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My Lenovo IdeaPad s10e Netbook got a makeover today! As it's a pretty red shiny little box, I decided that an internal makeover would do the trick and installed a brand new Kingston SSDNow V Series 2,5" 64GB SSD drive.

So far my extremely non-scientific tests yield an impressive result. The boot time for Microsoft Windows 7 RTM (32bit) has dropped from 58 seconds to 33 seconds, from a completely powered off state to the logon prompt displays on screen. That's an impressive 56.90% reduction of boot time. I know this is a bad metric, but as I don't have any other real tangible test methods available to me, that's all you get.


Does anyone have any suggestions as to what and how I could test, with real data, the performance difference before and after SSD drive installation?

Addendum

I realize now that I should have called the IdeaPad s10e Mrs. Lenovo, not Mr.
After all, look at it:

Lenovo has turned 180° and brought ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) back from the dead. In a blog post on "Inside the Box" called "ThinkVantage System Update Returns", Matt Kohut, Global Lenovo Strategist, announces that System Update has been revived.

He goes on to explain that customer reactions, both blog posts and forum postings, has had such a big impact that it has caused Lenovo to rethink their decision.

Following our announcement, however, we heard from many customers on our blogs and forums. We’ve heard clearly that our individual and business customers alike value TVSU highly. Therefore, we are adjusting course based on your feedback, and have released a new version of TVSU on May 31st. In addition, we have made some backend investments which should indeed improve system performance.

As I posted about this issue a little while back, outlining my reaction to the discontinuation, I'm very happy to see that this gets reversed. TVSU is a valuable tool, and hopefully will continue to be so in the future.

At least it does seem like the downloads go a lot quicker now than before, but I fear that might just be temporary until "everyone" starts using TVSU again. I hope the investments Lenovo has put into the backend of things work out, also in the long run.

Re-reading my previous critical post about this, I realize that I probably was a bit ambiguous with regards to how we use TVSU in my organization though. We only use TVSU on the computers that doesn't get their updates from our own local repository that gets it's updates through the ThinkVantage Update Retriever (TVUR), and this has worked as expected through the period when TVSU wasn't available.

A while ago, Lenovo pulled the plug on the old ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) infrastructure and announed that they would return in the beginning of May with a new and improved system. While I am all for improvement and progress, I questioned why Lenovo had to completely remove the old (somewhat) working driver repository before the "new and improved" system was in place. I was willing to live with that, as long as we got a new and improved system in place. I was, in fact, looking forward to see what Lenovo was up to.

Today, I was pointed to this little gem on the Lenovo site

Lenovo is changing the way customers obtain updates for their PCs and Servers.

• For our PC customers, automatic updates via ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) are being discontinued. Customers can continue to download updates by accessing the Lenovo support site at Lenovo Support & downloads. Lenovo is pursuing alternative solutions for system updates and future offerings will be communicated through the new Lenovo Message Center Plus.
  

I'm sorry Lenovo, but completely discontinuing TVSU is not "changing the way customers obtain updates", it's telling your users that you don't value their time. Sadly, this is not the first time I've had that experience with Lenovo. I know this is pretty harsh, but consider the following scenario:

• You run an IT-department when you standardize on Lenovo Thinkpads for your mobile workforce.
• As a consequence of your standardization efforts you set up several deployment methods for these Thinkpads
• Seeing that your preferred vendor provides you with tools like ThinkVantage® ImageUltra™ Builder, and ThinkVantage® System Update you decide to spend considerable time investigating and perfecting your deployment methods based on these vendor supplied tools that actually adds value to your hardware investments. It's kind of magic, but it works!
• Lenovo then pulls the rug from under your feet and you basically have to start over.

This is the scenario I'm currently facing. Newer Thinkpad models, like the t400 and t500, are (naturally) not supported by the aging ThinkVantage® ImageUltra™ Builder (The readme for the trial download was last updated in 2007). Since we use it for deploying our base business OS and a minimal set of drivers this was a problem for us. After investigating a bit, we decided to try and give Lenovo a call and see if someone could help us out getting it to work on newer models.

