!XPS is now sitting in my bedroom!

Purolator man just dropped off my laptop (11:30 29th of March, 2004). Had enough time to open in (laptop in flawless shape) before in-laws came over. Haven't even turned it on yet, but, who cares, 'cause it here!!!

Took some pics and will post 'em as soon as I find some space.

Good luck to the rest of you,

bogus

(Man, I have to post this message on a hundred different threads!)

Margo,

Had some extra time, so I took a vacation. Still haven't turned it on yet, have company.

Good ideas guys, I'm really impressed.

No need though, the in-laws are gone, and I have been playing for a while now. Took some pics with my Digital Rebel (still haven't found a way to post - any ideas would be great) and ran 3dMark for about 1.5hours with no problems.

After format and reinstall of important programs 3dMark2003 score: 3361. Haven't had a chance to compare that with others on this forum yet. Haven't even had a chance to play a game yet (will install call of duty soon).

All the parts seem to be here, everything feels solid. So far this laptop is meeting my expectations. I'm not the type of person to get overly excited about stuff, I try to look at things with a critical eye. But I have to say that I can't find anything bad that stands out. If I had to criticize something, I would pick the loudness of the speakers. Keep in mind that speakers are really pretty good for a laptop, in fact, I go as far to say they're the best I've heard. The quality of sound really exceeds my expectations, however; I wish they could be 10 to 20% louder.

I will do a longer review with pics when I get a place to post them (any help?) and have had more time to play and test.

If anyone has requests, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

Typing on my new XPS while a "backup" a DVD,

bogus

I went here, and downloaded the two programs (DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink). Once I was done with DVD Shrink I click the the "Burn" button within the program and it automatically starts Nero 6 (which I also have) and burns the DVD. Just finished watching the finished product and it turned out awesome.

Very pleased. Just need to find out how to get rid of certain things (FBI warning, Menus) within DVDShrink.

Good news, I've had this laptop running for 12 hours straight and no problems (heat, lockups, artifacts, glowing, stuck pixels, etc..).

Trying Call of Duty now.

Get ready for the bad news... or old news, depends on how you look at it.

Call of Duty crashes about three minutes into the game. Screen just freezes. I was already reading about the original GPU issues, but I'm not sure if that is what's causing it. Or, does the game itself not agree with the hardware inside this laptop.

I did the powerstrip workaround, and played Call of Duty for a little less than an hour and no crashing. The fans are working, but this laptop is not hot at all. Hardly warm.

Keeping you posted. Going to try some other games, but it's late and I need to sleep.

Oh yeah, and as a side note: my wireless Lan stopped working. Go figure. I'm going to mess with the settings on my desktop. Shouldn't be that big of a deal (famous last words).

Keeping you posted,

bogus

Yep, 5AM and I'm still up. Fixed the wireless problem, works great again. Installed and played Rise of Nations, Warcraft III, and Battlefield within any freezes.

Hopefully the powerstrip fix is a permanent solution. I unistalled powerstrip to see if that would effect anything (read: make things suck), but it doesn't in my circumstance. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Good night kids,

bogus

It's during gameplay, just like the other guys with bad GPUs were having. It would be around the time during the training level when you grap the grenades. I did the powerstrip workaround and haven't had any more problems.

I just hate fixing things and not knowing how I did it. If anyone knows how and why the powerstrip thing works, let me know.