General J

Life should be interesting in the next 4 years. I don't think people quite understood who they were voting for. Since the media painted such a wonderful picture of an Obama nation, people thought he was the answer for everything. Don't make enough money at work? You wouldn't have that problem if you had Obama! Make the top earners who already pay the vast majority of taxes pay even more so that we can "spread the wealth"!

Now we get to this crap. Volunteering is a great thing, if you have a drive to do it and want to. Or if you even have time too. Our lives are already so rush rush, including middle and high school age kids, that some people just can not afford to lump another thing on.

The other thing I always think about is this: You make it a requirement for kids to do community service for schools. College admission is a prime example. That takes the whole point out of it. The kids aren't doing it any more because it makes them feel good about themselves. They are doing it now so they can add it to their resumes and admission forms. Sure it helps out, but it is no longer a reflection of the person doing it. And the kids aren't taking anything away from it. They now think that life means doing things only when they are forced on you. Why not teach our children to just do the right thing on THEIR own, not because the government says that you have to.

Save the space and drop the floppy drive. I know there are a few occasions where you would need it, but you can really get away with just a dvd/cd-rw drive from my experience.

Someone else can either give an affirmative or a negative, but I was questioning how much more performance you would get out of the quad core than a faster clocked dual core. Or, if you wanted to stick with the quad core, and bring your price down, look at the AMD Phenom X4. Again, I don't know how well they stack up against the Intel lot. I have a core 2 duo in my laptop and an AMD Athlon in the old desktop, so I am impartial.

If you took the savings from going with the AMD processor, you could almost buy another video card and run it in SLI for 2 gigs of video mem. I thought when I built my desktop ~4-5 years ago that the 512 mb video cards were serious overkill.

So, I have my new laptop with 2X250 gig 5400 RPM HD's. They are currently set with 4 partitions. One is Vista 64-bit, and the other are data from what I have seen. Asus ships with a program called "express gate" which allows you to do web browsing, music, some online games, photos, chat, and skype calls without launching the OS. It's neat, and nice not waiting for windows just to look up directions on google maps.

But, the BIOS supports a RAID 0 setup. I know nothing about RAID setups at this point other than they are supposed to be faster (?). Can someone shed some light on why the RAID setups are better? How much of a benefit would I get out of it? How hard is it to do? And is it worth the hassle of setting it up and reformatting? I would lose the ability to use express gate, which seems some what handy. But if performance would be greatly enhanced, then I would probably give it a shot.

I actually thought about that this morning. In my search to end the high cpu usage, I actually ran across something suggesting that it be turned off. What exactly does it do? Is it just for search functions, or does it help with load times?

So, I have had the laptop a few days, and only had a limited time to mess with it. CS:S runs like a dream with everything cranked. System is fast, build quality is super nice. I would definitely buy another Asus in a heartbeat. The machine I bought for the money is worth every penny. You can not beat ASUS's warranty, and they were ( I believe) the only company offering 802.11n that I noticed. Battery life is great when it is set to "power saving." "High performance" sucks through the battery in less than an hour from what I have seen. But it is running a lo of stuff. Even comes with everything down to a Logitech MX518 mouse. My only complaint is the keyboard, which feels a bit loose for my taste with a new computer. It's not horrible, but it feels a little pre-broken in to me.

This is the strangest thing. I knew that when I built my new desktop, a few years back, that it took a while to settle as far as reliability. I got the laptop, and not even an hour after my first post, it settled down. CPU load just totally dropped off. Nothing was running sluggish anymore. I knew it shouldn't have been, but I didn't understand why it was. Everything is great now. CPU usage is only up while a demanding application is open. System is using almost no CPU. Strangest thing. I was just about to be seriously ticked off with Windows Vista when it leveled off. Running all high graphics in Windows now, and no load at all. Everything runs perfectly well.

I have. But I forgot to mention that huh? System is always above 50, and usually well over 60-70. System Idle Process is next at around 20 or so. I knew Vista was supposed to be a resource hog, but this is ridiculous! I figured with the specs this thing had, I would handle vista just fine, and be able to at least multitask between 2 windows. I can barely open 2 instances of firefox!

So, I just got the asus g50v-a1, and I am having issues. CPU usage is showing anywhere from about 75% - 100% all the time. Is it normal for the OS to be running the processor that hard constantly. It is doing this even without extra programs running. I have turned all services off, other than the Windows ones. I have set the power mode to high performance, and I have turned all the visual effects off (setting for performance) and boosted the virtual memory (which I would think it wouldn't need with 4 gig's RAM at it's disposal?)

Anyone experience any similar problems or know anything about this?

Here!

