G-Omaha's **8790 Review** Now Open To Questions and Comments - Page 3

Not all products are "flashed" with the "latest and greatest". This is especially true if they were "ramping up" for a large shipment or product "kick off". It's just too expensive to pull the units out of the box, flash them, and then repack them. We'd probably be talking thousands of units, many of them would be "staged" at one delivery point or another.

The LinkSys is currently "out of the picture". I've really had very little problems with these devices - except when I first bought them and didn't realise that I should "flash the BIOS" or update the firmware (your choice of terms) - I've had them for a long time and got them at a large discount from Provantage (they had thousands of them in stock at the time).

Edit: Remember the measuring device only went to 110F Maximum.

Sager Drivers FINALLY downloaded

For some reason Sagers ftp site for the 8790 quit transmitting earlier and my down loads were "hung" in limbo. Then when I re-tried, I could not even get a response when I clicked on the 8790.

Now... I think I'll run another suite of Burn-in software and then go after that DVD/CDR Writer.

Burn-in Summary

I was using a program called "Burn-in". It aggressively exercises the entire system, including 2D and 3D graphics. It appers to "peak" almost all of the system componets. The entire system passed "EXCEPT FOR THE WIFI" which experience several "packet errors".

I ran four iterations of this routine (one hour) and the system got a lot warmer than I had previously experienced. Even so, I think it is OK for me as the temperatures only went up a couple of degrees. The fans were on "Whole Hog" for the entire period. Talk about spouting out hot air - they did do that and did it well.

Battery Life - High Stress Test

After I ran the Burn-in test for an hour, I decided to see how long the system would run using this same test, but under battery power.

At 23 minutes of run time, the battery indicated a charge of 46%. WHAM - the system immediately shut down - HARD. I tried to power on again without the external power and it simply would not do anything. I plugged in the power brick and rebooted the machine. The "battery light" was flashing orange and the battery was displayed at 0% within Power Meter. I shut the system down and waited to see what it would do and also opened the manual to see what the blinking orange light indicated. Good news - just a fully discharged battery and not a "burnt out one".

After about 10 minutes the light changed from blinking to a steady orange. I once again booted and looked at Power Meter. Still at 0%. Now 15 Minutes later Power Meter shows that the batter is 5% charged.

I am concerned that the battery went from 46% to 0% in a second and wonder if it is defective. I should have been able to go to 7% get a message, and then the system should have gone into hibernation when the power was reduced to 3% or less. These are the default settings that came with the machine.

I saw similiar "tendencies" on my 3363V shortly before the battery went totally dead - yes dead (can't charge or anything).

I will recharge the batteries and then try another test using a DVD playback.

While on Batteries the LCD was set at the Brightest setting, the CPU was not "down clocked" and the Volume was also at Max.

Hope that the battery will recover as I really hate paper work.

I think that the majority of the problems were associated with the the darn thing loosing the security settings for WEP and WPA. The delay in connection under WAP, I blaim on the WAP interface/syncing things that need to happen.

I you don't have roads or other houses within about 1,000 fee of your house, I wouldn't worry too much about security. Squirrel rifle will take care of that more than a security code.

Update: BSOD after unplugging the USB Floppy

OK, This time I followed the rules and insured that the device was tagged for "Safe Removal". Windows said OK, and I unplugged it. ZAPPO, the same BSD appeared. I guess this is a "COLD Swap" device. Hot in, cold out.

Actually it is treating the FDD as if it were a HDD - which, by the way, can't be hot swapped on this unit. I'll give a review of the BSD reasons later on. Right now, I have a few things that need to get completed before tomorrow. "Darned Mettings and Presentations". I want to see if the same thing happens with the 750Mb Zip Drive that I have.

Hard Drive Update - They are Hitachi Model HTS548080M9AT00

Here are the specs:

Data buffer (MB) - 8
Rotational speed (rpm) - 5,400
Latency (average ms) - 5.5
Max. media transfer rate (Mbits/sec) - 450
Max. interface transfer rate (MB/sec) - 100MB/sec Ultra DMA mode-5
16.6MB/sec PIO mode-4
Seek time (ms)
Average (typical) 12
Maximum (typical) 2.5
Minimum (typical) 23

Battery Life Update - Much Better Now (8 Cell Battery)

After recharging the batteries, I tried this again. This time I unplugged the power brick, booted the machine and had the following running:

1). EzTrust Anti Virus
2). WeatherBug
3). 86 Pop-up Blocker
4). Spyguard
5). Outlook Web Access
6). Power DVD - to play a DVD.

CPU Clock Adjuster for Battery Power was enabled in BIOS.

Here are the sequences of events and timings.
10:40 - Manual boot
10:41 - Battery at 97% following boot
Loaded OWA and Power DVD
10:42 - Started playing DVD. I reset the brightness to "Fully Bright"
Volume set to "Fully Maximum"
10:49 - Opened Power Meter and had it display
Started observing power remaining on Power Meter
10:50 - 86%
10:51 - 82%
10:53 - 79%
10:56 - 74%
10:59 - 69%
11:02 - 64%
11:03 - 62%
11:06 - 57%
11:09 - 59%
11:12 - 47%
11:15 - 42%
11:18 - 37%
11:20 - 34%
11:23 - 29%
11:26 - 23%
11:29 - 18%
11:32 - 13%
11:35 - 8% - Low Battery Alarm activated
LCD Dimmed
Middle Light on LCD began flashing orange
11:36 - Shut down laptop

So now we see that the battery will last more than 52 Minutes playing a DVD with maximum brightness and volume.

Dark Prophet,

It's a TD-8U10 drive.

Here is the link to the PDF document that containes the specifications or the drive.

http://www.dpninc.com/pdf/usb_floppy.pdf

Have fun. Looks OK and from what I used of it works OK.

UT2004 Demo looks real nice - my son played and I watched. Real crisp and fast - but rather graphic for my tastes.

I'll see if I can find Far Cry and download it.

Battery Recharge Time: System on and doing "other things"

The battery has finally recharge to 100% and the icon in the tray has changed from a battery to a plug. The recharge process took 4 Hours and about 29 minutes (could be 3 or minutes less as I wasn't real attentative about this).