Gateway M505XL - Page 12

No ghosting on Battlefield 1942 or Dark Age of Camelot. Dark Age had some minor stretching, but it is easy to get used to. The wide screen mode can be toggled off and on through the display properties, Displays tab, Panel button, "scale image to panel size". This will cause black bars on sides when it is not a native wide screen game or app. Overall, the widescreen has been great!

GOBO-
madden is the only game that i saw even the slightest amount of ghosting in, and its for one reason only- the coding in that game absolutely sucks. So does EA sports. Great game though. Not one other game have I played where I even thought I saw ghosting, and this includes Halo, which runs perfect at 1024X768.

CoD, BF1942, UT2003, they all FLOAT at high res settings with no ghosting or slowdown what-so-ever.

That's why Madden and all the other EA SPORTS games are made for consoles .

Every single one of their games sucks for the PC except NHL 200x IMO.

vc-

this is actually the first madden i have liked since sega came out with the 2k line on dreamcast (now the espn line of games). I love the game, but it is sooo a port of a ps2 game, and is bug ridden and usually unstable. As for nhl, its good, but i think espn hockey is way better.

Oh, I haven't played ESPN Hockey :P

Toshiba HD

Replacement HD shows up tomorrow. Not bad considering I didn't put in the complaint until last Saturday. Lucky I suppose.

Tomarrow?

Since they don't ship on Saturdays, I'm assuming that your HD was shipped yesterday (my order was also shipped yesterday and I made my order last Thursday) but according to UPS tracking, my order hasn't moved at all from Memphis, TN. Weird.

Dec 21, 2003 4:14 P.M. MEMPHIS, TN, US ORIGIN SCAN

Hd

vc178, did they ship it next day air? Mine shows out of NC and when I called they expected delivery sometime tomorrow. I hope it shows because I am going out of town. Hope yours shows too. Would be nice to start getting settled into this notebook.

Service type is ground, so that is probably why UPS is taking their time. Then again, Gateway assured me that the laptop would arrive before Christmas.

I'm going out of town on Thursday and it would be nice if it arrived before then. I'd have a brand new toy to play with on the way there (with a 4+ hour battery, there's no chance I'm going to drive ). I'd also have some time to settle in, experiment and play around with it.

Maybe I should have checked the shipping details before I posted..

Dec 22, 2003 10:36 P.M. MEMPHIS, TN, US DEPARTURE SCAN

That's always a good sign, for all I know, there's going to be a UPS guy arriving here tomarrow morning with a big black and white box!

EDIT: And Gooner, I didn't care if they shipped it Next-Day-Air or not, shipping was free and I saved myself $38.

Got confused vc, thought you were also waiting on a replacement HD. They were just cool enough to send it to me next day. Hope that black and white box is on your door step tomorrow. Have fun!

My 505 shipped yesterday, and should be here today.
Does anybody recommend things I should check when I get it? Like I know I should check for dead pixels? Anything else, like a Checklist for New m505 Owners?

I would look at the screen very closely for dead pixels. From what I have read, people are having great luck with pixels on this notebook. Still, just look very closely for any color difference in pixels. Black or white background seem to help them show up better than large color palletts.

If you get a 505xl, you may want to check in the device manager for the 5400 RPM drive. Barginseeker posted the model number of that drive earlier in the this thread.

I would also check and make sure all the USB, Svideo, etc. ports work.

Reviewing the box content for any missing items seems prudent to.

I don't have a 505 yet, but plan to order one soon. That's a check list I would go through.

If you can, posting some pictures of how it's packaged would be great. I don't know why, but I like stuff like that. I guess I'm a geek p0rn addict.

Enjoy your m505. I can't wait to order mine.

Could the m505XL owners please tell me what their 1.5m's are running at as reported by windows. For instance on my first 505, it was running at 599mhz. Now I just recieved the new one, and it is running at 317mhz.

Now I do believe the Pentium M underclocks itself for battery life, but I'm reporting these numbers while it's plugged into the wall. I'm just trying to figure out why windows is reporting different specs for the same cpu.

Thanks for the help.

UPS ground shipping, what a joke .

Dec 23, 2003 7:19 A.M. KNOXVILLE, TN, US ARRIVAL SCAN
Dec 22, 2003 10:36 P.M. MEMPHIS, TN, US DEPARTURE SCAN

It went almost nowhere after 7 hours.

Time to shoot off an email. UPS updated the scheduled delivery.

Status: In Transit [ On-Time ]
Scheduled Delivery: Dec 29, 2003

I'm just going to see what kind of a response I get from them. I don't really care about the date, I'm just curious about what Gateway has to say and what they'll do about it.

My 5400 is set to arrive the 29th via UPS ground.
Also, my CPU clocks in anywhere from 239MHz to 399MHz according to Windows.
The BIOS does have a setting for "Max performance" under A/C, which mine is set at, but that doesn't seem to change the processor speed reading. These Centrino's are made that way anyway. SiSoft Sandra reads it as a 1500MHz Pentium CPU.

vc178, stinks about delayed delivery. Good to see you are patient. I'm not. The Toshiba drive shows 'out for delivery' so I hope they drop that sucker off before I have to leave.

Decipher, have seen everything from 500-796 Mhz myself. Right now I have the factory install so it is running all the extra trash that comes from Gateway.

Gobo, the utimate in Geek Porn, pictures of a box. Enjoy!
http://home.comcast.net/~i.burgoon/B...lAtArrival.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~i.burgoon/W...boardCrate.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~i.burgoon/PaperInventory.jpg

P.S. Still think the computer is perfect. Knock on wood!

~Gooner

Thanks for the reply's. I figured it was normal, just wasn't sure since this is my first experience with the centrino's.

I have a few more questions for you guys. What i've been doing is comparing the new 505 system with the one I will be sending back due to the dead pixel in the screen. Now I don't know if i'm being just picky about things, but the following are a few differences I have found when comparing the two...

First off, when the laptop is closed on the new 505, the right side seems to not sit down flush like the left side. On my first 505 both sides of the screen sit down flush when closed.

Next, on the new 505 screen, the bottom right of the screen has a darker tone to it when compared to the rest of the screen. On my previous 505, there is no signs of this problem. I think I remember reading in one of the earlier posts that somebody was concerned about this.

Ofcourse the above quirks are nothing major, but I always notice the smallest imperfections. I almost wish I didn't have this other 505 to compare the new one to.

What do you guys think? Something I should mention to Gateway or not? The guy I have been working with to get my problems solved has been VERY helpful. He said if I have any other problems at all, just let him know. Don't get me wrong, I love this laptop to death. I would just like to make sure everything is right with this thing the first time around so that I don't have to deal with these problems down the road.

I appreciate your input.