From everything I have heard of Vista (have a laptop on order that has it, but I have never used it personally) he might want to either upgrade it to 2 gb ram, or dump vista for xp. He might also be able to do some light gaming on the integrated video. My bro-in-laws sony vaio has the intel 945 chipset, and he runs GTA San Andreas, hardly any eye candy, but it does run it pretty well.

So, I went with the G50V-A1. I figured the 15.4" was more than big enough. I also had read a lot of things talking about how the 32-bit version of vista would show all 4 gigs of ram, but couldn't actually use it all. I don't know if that is still true after all the updates. But, if it is, it amuses me that they sell machines with 6gb ram and pre-install 32-bit vista.

Anyhow, I will give a review once I have it in hand.

I had the feeling that the 17" one was going to be a burden to carry around.

Now my serious question is the difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of vista, and just how much better the 9700M GT will perform compared to the 9600M GS or the 1 gig ATI 3650.

So I have narrowed it down to two.

THIS ONE,

or

THIS ONE.

The first is a 15.4" and the second is a 17"

I don't know how crazy I am about carrying a 17" laptop between classes and such. The 15.4 seems awfully big on its own. I also do not know how much of a difference I would notice between the screen sizes, unless I was playing a game or watching a movie.

Most of the specs are pretty similar. Same processor, ram, super-multi drive. One cool thing is that they both have a full num pad.

The first one has 2X250 gig HD's, that can apparently be set up for RAID 0. But I am lacking in the knowledge department as far as RAID setups go. It also has the 512mb GeForce 9700M GT. And it comes with Vista 64-bit, which I am not sure if that is a plus or minus... Some say 64-bit is the only one that will recognize all 4 gigs of RAM. Some say that the regular version of Vista will now recognize all as well. The only true down sides I see here are the price at $1700 (which is still a bargain for the specs compared to the more widely known manufacturers) and not having the 1 gig video card like some of the others that I have seen (although I never could figure out whether they were truly 1 gig, or 512 dedicated with 512 shared available).

The second one has the larger screen which, as I said above, I can't decide if that is a plus or minus for me. It has a single 320 gig HD. And it comes with the 512mb 9600M GS. I am pretty sure that the vid card would be more than sufficient, but with that large of a screen, I would have liked the better card. But, it is $200 less than the first one. Same thing as the first one with the video card. I would have liked to see the 1 gig card in this one, but oh well.

I think I know which one I am going to order. Which one would you guys go for, and why? How much better is the 9700M GT vs the 9600M GS? And why is NVidia using recycled ATI numbering schemes?

I thought I had read something about a lot of problems with the mobile NVidia cards. I have only owned ATI, so I have no experience with NVidia. I know that from past experience, ATI's driver upgrades have been problematic for me. Also, I have only really had experience with desktops, as far as the performance side goes. I have never used a higher end laptop. $1300-1400 is a stretch for me, but if it means a machine that will hold up to the test of "tech" time for a while, I think I can convince the wife to let me splurge. $1500+ probably isn't going to go in my favor. Either that or I would go for the ASUS with the dual NVidia card setup! Anyone have anything as far as side by side test results for the ATI and NVidia mobile cards? I haven't searched Tom's hardware yet, but if anyone has anything that would show real performance specs it would be much appreciated.

Boiler - Newegg has quite a few laptops that have that same ATI HD 3650 card setup. Some are listed as 512mb dedicated, and some are listed as 1024mb dedicated. I have also seen cards (none of which were the ATI 3650 setups) on newegg that were listed as being 512mb dedicated with up to 1024 or 2048 available through sharing. I don't know how efficient the additional shared memory is. And I do not know whether the cards listed as having 1024 Dedicated fall in the same boat. I guess I may have to give newegg a call, or try to get in touch with ASUS or ATI support.

I know the Asus machines (whether it is the Intel or AMD setup) will handle any everyday program thrown at it, no problem. But, will it handle decent graphical settings in CS:S,TF2, Farcry, BF2, and some of the newer games such as crysis? I am not looking for uber super graphics, although that would be nice. I am thinking, at the least, 1024X768 with all the goodies turned on high in, say, HL2/CS:S. My desktop has a 128mb ATI Radeon 9600XT, and it ran HL2, CS:S at decent settings, and FarCry and BF2 at low/mid settings. I would like the laptop to top that performance.

To get right down to it, I guess I am trying to justify spending the extra $$ for the dedicated card and such, as opposed to one of the new integrated ATI setups. I know the mobile vid cards are far less potent than the desktop models though. I would assume the dedicated card is going to fare much better than the integrated ones. But just how much better, and if it is worth it, is another thing.

