Information Systems:Norwin November 2018 Laptop Upgrade

Background

• A T540p laptop was purchased singly for Norwin upon hire in October 2014. As a single purchase, the laptop therefore does not align with the refresh cycle of all other laptops (managers + IT).
• The 8GB DDR3L RAM and 180GB SSD in the T540p became limiting and an upgrade for both components was approved.
• Manager laptops were upgraded in 2016. Model purchased was the T460s. One T460s became available for use upon departure of a manager.
• The T460s has 8GB DDR4 RAM (4GB onboard, 4GB upgradeable) and a 180GB SSD (SATA3 not NVMe. Upgradeable).
• All T460s are OEM-licensed for Windows 10.

Upgrade notes

• Norwin has switched to the T460s from the T540p. Rather than upgrade the RAM and SSD on the T540p, components were purchased for the T460s instead.
• The T460s was upgraded to 20GB (16GB + 4GB) of RAM, and the SSD was upgraded to 500GB.
• As per manager endorsement and approval, the laptop will run Windows 10 Pro. Windows 10 Pro was installed, and activation was automatic as (at least according to Windows) the hardware ID had not changed.
• Laptop is domain-joined and now in active use.
• The spare computer and parts (4GB SODIMM and 180GB Intel 660p) will be available in the cage.
• Norwin's laptop now aligns with the lifecycle of the rest of the laptops. The proposed upgrade for this computer alone - when the laptops are upgraded - will be to a desktop computer, not a laptop.

Temporary notes

• Laptop name is NORWINU10, pending a change back to NORWINU1.
• Software will continue to be installed gradually.

Notable issues

• The trackpad has an issue in Windows 10 - cursor movement is glitchy at times, seeming to coincide with higher CPU usage. The experience is smooth when the computer state is near idle. This is occurring with the latest drivers.

• Update: A workaround is to disable the TrackPoint (red dot). This completely fixes the trackpad lag.

• Windows 10 no longer seems to support VLANs on NICs.

• Update: Actually yes they reintroduced support in the Anniversary update, I just have to find out how it works, as support is apparently built-in now (I was previously using Intel Advanced Network Services).
• Update: This was all just a matter of bad timing. Intel has to play catch-up with each major feature release (e.g. 1803, 1809 etc.). They had just released driver version 23.4, which supports VLANs in 1803, then 1809 came out.
• Update: Solved. Intel ANS (VLAN, Teaming) works on 1809 with driver version 23.5. Configuration is limited to PowerShell currently, but the driver set now matches how it functioned on Windows 7.

• Windows Hello is disabled by default, due to "some settings are managed by your organization". This is probably because it's joined to a domain that hasn't yet been configured with a default policy for Windows 10.

• Update: Enabled through a regedit.

• Currently unable to connect to IFS shares (SMB / Windows sharing) on bart. This might be because of an older protocol used on bart (whether it's to do with SMB itself or NTLM authentication), which may no longer be supported on Windows 10, or turned off by default.