Live from Japan: The FT 8790 Review - Page 9  

At least you've got that. My gaming is limited to my Sony VAIO that, luckily, I never got rid of. 4mb o' shared video memory doesn't allow for much heavy-duty gaming, tho'

Clevo Support
So far, I can say that I'm not too horribly impressed w/ Clevo Support's communication. My original mail took 2~3 days to get a reply. Now, they've had my machine for almost a week (tomorrow will have been a week) and have gotten no response to my mail (sent directly to the person with whom I've spoken with both by mail and telephone). I requested an estimate for when the repairs would begin, end, etc. and have gotten nothing.

Clevo Support
Called Clevo (pronounced clay-voh, BTW, if anyone was wondering) today to see what was up since I still hadn't received an email. Gal didn't have any information on the status of my unit- said she'd find out and then email me. I was a bit apprehensive, but figured there wasn't much more I could do. Wasn't too long before I did receive an email- Clevo engineers had repaired the unit and will be shipping it out tomorrow via DHL.

Either I've got impeccable timing at calling, or their "engineers" are working OT tonight to get my machine ready to be sent out tomorrow

ET phone home

Clevo Repair Status
Hadn't received a DHL shipping # today, so I figured Clevo was full o' crap. Called during a spare second at work and the gal helping me didn't have a #. Said she'd check into it and email it to me. Very pleasant gal~ she's been nothing but very sweet on the phone. But just hasn't been good at returning emails at all. I was a bit wary, but figured I'd give her the benefit of the doubt. Just before 5pm Taiwan-time (6pm here in Japan), still no email. Grrrr. Figured they were playin' me and hadn't actually finished the repairs.

Got home and settled in for the evening and got an email... the DHL tracking # is now in my possession. Doesn't work, but that's par for the course. Pickups sometimes take awhile to get in the system (got my UPS years to thank for knowing what's up w/ that ). Wednesday now, I'm hoping for a Friday delivery, but not counting on it. Saturday'd be nice, but I really don't know if they'd delivery it then or not. Figure Monday at the earliest. If it comes sooner, then I'll be pleasantly surprised. If not, well- I'm prepared. What I'm really prepared for is having my machine back. Going from a hyper-threaded P4 3.4 to a butt-monkey PIII 700mhz just doesn't cut it. Might as well be gouging my eyeballs out. Actually, I'm being dramatic and it's not *that* bad. Lil Sony actually does fairly well considering. Screen is a noticeable hindrance. Not bright in the least. My 1440x900 screen is MUCH brighter. But after I've gotten used to it, I find myself trying to brighten the 1440x900 when it's already on max settings. The newer WSXGA+ screen would really be nice to have...


So yes, I'm blabbering because I'm happy that my lil on-fire beastie is on its way back. The hot palmrest might be the bane of my soul and torture of my existence, but sometimes you just gotta buckle down and deal with a few curves in life.

Definitely HATING being back in a 4:3 format screen. GAH. Horrible. Simply horrible. I want my widescreen back. Thoughts of having a Fujitsu N5010 or Area-51m for a backup toy kind of make me itch because they've got 4:3 screens. Perhaps UXGA'd not be so bad, but still... wide is where it's at.

Boogieman, I hope your machine gets underway here pretty soon. In fact, if I think of it, next time I speak to my contact @ Clevo, I'll ask to see if there's anything at their end holding things up. See if I can find out where the weak link in the supply chain is, anyway for ya

Brettgo, I'll probably be getting ahold of you once I get my machine. Let you know how the whole thing turned out and give you info on dealing with Clevo if you want to go the route I did. So far, it's been fairly painless. And since you've been underclocking your vidcard, I'm guessing you have the same problem that I had. I'll try to help get you squared away if you want.


Dang it, I'm gettin' my machine back.

w00t!


Edit: 02 Dec. '04 Transit update
As of 9am this morning, it was in Tokyo. Hopefully customs doesn't come up with another reason to bungle the delivery like they did when I originally received it.

$#!t-Eating Grin
8790 arrived at work today between 3 and 4pm. I didn't have much time to mess around with it. The trials of being busy. It was cold, so I put it in an area that would warm it up. After that, I plugged it in and let it sit for awhile. Once work was over, I had to run out for another engagement, so I couldn't even turn it on to see how it would run.

Got home, plugged it in and figured I might as well at least get it to boot and see the mighty widescreen in action (a definitely relief after being stuck on this god-awful 15" Sony 4:3 dim screen).

Booted up fine, XP logo came up and then between that and the login prompt, the entire screen artifacted. GAH! Other than that, it seems to be fine. I haven't run any programs, though, so no idea if the problem's really fixed or not.

