Live from Japan: The FT 8790 Review - Page 15  

*crosses fingers* G'luck, chief!

G got his 8790 back into running condition, so hopefully you can get yours squared away w/o anymore fuss and confusion. Enough to drive someone mad, really.

As for mine, it's seen very light duty since I've gotten it back. Nothing demanding at all has been run on it (figure it should be able to handle anything at this point in time, tho', considering it just got back from RMA). I've got Guild Wars installed on it, so that's a sure-fire way of getting it to artifact if it's leaning that way. I've logged a little time playing Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, but that's not demanding in the least. My Sony FX-120 can play that game just fine, so it's not saying much when I say it has no problems running that

Having seen G come up with a solution to his artifacting problem in his review thread is outstanding. Give some of us others out here w/ troublemaker computers a little ray of hope that there is stability on the horizon for us.

I can only hope

This F@$#%in' POS F@#%in' computer
As hard as it may be to believe, I do not cuss. Fact that I've got a computer fresh off RMA that doesn't work right, has me LIVID. The Sager boys should be happy that they're in a completely different time zone than me because I'd be lighting one of them up on the phone if I could.

F@#$ F@#% F!#$%! Not long after my previous post, I got to wondering which BIOS was installed. I didn't know if it was the newer one w/ fan controls or not. Figured I'd give it a whirl. No big deal, right? Riiiiiiiiight. F@#$! I hit Fn+F10 and sure enough, the fans kicked up a notch. Cool deal. Right? Riiiiight. Well, I couldn't get the fans to ramp back down. They just stayed on high. And of the set of 4 little yellow lights above the keyboard, the middle two were flashing on and off in unison. WTF? I didn't time it, but I'm guessing about 20 seconds into the deal, the machine just shut down. OFF. WTF? Just to make sure I hadn't made a mistake, I started the machine up again and hit Fn+F10. Same thing- fans ramp up, middle 2 yellow lights flash on & off, then the machine just shuts down.

I don't know- maybe there's a quick fix or whatnot, but it's F#%$in' irritating to deal with this when the computer should work FINE. Am I missing something? Aren't these supposed to be repaired when they're sent in for RMA and not returned with different problems? I think this machine actually did the same thing after Sager'd sent me the new BIOS ages ago when I was having artifacting problems. I didn't think much of it because I figured it was just a part of the overall problem w/ artifacting at that time.



UnbeF@#$inglievable.

The machine wasn't hot in the least at the time. The trigger is turning the fans on high via the Fn+F10 key combo. What was running at the time was Trillian and Firefox. And I'd only been home for a little bit, so hadn't had a chance to do anything strenuous w/ the machine. In fact, since I've gotten it back, I haven't had a chance to use it much- so it's gotten very light duty.

I was just curious about the fan setting, so turned it on. Didn't expect it to shut down on me.

I've emailed Adam about this. I didn't bother w/ Sager this time. I've stood up for PCT time and again because of how they've seemed to go to bat for their customers. Guess it's time for me to punch my Help Me card.

No, it didn't get hot. It wasn't hot at all. I was just checking to see if I had BIOS that had the Turbo fan mode enabled. That's all. I'd used the machine for browsing for maybe 15~20 min before that and nothing else. It was off all day before that (I'd just gotten home from work).

If I don't hit the Fn+F10, there is no noticeable problem. It was only pure luck that I even tried it. Never was there a more fitting time for when Curiosity killed the Cat.

To sum up:
It's not overheating.
Fn+F10 turns Turbo fan mode on, then shuts down (w/ blinking lights).
Machine has not been taxed since I got it back (Firefox + Trillian is about the most demanding setup I've used; unless Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic counts)

Emailed Adam the night it happened. Have received no reply as of yet.

And yes, I installed Guild Wars. But haven't played it yet. Since I knew it'd be a long download, I just got it started and left it DL. Have yet to get it going, tho'.

Adam's forwarded my case on to Luke, so I'll be bending his hear from here on out. Hope we can get something worked out. Don't know that I'm much fun to deal with once my patience is used up.

I haven't torn anyone up yet, tho'


Have to say, I am impressed w/ this 9300. Quiet. COOL. Just as fast as the 8790, I think. Like the 8790's feature's much better, though. 8790's keyboard is better, too. The WUXGA screen is definitely growing on me. I always thought that WSXGA+ would be my limit, but now that I've been using the WUXGA at work and going home to WXGA, it's a noticeable difference. Not bad, but I definitely prefer the WUXGA over the WXGA. Don't know what my thoughts would be if I had a WSXGA+ to throw in the mix.

***Trying to be patient and calm***

Typed the above, but I'm sitting here tapping my fingers rapidly on the Dell because thinking about the 8790 and it not working right gets me all riled up.

Still no word since contact w/ Luke the other day (after I'd PM'd him re: Adam's mail). The only thing that's happened is that I got the Dell 9300 to artifact yesterday at work. I must be the g@#$mn'd artifact monster.

Dell 9300 Artifacting (meant for it's own thread, just haven't taken the time to start one)
I was doing some simple photo-editing and when I went to print with the MS Photo Printing Wizard (or whatever it's called) to a networked laser printer, I got artifacts. Recreated it again a bit later trying to print again. Bringing the wizard up resulted in artifacting. I've since then printed with no problems (ie- shutdown and trying again the next day).

What was running:
Firefox 1.7
Trillian 3.1
ACDSee 8.0
PTGui 5.1
GoogleTalk 1.0.0.7.6
PC-Cillin A/V (bkgd)
MS Anti-Spyware (bkgd)
JAVA v.1.4.2_03 (build b02; bkgd)
Dell QuickSet (bkgd)

Going through the Photo-Printing Wizard, it didn't occur until I got to the Layout Selection screen. That's when it popped up both times.




Edit: Keep in mind, the video card is 64mb. It's not a huge, overheating beast of a card. Should've been no problems. 2gigs o' RAM, too. Photos were ~2-3mb apiece. Could've had several opened as I was using PTGui to make panorama shots from photos I'd taken at work. Still, didn't seem anywhere as near as intensive as a huge TIFF file in Photoshop would be, so I don't know what the correlation would be between the photo-printing wizard and the artifacting.