Live from Japan: The FT 8790 Review - Page 6  

I've not pulled the keyboard yet, so I'll look into that when I get time after my trip. Hopefully I can kill 2 birds w/ one stone and figure out why my keyboard is bowed, too
Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the tips, Jimmy. I saw your PM before this post, so I was a bit confused about the link GCW is a good site. I just got a No-CD fix for something else off there the other day.

Never even heard of Nero Drive Speed. I'll have to look it up. Lately I haven't had time to play, so I haven't had to deal w/ the hot drive issues for awhile. Both KOTOR and Age of Mythology: The Titans have been No-CD patched.

Now I just gotta figure out how to get the keyboard up so I can loosen the screws. Search button, here I come.



PS- If you want to live in Japan, make it a goal and make it happen. Not impossible. In fact, there are JETs in about every city and town in the country. So there's a HUGE way of getting in the country. Either that or looking to work for Geos or Aeon as English teachers is another way of coming over. I don't much care for shoes, but Nike's little saying does fit, "Just Do it!"

Thanks, MKM. I'd already seen those pics in another thread that you'd posted 'em in. I tried the screwdriver thing, but wasn't sure which way they were supposed to go and didn't want to break anything, so I was going to look around a little more. Looked around more, but the Search Button didn't help me.

Will try again.

Just got finished with loosening the screws. Didn't see your post until just now, G. Thanks for the assist anyway, though Always appreciated.

Keyboard
Apparently the keyboard bowing that I had was due to the fact that the silver bezel wasn't clicked down into place and the 3rd push button release for the keyboard wasn't popping out to catch the keyboard. Keyboard is now fixed. 3rd push button release still doesn't come out like the others, but the keyboard stays flat now that the silver bezel is snapped into place correctly.

Loosened the screws on the left side, so hopefully that'll give me a bit o' change. Running at 46C right now at idle. Room is 25C.

Artifacting

Since I just loosened the screws under the left side of the keyboard, I decided to test KOTOR to see what would happen. At first, I thought it was going to be alright, but about 10 seconds into the actual game, artifacting hit. In a battle w/ 5 Sith, the artifacting became so bad it was all I could do to see how to exit.

Upon exiting, Mobile Meter reported that I was at 56C. Entirely acceptable temperature and it happened fairly quickly, so it's not an overheating problem.

Right now, my screen is filled with blue and yellow dots and crap and flashing. The vidcard's definitely not happy. Looks like it's time to make sure ev'thing's backed up and see how the PCT overseas support works.

Gettin' ready to leave in a few hours for the weekend, tho', so it'll have to wait 'til I get back.


Edit: Before taking off, figured I'd try a quick install o' newer video drivers (Sager's drivers are dated Aug 11th), but I can't get the freakin' DL to start. Oh, well. Later.

Artifacting Continued
Camping trip got rained out last night, so I came back home (but not before getting growled at by a bear and getting my new truck stuck in the middle of a river in the middle o' nowhere). Today I decided to try my luck again.
Played Age of Mythology:The Titans. Took 5~10 min (if that) and got complete artifacting. Could barely see to exit. Exited game, shut down system. Restarted.
Uninstalled ATi drivers (that came installed w/ system in March). Installed the 08.11.04 Sager ATi drivers. Rebooted.
Tried AoM:The Titans again. Same result.

Personal thoughts- my vcard is F@$#%'d. I can't imagine what else it could be. Mail to PCT/Sager is the next step. Not particularly pleased at this point.

Warrantech
I'm a dumb@$$ and never got around to registering my warranties. D'oh. So I'm doing that now and I must say this: Warrantech's website SUCKS. And I don't mean in the good sucking kind o' way. What a pile o' steaming crap. Well, to me it is. For most people, it'd be just fine. However, Firefox does not work. IE only. Strike One. Website automatically readjusts phone numbers to US style, so even though I've got Japan selected on the drop-down menu for my home address, it still doesn't support non-US phone numbers. That's just stupid. So they couldn't call or fax me if they tried~ Strike Two. Someone at Warrantech needs to pull their heads out and realize that any non-North American customers aren't going to be able to fill out the forms correctly. I'm sure it's been brought up as an issue by now. Surprised nothing's been done. Doesn't give me much faith in Warrantech.


