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  1. M

    Is there a better deal than this Gateway?

    Andrewbabcock, Why are you so obsessed with Penitum Ms? It's getting to the point where I really have to know! It's like someone is holding a gun to your head and saying he'll shoot you if you don't get 1000 people to buy a Pentium M in the next two weeks. To answer your question...it's...
  2. M

    Whats the best bang for buck i cand find for a Laptop?

    That Gateway redefines the expression "bang for buck". btw...I believe Tiger Direct messed up...that MR9600 is not integrated graphics and the 64MB is dedicated, not shared. I could be wrong about this...there are MR9600s with shared memory, or at least there are supposed to be, but I've...
  3. M

    Is there a better deal than this Gateway?

    The celeron M is nearly identical to the Pentium M of the same clock speed in performance for everything except games, where it lags only slightly because of the smaller cache. The only real difference between the two chips is that the Celeron M doesn't have the dynamic clock/power savings...
  4. M

    Budget Gaming Notebook

    A friend of mine recently bought a Gateway for $999 at best buy. It had an A64 3400+, 1GB ram and an X600. Not sure of the model number, but they may have something similar in the weeks to come.
  5. M

    Battery life with a Celeron M

    Well, thanks anyway. It's a hell of a deal, though. Same performance, a tad less battery life, a lot less money, and it's so small and light compared to my A64 brick. :)
  6. M

    Battery life with a Celeron M

    Hi all, I just picked up a cheap Celeron M notebook for my wife and was pleasantly surprised that the Celeron M is almost identical in performance to a Pentium M in everything except battery life (same chip, half the cache - 1MB, and no dynamic clock). I wasn't even aware of the...
  7. M

    How do you install XP on a laptop with no cdrom and no floppy?

    Go to best buy and get a pc card network card and an interconnect cable (a network cable designed to link two pcs directly), unless you have a hub or a router, then just get a regular network cable. If you have a wireless router, you can get a wireless card (only if you have xp, otherwise...
  8. M

    How do you install XP on a laptop with no cdrom and no floppy?

    I did this on one of those teeny sony's with no drive. It's simple. Network it...interconnect cable, wireless card, whatever. Share another PCs CD drive, and install it from there. Setup copies all the files it needs before it reboots. So simple, it hurts (if you've wasted any time...
  9. M

    Gateway mx7515 AMD 4000+ 2.6ghz laptop

    The gateway discussed here does not have a shared video card, it has a discrete x600 with dedicated memory. I can't tell you if it will run Everquest, but it screams in half life 2....only thing is, you can't play with anti-aliasing. That's the downside of a second rate video card. If you...
  10. M

    Gateway mx7515 AMD 4000+ 2.6ghz laptop

    Very little GPU memory is needed for video rendering....I doubt it will even use the 64MB of dedicated memory. System RAM is another matter. Besides, my gateway has the same setup (MR9600 64MB) with an even slower memory bus (AGP vs PCIE) and it still outguns my desktop with 256MB of GPU ram.
  11. M

    Gateway mx7515 AMD 4000+ 2.6ghz laptop

    For video editing, GPU doesnt' matter that much. My Gateway 7426 (A64 3700) renders faster than my desktop (P4 3Ghz running at 3.6), and the destop has an X800XL, while the Gateway has the MR9600.
  12. M

    Inspiron 8500 video upgrade?

    Actually, you would see a very big speed increase going from a 4200 to a MR9600, even on DX8 games. It's just a more powerful card.
  13. M

    Laptop fan not on 24/7?

    Hey, that's cool. But next time, do me a favor, and prequalify your question with: "You shouldn't care about my hardware, I'm an as@#&*^$ and I deserve whatever I get. Just answer my question directly and without qualifications, even if I ask 'what is the easiest way to electrocute myself...
  14. M

    Laptop fan not on 24/7?

    Which in turn will cause premature laptop death. Laptop cases are small and tight. Even a small amount of dust can foul things up. The longer the fan is on, the mure dust is sucked in, contributing to eventual fan failure. You do not want the fan on all the time.
  15. M

    Will this laptop be powerful enough?

    Hey, I have a question about Best Buy's PSP...I'll be pushing a year on mine in a few months and was wondering if they let you keep the old battery as well as the new one, or do they do something like a "core exchange" and take the old one away? btw...people always talk about Best Buy...
  16. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    I'm not entirely certain that this is a valid issue. Lithium batteries have their own governing circuits that prevent them from being over and under charged that are present inside the battery case and are independent of the laptop. The cutoff circuit in a lithium battery prevents the 3.7...
  17. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    A deep discharge is when the battery goes down to under 10%. Different people have different opinions, but that's a general rule. You brought up a very good point. The laptop battery exists so that you can use it, not so it can preserve itself. Just do the best you can and don't worry...
  18. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    Manufacturers sell replacement batteries. If you take care of yours, it should last for about four years above 70-80% capacity, which is still pretty good. The worst thing, the absolute worst thing, that you can ever do to a lithium based battery is to leave it alone for a very long time...
  19. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    It all boils down to a choice. What's more important, long battery life or accurate time remaining estimates? I calibrate my battery once every six months without any problems, which I like to look at as a compromise between battery life and accuracy. I'm not sure yet, since I have yet...
  20. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    I just read that link you mentioned. I was familiar with battery university, they have decent general information although some of their more technical info is not correct for some battery types (can't blame them, there's a lot to know). However, this is what they say about lithium...
  21. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    Calibrating is not good for Lithium batteries, absolutely not, no matter what anyone says. Lithium batteries, like all batteries, have a limited cycle life. That is, with each deep discharge cycle, the battery weakens a little. Even nickel based batteries have a limited cycle life and are...
  22. M

    Calibrating your battery?

