivers that came with Windows 7 and it’s update?
Chris
Chris
May 14, 2009 at 5:34 am
I have a T40 which is now more than 6 yrs old. I have a 1.5GB RAM and I think its a 1.5GHz Centrino processor. As Doug said, I used the LAN Card when installing Windows RC version as a dual boot. It downloaded the necessary drivers for the wireless and 3 other necessary drivers. After that switched to the Wireless. Installation took about 45 mins. Initially system looked very fast. The Aero did not work becuase the Graphics card does not support it. The manufacturer is no longer supporting the graphics card in my T40. So, we will not get new drivers for it. Gadgets did not work either initially but after a week it just started working by itself. I started installing other applications on it over the past week. I installed Yahoo messenger, Picassa 3.0, Logitech webcam, Canon Inkjet printer drivers, Canon camera drivers, Canon HD Webcam drivers, Adobe reader, Macromedia flash for online videos. Now I started to notice that the system is slowing done. When I look at the resource monitor, its the CPU thats shooting up to the 80% range. I hardly see any activity in Memory. I see 32% memory normally and when I start using the apps it goes upto about 45%. But the CPU is going up even when I open one app like Yahoo messenger and call somebody. I am thinking a better CPU is required for Windows 7. These laptops are too old for todays software. I am just evaluating windows 7 so that I can make a better decision choosing my next laptop. So far I Windows 7 looks great.
Ravi
May 15, 2009 at 10:56 pm