Edit:And so far, it's been sitting for over 5 minutes now trying to submit the information and it's not taking. Strike Three. Gah.

Edit #2: Almost 25 full minutes sitting and trying to enter the information now. It's almost 11pm PST in the States right now, so I wouldn't imagine their site would be overloaded or anything.

Warrantech Website Update
This web site is temporarily unavailable.We apologize for any inconvenience. Please revisit this site at 2:00 AM C.S.T .

Well, that explains why I've sat waiting for this silly thing to go through for an hour now.


Edit: Took a little time off to run around town to do misc. crap and whatnots. 2 hrs later, hit the Register button and it took. Good to know. Too bad that the contact information is incorrect, but hey- not my fault their software was designed incorrectly. *shrugs*


Edit #2: Went to register the Warrantech Service Plan (last registration was for the Export Option) and realized that I received a 2 year under $4k plan instead of the 3 year under $4k plan that I ordered. Mail sent to Tom@PCT. Definitely a big blunder on my part for not having registered this when I first received it. Had I done so, I would've caught it then. Dumb dumb dumb.

Support
Received a mail back from Tom @ PCT in regards to the warranty issues. All is well there. Tech Support request fired off to Sager (Artifacting, Paint, Headphone noise, DVD drive noise/heat). Figured I might as well hit all the bases since I'm talking to them. I know I'm forgetting something...

Thought about mentioning the screen flicker from some time ago, but I haven't had any problems since then, so I'm not worrying about that right now.

Sager Support
Have been in contact with Ted @ Sager Support. I have to say that so far, response has been very quick. Comparable to the responses I've received from Tom @ PCT. Very reassuring so far.

For my video problems, the one thing I hadn't done but was told to do was to flash my BIOS. I just did that and will test a game momentarily.

I also reported my paint problem. Since I have several small issues, I figured I'd lump 'em all together. If I send my unit back to Sager, they will replace the top case and letters/keyboard. Problem is, I'm in Japan, so I'm very reluctant to lose my machine for an extended period of time just for the paint. If the video problem isn't remedied, though, it might work out that way. I'm not sure yet- have yet to find out how the Export Option will work if the BIOS update doesn't solve the video issues that I'm having.


WiFi driver
Lately, I've been getting the annoying message about my G-Link blahblahfreakin'blah at startup again. It went away when I reinstalled the drivers after I first received the unit . Been good to go until recently. Tried reinstalling the drivers again last week. No go. Same msg on startup. Annoying.

BIOS Update- Did it cure the artifacting?
Took me a little longer than I expected to try a game out. Life just happens to be fussy that way sometimes.

First test was Age of Mythology:The Titans. Loaded up a saved game. Instantly saw artifacting. Slight, but there. I thought that the overall artifacting wasn't as pronounced as it was before the BIOS update. That was, until the machine just shut down. I'd entered the game, selected a grouped army and had them destroy an enemy structure. No problem. Slight artifacting. Picked another structure not far away. Before any units could even get close, my machine simply shut down. Dead. Blue lights on the buttons were off. Dead. Only thing on was a fan. I'd pushed F10 to cycle through the fan speeds. Seemed like High was the only fan speed available. That didn't seem right. But, the update had installed correctly and I'd cold booted it as requested, so there shouldn't have been any problems there.

Booted back up. Started KOTOR. Didn't get too far before I knew it was a lost cause. Got to the screen where the bad guy's standing in swirling smoke and you choose your options. Well, I had a pretty decent amt of artifacting right there. Did a few screencaps and kept one that showed obvious artifacting. Will be passing that along to Sager as proof of the problem that I'm having.

My luck's been bad lately. First woman. Then truck. Now computer. Not sure what's next.