    I wrote a long post a while back on lithium batteries, but I don't know if it's still around. To sum it up, much of this "knowledge" that's floating around and being distruted by everyone from colleges to battery manufacturers is dead wrong, at least for lithium batteries. "Calibrating" is...
  23. M

    Notebook with radeonx600 64meg vs desktop w 9200

    I don't know about the quality difference between Gateway and Toshiba. My last two notebooks were both Toshibas...I bought one for myself and one for my wife. I now have a gateway 7426gx. Both Toshibas were good, solid machines, but both had weird problems. The trackpoint on mine would go...
  24. M

    Notebook with radeonx600 64meg vs desktop w 9200

    The video memory doesn't make that much difference. The most important thing is the graphics chip (in your case x600) and dedicated memory, which both have. The notebook is much much faster than the desktop. I'm glad you're happy. :)
  25. M

    Notebook with radeonx600 64meg vs desktop w 9200

    Pleasant surprise for you! 1. The Notebook would be significantly faster than the desktop. The X600 may not be the king of the hill, but it's no sloucher. Also, the CPU in the notebook is close to twice as fast as the desktop. 2. Not only can your notebook play Half Life 2, it can...
  26. M

    Notebook for Video Capture & Encoding

    In that case, the real answer to your quesiton is an 800MHz PIII with 256MB RAM running XP. The quality/bandwitdth of video that can be uploaded by a conventional broadband connection while being simultaneously downloaded on the same connection will not strain even a super budged modern...
  27. M

    Notebook for Video Capture & Encoding

    A good video editing/encoding laptop is the Gateway 7426/7510GX. It has an A64 3700 and 1GB of ram, making it one of the most powerful laptops available for such purposes. If 1200 is a little cheap for you, I'd upgrade it with a 7200RM hard drive and you'll have a multimedia powerhouse...
  28. M

    Ghosting on laptops.......

    I have an 8mns LCD for my desktop, and my laptop LCD ghosts only a tiny bit more (most people would never even notice it). Unfortunately, it's not much of a gaming laptop for first person shooters (Gateway 7426gx...MR9600), though it plays halflife 2 extremely well.
  29. M

    Looking for a notebook with Geforce graphics

    Pictures, icons, text, etc. all look smaller at higher resolutions. And if you scale down the resolution on an LCD panel to play a game, everything gets fuzy, since LCDs don't scale well. Lots of people will say that you can't notice the difference, but that's on account of a...
  30. M

    i'm painting my laptop DONE!!! Pics inside...

    Oh, just paint the damned thing matte black or chrome and be done with it. The blue, once sanded, will make a nice base coat. Hmm...I wonder if you can coat a laptop with Rhinolining...
  31. M

    Does the x700 64 meg really lag behind the x700 128meg?

    Just to give you an example, the difference between a MR9600 with 64MB and an X600 with 128MB is 3DMark03 comes out to 8% (they are basically the same card..one is AGP, the other PCI Express). I would consider that a negligible difference.
  32. M

    HP zv6170us Pavilion vs. GATEWAY 7510GZ

    The HP has intergrated graphics, so if you want to play games, the Gateway is your only choice. It's a great machine...I have almost the same thing (7426...9600 vs x600) and it's an awesome laptop. I don't play games on laptops unless I'm on a plane or something but I ran a lot of tests and...
  33. M

    single stuck red pixel on notebook screen

    I returned 2 gateway laptops to best buy (all in the same day without leaving the store) before I found one that was perfect. From everything I researched, a perfect screen stays perfect 99% of the time. People are just slow in noticing dead pixels. So if Dell is willing to replace it, go...
  34. M

    14" too big to lug around?

    Although I don't support this in principle, everyone of you that has whined about how 14" or 15" notebooks are too heavy to cary around should be drafted into the Army or Marine Corps and forced to do a 25 mile road march with 70lbs of equipment on your back. What you people should do is buy...
  35. M

    High Definition Video

    Nope. Try this...get your hands on a laptop with a 1900x1200 screen, and one with a 1280x800 screen, and download an HDTV movie in 1080p from bit torrents. Watch the two side by side, and tell me if you can see a difference. Or better yet, jus look at a jpg image at those two resolutions...
  36. M

    High Definition Video

    Most people can't tell the difference, resolution wise, between 1080i and 720p, and 720p doesn't flicker. Therefore, most people prefer it. 1080p is a different matter, but that's beyond HDTV standard. There are very few (if any) tvs in the consumer market that can display 1080i at full...
  37. M

    Do you think widescreen and/or xbrite is worth it?

    That glossy coating is more than just to enhance colors. My viewing angle would be 90 degrees if it were possible to see around the side of the screen. Other than that, it's about 89. You can look straight down the side and see every pixel clearly.
  38. M

    Which retailer would you say has the best dead pixel policy?

    I'd like to know which Best Buy you work at, because the ones in New York City won't do it. I've spoken to many people at the Geek Squad desks, and they all say the same thing: we'll replace anything you don't like except the screen, which we base on the manufacturer's policy. In other...
  39. M

    Which retailer would you say has the best dead pixel policy?

    Not true. You may return anything for any reason at Best Buy, but certain things like laptops or camcorders must be defective, or you pay a 15% restocking fee. That's where the manufacturer's dead pixel policy comes in. If something is defective, Best Buy ships it to the manfucaturer and...
  40. M

    Which retailer would you say has the best dead pixel policy?

    Yup, that's what I meant. :) Best Buy's dead pixel policy is based on that of the manufacturer. So, for example, you can return a Gateway (Gateway retail ie eMachines) laptop if it has one dead pixel, but you cannot return a Toshiba (or most other makes) laptop with the same exact defect...