Had to reactivate XP which was a pain because for some reason, the code that was there wasn't being accepted, so I had to call in to MS Japan and get things squared away. I was actually in a hurry, but sometimes... well, priorities, y'know Apparently it was a problem on MS's end, not my computer, so that was good to know. Still a PITA, tho'. Bill can take his product activation bullcrap and shove it.

As soon as it came up, I F11'd it and my wireless popped up. HD was as I sent it in. The only difference was that the activation bit had been reset.

Just got home and need to go to bed because the alarm going off in about 5 hrs, but I'm thinking I'll install a game first anyway just for curiosity's sake (well, more like withdrawal).

So yah, happy guy The major artifacting between the XP splash page and the logon worries me, though

I was hoping that the case would be replaced in order to deal w/ the palmrest paint issue, but alas, I believe the only thing that was changed was the motherboard. Case is the same. Clevo's warranty doesn't cover that. Sager said they would if I sent it to them. However, I would've had to foot the bill for return shipping from the States. Clevo paid for return shipping (overnight DHL) from Taiwan. Would've rather've sent it to Sager, but since I was footing the shipping, Clevo/Taiwan made more sense to me.

As it was, I paid out ~$160 to get it to Clevo

Artifacting
The artifacting issue has been mostly taken care of. However, it is not totally gone. I got a total screen artifacting that went on between the WinXP load screen and the login screen and then after that, artifacting in KotOR (not in-game, but during the transition from initial movie to actual gameplay). I haven't had any time at all to actually play the game to see what happens. When I tried to exit out, it gave me an error. Something along the lines of atitdiag or something like that. Don't remember now. Made me think it was a video driver issue.

When I had time, I went to Sager's site for drivers. DL'd the v8.0 drivers as, upon checking the BIOS, I didn't have the updated BIOS. I had version 1.00.09 and 1.00.1 is needed for the newest drivers. Haven't had the time to update the BIOS again and try the newest drivers.

Whatever the problem, I'm not impressed that it doesn't work immediately from the factory. Is that too much to ask for?

Right out of the factory. I was like you, too. For the longest time, I didn't update any drivers because it worked just fine straight from Sager. Only when problems started arising did I update the BIOS/vidcard drivers, etc.

So far I haven't had time to do anything like updating the BIOS and then the newest vidcard drivers, etc. Need to email Sager & Clevo to let them know what's going on.

Not enough time in the day.

Well, if you replace the motherboard...


BTW- I might have to steal that Gmail invite if you don't have it tucked away for some cute chick somewhere...


In other news, I checked out the Dead Pixel Test from this thread: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=53877

Found one lit reddish pixel. Pffffffffffffffffftp. Darn it. Oh, well. Doesn't really bother me. Never noticed it before. Isn't going to ruin my day. I'm generally a perfectionist w/ something like this, but it's not noticeable at all, really.

That's really been the only thing I could think of doing. Just haven't had the time. And wasn't sure whether to do that first then contact the big chiefs or contact them first to see what they would suggest.

Never had time to do a reformat/reinstall like I wanted, so never did push the issue further as I figured that'd be one of the suggested fixes. Figured I'd let it slide until I either reformatted/reinstalled and continued having problems or until problems arose again.

Fast forward to today. My friend that is an artist on Guild Wars offered me a beta key for this weekend's event. Wasn't sure if I'd have time and told him that my machine might not even be able to handle it. Got up this morning and figured I would try to see how it could handle Guild Wars w/o a reformat/reinstall. Well... it runs, but not great. Lags on occasion (not sure that that's me or a server issue- I never had lag issues when I was an Alpha tester). Biggest problem is... Artifacting. Worst times are when I enter a new area and it artifacts like MAD for a few seconds and then it settles down into an at least playable atmosphere. When I quit the game to go eat lunch, the screen continued to artifact with green sprites all over. I had a torrent DL going at the same time as well as Trillian, MSN Messenger, ZoneAlarm, Mobmeter and AVG (background). Now that I'm back from lunch, the artifacting's gone and the temps have calmed down a bit.

On the temps, as I began writing this, I had a torrent UL going and was running at 43. Now I've cancelled the UL and am running at 46-48. I need to clean the system out, I'm pretty sure. Been awhile since I've blown it out.

So the artifacting's back (not that it ever left), but I'm still convinced it might be because of the drivers being somewhat wonky as Clevo replaced the motherboard and installed the old BIOS, so I think XP's not quite at the top o' its game. Just need to make time to start from scratch....