My in-laws swear by mac. BUT... I will not pay for the over-hyped, over-priced mid grade mac. You can get 2x the specs for half the money. And I have seen plenty of problems with the macs. For goodness sakes, my in laws had to dump safari, in similar fashion to what most people do with IE, for firefox. It was crashing constantly. Same thing goes for a lot of their mac software. It will simply quit out randomly in the middle of running with no explanation. And what the heck is with only having one mouse button. No, I do not want to have to push a separate key on the keyboard, even if it is a "cute" little apple, to get the right-side mouse button function. That must be where the extra cost comes from!

So, in short, NO MACS! I will not do it!

I guess my question is this: Is that ATI 3650 really a fully dedicated, stand alone 1 gig. Or is it 512mb dedicated, with 512mb additional shared? I know there are 1+ gig desktop cards. But even those confuse me. They say 1gb memory, but show memory interface as 512 or 256 bit. Can anyone share some info on this?

I have been out of touch as far as keeping up with new hardware. Is the core2 duo 32 or 64 bit? And it is dual core, not quad core, right? The only major difference, aside from processor, that I noticed with the intel setup was that the video card is supposed to be a dedicated 1 gig card, vs the 512 of the amd setup. How much of a difference will that extra 512mb on the video card make?

So, I am looking at a new laptop. I will be using it as a semi-replacement for an aging desktop, school, and some gaming. I understand technology changes every day, and anything I buy will be immediately outdated.

With that said, anyone have any opinions between AMD and Intel's mobile processors? I have an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ in the desktop running at 1.9 ghz and, from my prospective, is considerably faster than the Pentium 4's made around the same time.

I am looking at:

This one,

or

This one.

I am looking for something that will handle most anything thrown at it today, and keep up with future requests for a while. Any opinions?

I have been using my gmail account through Mozilla Thunderbird for awhile now. I am too cheap to pay for something that I can get for free that works well enough.

My wife has an older (~6 years old) IBM Thinkpad, and ran into the same thing that ZD had. I use spybot:S&D and one instance of IE opened up pandora's box. Something was running and attempting to change a load of registry settings. I finally got antivirus to run, and found 2 trojans. The easiest way I could think to solve the problem was to reformat. And, since my XP cd was on a moving truck somewhere between Missouri and Idaho, Windows wasn't an option. I couldn't use Ubuntu because of the RAM requirements. So I went with Debian.

With the GUI, Debian/Ubuntu should be pretty easy to use, even if you don't want to get into using the terminal. If you do end up learning terminal commands, which I haven't gotten completely into yet, you can pretty much do anything you want with the OS. And, the good thing is that there really is actual documentation on how to use the OS. Also, being cheap, free is a very appealing aspect.

The only reason I can see for keeping the Windows installation on my next laptop purchase would be for gaming. There are programs that allow you to run windows programs through linux. One is WINE and the other is VMWare. BUT, last I read, Valve was searching for a highly skilled Linux programmer to port Steam and software over. Good news for CS players.

I have never played it, but I believe it is a lot like Operation Flashpoint. It is supposed to be an ultra realistic strategic first person shooter. Looks pretty cool from what I have seen. Think Battlefield 2 with an extra dose of realism and serious steroid use. I am planning to convince the wife that it will be a necessary purchase once this machine, or this one is ordered. I am looking at new laptops for school, and to replace the aging desktop & current laptop.

Any word on that linux client yet? Laptop RAM went belly up. So, while I was in replacement mode, Windows just happened to be dumped for Debian.

Howdy!

I did find what I was looking for, finally. Here it is! It is a custom map for ArmA.

Anyone know anything about a game with a duel mod? 1vs1 shootouts with spectators outside of the shootout area. I saw a video a while back of the game in action, but I don't remember where I found it. It is a newer game. The rounds start with 2 players in a fenced in ring. There is a random countdown and then they draw. Anyone know anything about this? It is driving me crazy that I can't remember where I saw this. I was watching the ShackTactical video Hill 79 around the time that I saw this if that helps anyone. Please help!

I finally decided to go with the Plantronics. I dont use the mic right now because the computer is on a shared wall with my sons room, and I only get to play while he is asleep. But in the near future, the computer will probably be moved, so I will have the headset still. And I knew that they sounded great for $20.

And as far as the life of plantronics: I had the .audio 90's for 3+ years with not a single problem. My son, who is just about 2, has put them on, carried them around, thrown them, chewed them and they did just fine. I don't know what the heck other people do with their headphones that make them go out within 6 months. Personally I would be sending them to plantronics and exercising my warranty for a free pair every 6 months if that was the case. That being said, they will not, I repeat WILL NOT survive a vacuum cleaner.

I've been away for awhile So sue me!

signed,

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