Recent content by mysticfm

  1. M

    Just curious - Who here owns a mac?

    2.33Ghz C2D 17" Macbook Pro 2 GB RAM 667Mhz bus (pre-Santa Rosa) 100GB Hitachi 7200rpm drive
  2. M

    Bad CRT, or bad video card?

    Thanks for the warning. I seemingly have bad luck whenever I mess around with hardware even in relatively innocuous ways, so I'll need to be doubly careful if I ever try this.
  3. M

    Bad CRT, or bad video card?

    I'd probably electrocute myself (even without having the monitor plugged in). :) Seriously, I'll probably hold onto the CRT and try that sometime when I'm feeling brave ... I could always use it on an auxiliary machine if it does work. In the meantime I was already planning to transition to...
  4. M

    Bad CRT, or bad video card?

    That's a good point ... I'll try it as soon as I send this off. UPDATE: Yep, the CRT is still acting up, even when connected all by itself. It didn't happen right away today, but after a couple of hours it is definitely screwing up. If the card did set the refresh rate too high, could it...
  5. M

    Bad CRT, or bad video card?

    I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP, 256MB) that I've used for a couple of years with a Mitsubishi Diamondtron CRT monitor. In January I added a Samsung LCD flat panel monitor as a 2nd monitor, attaching it via the 9800 Pro's DVI output (obviously the CRT had always been on the analog output)...
  6. M

    HP NC8430 - getting full display brightness on battery power?

    Yep, same control here ... and I have indeed ended up disabling the ambient light sensor in an effort to get the display as bright as possible on battery. Even after that, it still wasn't nearly as bright as when on external A/C, unfortunately (as you've confirmed). If anyone knows for...
  7. M

    HP NC8430 - getting full display brightness on battery power?

    On my NC8430, fn+F8 just brings up the Battery tab of the Power Options dialog. (The F8 key has a little blue battery symbol on it to reinforce this.) fn+f10 increases the brightness, but when it is maxed out the screen still is far dimmer on battery than when on external power ... so dim, in...
  8. M

    HP NC8430 - getting full display brightness on battery power?

    I've got a new HP Compaq NC8430, and so far I like it very much. However, I cannot figure out how to get the display to run at full power and intensity when I'm running on battery power. I've used the Windows Power Options successfully (I think) to force the CPU to run at full speed on...
  9. M

    What to do after I open the box?

    I expect to receive my first notebook PC (HP NC8430) sometime today. Assuming that the unit is not DOA, I'll have a lot to do with it right away (uninstalling Norton and installing my own AV, upgrading the hard drive to NTFS, updating the OS, getting wireless comms working, installing software...
  10. M

    Really annoying notebook problem, you ever seen this?

    I'd suggest disabling the touchpad entirely for a bit, just to find out if the problem is related to it. If so, then either you are brushing the pad lightly without realizing it, or else maybe the touchpad is acting up. (Had a relative who had this problem ... turns out they were touching the...
  11. M

    Laptop newbie needs help choosing

    I was under the impression that the change to the V5200 was hardware rather than drivers? Maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, this morning I'm putting aside my HP bias and taking a close look at the following machine: HP Compaq NC8430 Other than the smaller hard drive, I'm thinking it might...
  12. M

    Laptop newbie needs help choosing

    Thank you for the comments! Yes, I don't expect anything like pro sound ... just hoping to get something that isn't quite as bad as a tiny AM radio (the high-end Acer in particular has apparently been dinged for having appallingly bad audio). I'll continue doing sound on my desktop, where I...
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    Laptop newbie needs help choosing

    I've never looked seriously at laptops before, but I find myself in need of one now, and I can't wait around long enough to get a Lenovo Thinkpad. So I'm looking at several options (links below), and could really use some opinions. I'll be using this laptop mainly for software development...
  14. M

    AVG Email Scanner

    I had similar problems with AVG's email scanner last summer (any email larger than a certain size would get hung up in the outgoing scanner rather than being sent. The solution I eventually resorted to was to dump AVG altogether, reconfigure my network and email settings pretty much from the...
  15. M

    How to "uninstall" Windows XP Pro from a HD?

    To elaborate a bit, the MS rep told me that you get exactly *one* online activation for an OEM version, regardless of hardware changes. But you guys are right and she was wrong ... online activation DID work. I guess it was because the machine had remained unchanged for enough months, and the...