Artifacting continued
Have tomorrow off from work, and I haven't really had a whole lot of time to do any gaming other than what little I've done testing the artifacting problem. Knew AoM, KOTOR and Sacred were out of the question. 四川省 works fine, but there's only so much of that one can do. Also, it's not as nice on the 8790 as it was on my Sony VAIO. Sometimes high resolution's too much. Guess I could knock my screen res down to play it, but then it screws up everything else on the desktop. Not the end of the world, but pretty annoying when it's a simple game one's trying to play.

Figured I'd give Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic a try. 2D instead of 3D, so I figured maybe the video card would be able to handle that w/o burping up all over. Made the game and started out just fine. Played on actually for probably a good 30-40 min. I'm guessing. But then it hit- total artifacting. Just as bad as KOTOR or AoM. Screen it totally FUBAR. Definitely not happy with this.






Interesting aside- notebook's running hot. Shouldn't be. It's lifted up, been blown out recently, PCMCIA slot dummy has been removed and the 7 screws undernearth the keyboard on the left side have been loosened. Shows 52C. Noticed that when I use the scroll function on my MX900, the artifacting worsens. I scrolled a few times back and forth and the temp rose to 53C. I figured I'd see how far the heat would go, so I scrolled up/down for about 10~15 seconds or so. Heat rose up to 54C.

I'm of the mind that this machine is F@#$%d. *crosses fingers for Export Option to work out*

Artifacting outside of games
Starting to get small, random artifacts on the desktop. Not many- just a couple so far, but they are happening.

Downhill she goes...

G, I'm of the same opinion, unfortunately. It just seems too similar to what happened to GS when he first got his computer. Ah, c'est la vie.


Edit: Just did a time test for Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.
Started the game @ 09:47am. Loaded up a saved game that I'd started yesterday and played a few rounds. Artifacting began at 10:01am. Almost 15 minutes worth of game time. I'm going to try again now that I've rebooted and see if I get the same amount of time or if it artifacts sooner.

The shortcuts to Sacred and Age of Mythology:The Titans on my desktop are artifacted right now. Yesterday, icons belonging to Panorama Composer v1.0 were artifacted in Explorer.

Edit 2: Time test ofr AoW:SM came in better this time. Started at 10:15am and first artifacting began at 10:45. During this run, I made sure excessive extra programs were off (ie- WinMX, Trillian, MobileMeter, Firefox).




After rebooting, my desktop is slipping further into artifactedness (maybe it's wasn't a word, but it is now). 2 desktop icons (Sacred & AoM:TT) plus my Quicklaunch area are now hosed.

Battery
The problems are beginning to stack against me. Had a computer problem on a WinME computer @ work today. I ran my 8790 out to field test the software (WinWedge). When I was done, I ran my notebook back to my desk and ran back out to further troubleshoot the WinME/WinWedge problem. My wireless was connected the entire time (gotta love being able to DL off the internet while working at the same time ). I went back in later in the afternoon and was wondering why my computer was off. Strange. Then I realized that I'd forgotten to plug the machine back in when I returned it to my desk. I was in a hurry and headed back out of the room, so I plugged it back in and hit the power button and ran back out. Came back a little later and the computer was still off. Eh? Powered it up again. BIOS came up, CPU check OK, HD check OK... beeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeep... EH? After beeping a few times (and 3 of the 4 little yellow lights to the left o' the blue lights were flashing in tandem), the computer just died. Shut down totally. Tried it again and as I did, I vaguely recalled G-Omaha saying something in another thread quite awhile back about batteries and not turning the power on after the battery'd been fully discharged. Was a little late for that particular recollection as I'd already tried to power it up a few times. Got a few beeps of Impending Doom and then total shutdown.

Now I'm at home. Pulled the battery, plugged it in and off I go. I'll have to search around different threads for battery-related problems, but at this point, I'm kind of cut for time. In the middle of trying to fix another machine right now. Owners are anxious to get their machine back, so I'm trying to get it squared away.

Kinda grumpified by it all now that I've got a small stack o' problems working against me. I think the distance from Sager is a source of frustration, too. Having read through the wording of the Warrantech Export Option, I'm not real enthused about my options there as of yet.

Worst possible time for this all to happen, too. No money this month.