I still can't believe how incredibly difficult it as to get support for that particular piece of software. Calling Lenovo support was useless, they didn't even know what product we were talking about. To this date, we have been unable to contact anyone in Lenovo, or IBM for that matter, that can help us with technical issues with it. No one. None. Zero! We did manage to get the basic drivers working inside the deployment image we have after quite a bit of investigation and trial and error on our own, no thanks to Lenovo.

So, where does ThinkVantage® System Update enter the picture? Well, we followed best practices and setup a minimal image that basically only includes networking drivers for the Thinkpad models we have. Then, and here's the magic part, the image installed ThinkVantage® System Update that connected to a local copy of the TVSU that contained the drivers we need for the rest of the devices. In reality, it's brilliant. Or, I should say that it was brilliant.

Now that Lenovo has yanked the foundation for our ImageUltra based installation services away from us, and we don't get support for it in the first place, what are we supposed to do? Manually download drivers and place it in the repository and hope the old TVSU client will find them?

Lenovo, I'm sorry, but this was not what you were supposed to be doing when you were "improving" the service. I've been a strong advocate for TVSU for a few years, even used it as a selling point when our business invests in hardware. Your most recent move has left me stranded, and now I need to start over setting up a distribution mechanism all over again. I know there are good alternatives to ImageUltra and, trust me, I know it has weaknesses, but I was willing to live with them as long as TVSU did the grunt work with regards to drivers. Right now Windows Deployment Services springs to mind, but that still leaves the problem with driver installation and management. TVSU sorted out that bit for us, and I'm sure Lenovo has other customers with similar stories.

I would really like to see the reasoning behind this decision, it sure doesn't make sense to me. But then again, I'm just a lowly user that actually utilized the very system Lenovo made available to me. How incredibly stupid of me.

Update 03. June 2009

: Lenovo reverses decision discontinue TVSU. Good one, Lenovo!

Last night I jumped in and decided to install go forward with my grand plan, namely running Windows Server 2008 as my laptop OS.

Installation

After making sure that I had backed up everything I might be needing
from the old Windows XP install, I basically wiped the whole laptop and
started fresh. A couple of partition deletions later, the Windows
Server 2008 install was underway and on my Lenovo ThinkPad T60 the
installation was pretty much done in 15 minutes.

Thats right, 15 minutes from the install started until I was able to logon for the first time.

No questions are asked during install. No computer name setup, no passwords, nothing. You can pretty much stick the media in the computer, go have a cup of coffee or something, and come back to finalize your installation. Hands off installation at it's very best.

After the first logon, you get presented with the "Server Manager" which under the "Features Summary" states 0 of 36 features installed. Is this really Microsoft? They have 36 features you can add, and they don't force you to disable the ones you don't need? You actually need to make an active choice to enable the features you want? Thats great!  

The "Server Manager" itself warrants a post of it's own. By far the best management console to come out of Redmond to date, and the ability to have diagnostics, roles, and features all in one central place like this is something that has been in demand for years. Well done!

On to driver installation. Most drivers were automatically installed, after all Server 2008 shares kernel and codebase with Windows Vista, so this was to be expected. The drivers that Server 2008 didn't handle on it's own, were for the most part handled by Lenovo System Update which identifies my system as Vista. The only thing I'm missing at this point are the Bluetooth drivers, but I'm pretty sure they'll install without much problems after a manual download from Lenovo.

Of course, running Windows Server 2008 as a desktop OS means that you will have to manually configure a few items. Unlike previous Windows Server versions, Server 2008 is pretty much locked down when installed. After all, who needs Aero, Windows Media Player and Wireless connectivity on their servers? It is a server OS after all. Well, as it turns out, I do. If you can call Aero a need that is, but I just had to try and enable it to compare performance with Vista.

The first "problem" was wireless connectivity. The wireless driver for my laptop seemed to be installed ok, but I was competely unable to find, and much less connect to, any wireless network. This was pretty infortunate, as I only use the laptop on wireless connectivty at home. Sitting on the floor with a cable attached to my wireless access point wasn't much fun, so I had to tackle that issue first.

