Darwin, lanux128, I'm so happy you guys find it to be an improvement!

As for the controversy, I have managed to make a mod for it that complies with SMF guidelines and is perfectly compatible with their license.

So ppl over there are trying it out: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=188513.0  :)

ThinkPad's Rescue and Recovery allows you to save the hidden partition to multiple DVD/CDs. Anyway IMHO there's nothing but crap buried in that area.  ;)

IMO, by "proprietary things" your co-op vendor was referring to IBM Preload Desktop partition (a hidden partition on almost every thinkpad harddisk that helps with system recovery and can be accessed through BIOS).

I was once a Thinkpad salesperson and support specialist and to my knowledge all ThinkPad hard drives are interchangeable - it's really no big deal to change hard disks on a ThinkPad.