Re: thinkpad digest for Sun, 30 Jun 1996

[K A Sturrock <ks@grove.ufl.edu>]

>Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 17:54:27 -0400
>From: Jack Shu <jshu@kira.ecs.umass.edu>
>To: tp750@cs.utk.edu
>Subject: TP701 & Windows NT 3.51 anyone?
>Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19960629215427.0067dd18@kirk.ecs.umass.edu>
>
>Just wondering, has anyone installed win NT 3.51 on their 701's yet? does it
>work? does NT support the built in sound, modem, etc? can you still
>hibernate/suspend with win nt? 

I run NT v3.5 on my DX2 701 with 20M of RAM. It installs fine off of the
distribution diskettes. You will need to visit chips & tech's web site to
get the correct video driver and I also installed the sp4 patch kit from
Microsoft's web site. The default VGA driver works okay with 16 colors. The
C&T driver provides the same capability as the regular Windows v3.1
driver...but the colors seem a little "different".

The modem works fine, although I have not set it up with the proper init
string, so I told NT that I have an IBM PCMCIA 14.4 modem and type the init
by hand. The generic 14.4 or Hayes 14.4 entries do not work. I am typing
this on Eudora Light. I also use Netscape v2.02, Freeagent, and the built-in
NT telnet & FTP clients with the built-in NT dialup PPP software. I have not
tried FAXing or any sort of answering machine software as comes from the
factory with v3.1.

The sound works, you tell NT that you have a soundblaster card and the sound
and microphone are fine...I have not investigated the sound input connectors
(but mine were always so noisy I never used them under Windows v3.1). NT
does not have any built-in software for changing the sound source.

The IR port works fine. I use it with my HP200LX palmtop, but some of the
software of interest to palmtop owners (Laplink remote access) won't run
under NT. ZModem & Kermit are fine with the IR port.

Suspend works okay except: NT looses track of time, the clock resumes right
where it left off when you bring the machine back to life. I have not tried
hibernate since it always caused problems with some program I used to use
(SAS?), and I wanted the disk space. The disk spin-down and screen blanker
work fine. However - under NT the disk is never spun down for long.

The machine, as expected, is noticably slower when starting programs or
puttering around...but, as expected, it handles load very well and has been
very reliable. I have a stripped down version of NT with almost no services
and very little extra power-robbing stuff and it is a bit slow (especially
booting). I expect that things would be better on the DX4 model. But speed
is relative. If you can handle Solaris on a SPARC 1+, NT on the DX2
Butterfly is fine (maybe better!).

My battery life under NT is lower, I get a little over an hour with the
NiCAD while I used to get a little under two hours with Windows v3.1. I
understand that NT gets upset if you swap PCMCIA cards...but I have no
PCMCIA cards in my system.

The big side benefit to my setup is that I can use the NT printer services
for my color HP DeskJet, printing is very fast and is not even noticable
(performance impact wise). Best of all, I no longer have to look at that
stupid inkdrop person/thing that waved the flag and said useful stuff like:
"Printer not responding! Cancel your print job? <YES>"

If you have a lot of RAM (16+), I think that NT is a viable alternative to
OS/2 and UNIX. Without starting a war, I think that OS/2 sounds more
"butterfly friendly" but if you have a reason to run NT...it can certainly
be done.

I have no idea about Jack's question regarding the benefits of NTFS to him,
I used NTFS because I wanted long names, security, etc.


                                                -Ken