The solution is pretty straight forward, and makes perfect sense, but if you don't know where to look it might pose a problem getting wireless to work.

Wireless

As I mentioned earlier, Wireless LAN features are not installed by default. All you have to do, is to add the "Wireless LAN Feature" to the server. That brings us to the new "Server Manager" console that Microsoft provides in Server 2008. Start "Server Manager", click on "Features" then go to "Add Features" and right at the bottom you'll find "Wireless LAN Service".

Internet Explorer Security

The second issue, if you want to call it an issue, is that by default Internet Explorer is locked down with the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configration settings. For the most part thats a good idea, and I'll leave it enabled on all my real servers at work, but when using it as a desktop OS it is just annoying. Disabling it is a bit different that from Server 2003, but it's a very quick procedure in Server 2008. In Server Manager browse to the Security Information section and click "Configure IE ESC".

Aero:

Now, to enable Aero features there are a couple of things that needs to be done. First, use the "Add Features Wizard" to  add "Desktop Experience". This requires a reboot, but thats not all, you also need to start the "Theme" service, which is disabled by default. When you have logged back in, launch "Server Manger" and browse to "Configuration" -> "Services" and locate the "Themes" service. Change the value from "Disabled" to "Automatic" and start the service. After the service starts, right click on the Desktop select "Personalize" and set the theme to Windows Vista.

Other

I've installed most of my day to day work applications on the newly installed laptop. Lotus Notes 8, VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client, Firefox etc. The only problem I've encountered so far, was installing MSN Live. The standard download doesn't install on Server operating systems, but there is an alternative download available. I've seen that others have experienced problems with running VMware Workstation 6 and Hyper-V simultaneously, but I've yet to test Hyper-V here, nor run any VMware products on top of it. While I plan on testing out Hyper-V on this system, I have to prioritize VMware Server for now. I still have a few template images I need to create, both personally and for the Gallery team.
 
I might be running the most expensive laptop OS in the world, but so far I'm extemely happy with it. I was even able to join the work domain remotely, via our Firepass SSL VPN solution. I had a small problem with the initial logon for my user account though, as the VPN client wasn't running when the logon box appears. That was easiliy solved by logging on as a local administrator, connecting to the SSL VPN, switching user account and then logging on with my domain user.

Conclusion

Windows Server 2008 performs better, even with the Aero features enabled, than Vista ever did on the same hardware. To
me, this a bit strange, even if a lot of services are still disabled,
as the codebase is pretty much the same as Vista. For all I know, Vista
might perform better now that Service Pack 1 has been released, but I
don't anticipate changing back any time soon. Another factor here is
that I had the 32bit version of Vista installed, while I'm now running
64bit Server 2008. How much of a difference that really makes, I don't
know.

My experience with Windows Server 2008 so far really makes me want to get started with upgrading my domain at work and all my servers. I'm literally acing to run adprep /forestprep and adprep /domainprep right now, but I'll wait until I'm physically at work though.

Mr. Patrick O'Rourke from the Microsoft Server Divison, if you are still reading this site please send my regards to the whole development team. You've made a great desktop OS, I'm confident it will be great on my servers as well.

For some time, I've been having some issues with how Lenovo System Update uses the computers Regional Settings to determine which language it should use when installing drivers and software.

It turns out that there is indeed a way to override the automatic language selection, without having to resort to changing your Windows Regional Settings.

While reading through deployment documents for Active Directory integrated System Update, I found this little gem:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\System Update]
"LanguageOverride"="EN"

That registry setting sets a language override that System Update checks before it determines which language to use. If the registry key is not present, or has invalid data in it, System Update does it's normal auto detection.

Valid two- and three- letter language codes are the following:

• DA (Danish)
• NL (Dutch)
• EN (English)
• FI (Finnish)
• FR (French)
• DE (German)
• IT (Italian)
• JP (Japanese)
• KO (Korean)
• NO (Norwegian)
• PT (Portuguese)
• ES (Spanish)
• SV (Swedish)
• CHS (Simplified Chinese)
• CHT (Traditional Chinese)

Finally an easy way to override the language selector, and prevent Lenovo from "polluting" your computer with localized software you don't want.