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I’ve had my Toshiba M400 for nearly six months now and in that time I’ve fallen out of love with the Tablet. I love the concept, but if having the extra functionality means having all of the extra bloatware then it’s not for me.
I have re-imaged it from Toshiba’s image several times but the sheer number of bits and pieces added in by Toshiba have alway annoyed me. The hardware is great – but the software to support that hardware is awful. Over the last week it’s been like woring through thick sludge trying to get basic tasks accomplished. Having a gigabyte of memory is useless if it’s swallowed up by seemingly redundant drivers and processes. I like to be in charged of what I run on my computer. They don’t call it a PC for nothing.
So this week I bit the bullet. After a search around the interweb I discovered a way to cleanly install XP Tablet Edition. I used nLite to create my own Toshiba flavoured version of the Tablet PC OS. Using Media Centre Edition as the base OS, I slipstreamed in the Toshiba Raid drivers. Then after tweaking it a bit for my own particular preferences, I made an ISO. I used Nero to burn the ISO to CD and voila – one Tablet Edition disk.
Last night I started the XP install process. I used the key that Toshiba used to install Windows even though it’s different to the one printed on the sticker on the notebook. I’m not totally certain about how kosher that is? It worked though!
After getting XP loaded, installing my anti-virus and testing the pen (to make doubly sure that I had done it right), I put in my Toshiba drivers disk – the one one that I made from the factory install. I loaded the wireless drivers and then headed straight out to Windows update. After that I headed to Toshiba’s support site and got the latest basic driver set. After making sure I had got all the drivers I started to load the additional stuff to run the stuff that I wanted to run.
I have loaded the hard drive protection utility but not the accelerometer (who in their right mind would want to shake a computer to start a programme?). I loaded the raid driver but not the additional systems because I don’t think that I’ll be using an extra hard drive.
I haven’t loaded the Toshiba Power Saving stuff because I’m hoping that Notebook Hardware Control on top of the default Windows setup will take care of my power saving needs. I haven’t loaded ConfigFree because, much as I like the idea of being able to change the network and proxy server information on the fly, it’s just too resource hungry.
At the moment I have a basic installation with all of the basic programmes that I use on a day to day basis. Firefox (and all my extensions – gotta love FEBE) is looking after my browsing and FeedDemon is taking care of my RSS. Office is installed and I’ve got Nero and WinDVD loaded. I’ve put VideoLan in for my media needs but I still need to load Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative to manage the extra codecs.
At the moment I am back in love with this little computer. It’s whizzing along beautifully with none of the lags or stuttering that have blighted things previously. For sure I have yet to put in PaintShopPro, Inspiration, KidPix or some of the other programmes that I use regularly. So far so good. Now I really need to find that Ghost disk!
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Even though my Acer Tablet PC is in the repair shop at present, I had been wondering why I spent so long at startup waiting for the OS and desktop to get going. Especially when my 2002 vintage desktop is up and ready to use in a fraction of the time. Now your post tells me a bit more about what is going on! My technical skills are a pale shadow of yours so ridding myself of excess apps could be difficult. Thanks for sharing how that can be done.
I’ve been meaning to trim down my OS installation as well (I have a Tecra M7), though at the moment I can’t handle the downtime since I use it for all my note-taking in school… though this is Thanksgiving Vacation
. I’ll have to try out nLite.. I’ve heard about it before, but hadn’t thought to use it for this installation.
I’m curious as to how you re-imaged your M400, since to my knowledge, Toshiba doesn’t put a recovery disk in the package. The Tecra M7 comes with a recovery partition that eats about 10 Gigs, that can rei-install the OS and drivers. There’s an option to make 4 recovery DVDs from this, and delete it if you want to. I made the disks, but haven’t used them yet.
The M400 has the recovery partition as well as the option to make the recovery DVDs . While these are useful they are not the answer – for me anyway!
My last laptop was a Dell Inspiron 8600, before that I had a Compaq Evo n160. I’m not used to running so many drivers and extras and using up so much of my precious ram.
I love the idea of the Tablet PC but the overhead created by the drivers and processes is ruining the experience.
I totally understand what you are saying, David, after investing a premium in buying a tablet PC, why woul you want to be without it?
I used Windows Media Centre Edition to make an XP Tablet Edition disk. To get the thing to boot, you need to slipstream the SATA hard disk drivers which are available on the Toshiba site.
It’s the kind of task that requires a quiet weekend and a bit of patience. Email me if I can be of any help?
I am trying find info on the tablets as I am looking to purchase one and am strugling – I would love to see one in action prior to outlaying the cost. can anyone offer me somed advice on what to look for and who to contact – I live in Auckland – Cheers
To David Coneff,
I went through the process of reinstalling my Tecra M7 OS and it made a world of difference. Although I can’t say I have the best procures, it might help you when clean installing your own computer:
http://www3.rdstokes.com/Blog/Tecra-M7-Review.html
Rob
MAN, I feel like I’m the one posting this. I’ve got the same issue with the same tablet and it’s really slow (1 GB RAM DDR2, Intel CORE DUE 2, 2.0 Gh, 2.0 MB L2 Cache, etc…) a PC like this should fly
anuway, I tried the procedure you mentioned (before reading this post) but I didn’t manage to make it.
I found the I386 folder on my HD and another I386 folder under TabletPC folderand I have another WinXP pro SP2 CD. After combinig them all with nlite (along with the RAID driver) and installig windows, it’s normal winXP Pro with no tablet features. Can you pleeeeeeeeaser send me the procedure exactly!!
thanks in advance…
hmm – as above – i’m just about to do the same thing, however, i’m using the M400 recovery disc, nlite won’t accept it.
do i have to use a normal win xp install cd?
and how do you exactly make a tablet version? what differs the tablet from the normal xp pro?
by the way – a list of what options you have ommitted and retained would be useful for people like me trying to do the same.
thank you
This link is for a thread of discussion precisely about using nLite to slipstream Tablet Edition 2005. Figured anyone coming by here from a Google search on this topic would find it useful.
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=1867&page=3