Live from Japan: The FT 8790 Review - Page 3  

Wireless

Wireless seems to've calmed down a little, but is still disconnecting at randoms times. Wonder if my ISP (Yahoo) doesn't like me being on all night and day


Bluetooth

Definitely digging this wireless mouse biz. The mouse died on me soon after getting it and I cursed the place I bought it for cheap batteries, but ends up the silly thing's rechargeable, so once I got that straightened out, I was good to go. Now I just need one for work, too (but dang- that's spendy @ $100/mouse).


Still need to make time for finding a hosting place for pics. Just one o' them things that keeps getting put off because something else comes up. I have taken a bunch, tho'!

Palau, just like Sushifiend, I'm having absolutely no problems at all with my internal wireless and Bluetooth. Other than getting used to the different ergonomics of the Logitech mouse (I've used MS Intellimouse Explorers exclusively since right after they came out), I'm absolutely loving the fact that I've got 2 less cords in the way (mouse wire + LAN cable).

Internal Fans
I've finally got my internal fans to ramp up to speed. Everyday when I leave for work, I've been putting my 8790 in Standby, putting in its bag and headin' off to work. As soon as I open the lid, it comes to life and I'm off and running at work. Works the same in reverse on the way home. Standby, in bag, drive home (appx. 25min) and once home, I'm up and running. Sometimes I have to open my Bluetooth Neighborhood in order to reconnect the MX500 mouse, but other times I don't. Other than that, no problems. Until today.
This morning, I put the computer in Standby. I did it quickly via the Windows key and Enter, Enter. Nothing happened. Thought that maybe I'd screwed up doing it so quickly (was busy getting ready for work), so I did it again. Nothing. *frown* Ok, so I stopped, did everything w/ the mouse to make sure I wasn't hitting Cancel when I hit Enter and it started to go into Standby mode. Started. Darn Windows. Something was hanging, but no clue what.
I let it sit while I went about my business. Was still like that a min or two later when it was time to head out the door, so I figured it'd get there eventually. Just tossed it in the bag and off I went. By the time I got to work, the fans were on Overdrive. Noticed them when I turned the car off.
Notebook was still stuck in the Waiting to Standby mode, so something was seriously hung. Even a Ctrl+Alt+Del got me nowhere. Powered it down w/ the power button and let it set for about 30sec~1min or so before turning it on again. When I turned it back on, Mobmeter reported an initial temp of 55C. Since that time, it's bottomed out @ 43C now. The fans never came back on once I powered it back up, but I'm assuming that it was much hotter than 55C. I get it up in the 60s when playing KOTOR, but I never hear the fans ramp up like that. It's always the power brick fan turning up high that is annoying.
I'd just posted in Sushifiend3000's thread that I don't hear my system fans. Guess I can't say that anymore

My screen just blinked off and back on. WTF???

Wasn't a power shortage. Even so, it's a laptop. A power outage wouldn't affect me until the battery died. So no, that one's out of the question.

Screensaver? No. Not enabled.

Software bug? Possible. Anything's possible in that dept. But no way of figuring that one, really.

Video driver problem? Doubftul. Was on my desktop and not running anything more taxing than Trillian at the time. In fact, I was talking to a co-worker when it happened, so I wasn't doing anything (but yes, I realize XP has a billion things running in the bkgd).

Loose cable? Hope not. There was nothing moving, so there shouldn't have been any problems w/ connections. And a loose connection w/ my screen. I'd be MOST unhappy if there were something like that going on. It would scream CHEAP to me and that's not a word I'm wanting to ascribe to my 8790.

Resource Conflict? Like the software bug, totally possible, I guess, but no clue as to what'd be conflicting or why.

Hack Attempt? Possible. But they'd have to be going through my company's ISP's protection as well as ZoneAlarm on my computer (didn't say I fully trusted my company's ISP's protection, did I? ) Doubtful on this one.

Gremlin. My 8790's big, but it's not that big (either that or Gremlins are gettin' smaller). And hey- no water was added to my 8790, so it should be free of gremlins.

Not a virus, either. AVG keeps me clean of any non-sexually transmitted nasties. So it's not that, either.


So far, I'm fairly calm about it, but I'm concerned about being more than just a few miles away from CA in any event if this happens to escalate. I bought the Export Repair warranty through PCT, but I'm not sure how that'd work with the screen going wonky. Hopefully it was a one-time thing.

Boeing DVD Drive
Played Rise of Nations for a few hours the other day. No problems at all (other than surviving vs. the other 5 computer players- not Sager's problem) while running. Actually, I holler about the DVD drive being loud, but I don't recall it being loud during the game. If it was loud, I was too preoccupied to notice.

However (there's that word again), when I went to take the disc out, I noticed the entire area from the DVD drive to the keyboard was HOT. I'm not talking about the warm kind of feeling that the wristpads get. I'm talking about the Freakin' HOT. When I took the CD out, I was scared for it. It was HOT, too. As in making me worry instantly about the lifetime of any CDs or DVDs that I use. Suddenly the notion of finding No-CD patches for anything and everything sounds like a very good idea.

I don't know the tolerances for CDs and DVDs for heat, but if there is a limit, I would imagine that, under constant usage, the 8790 will push that barrier. That's just the impression that I'm getting.

In the writing side, I've used the packaged Nero Express and burnt a few data DVDs at 1x. No problems. Tried one at 2x and it was only partially readable. Tried again w/ the same files at 1x and it was fine. I'm guessing it was due to the discs that I'd bought. Makes me scared to try at 2x again, tho'. Tried to burn a disc yesterday using B'z Recorder 7 (Japanese) and got a Hardware Error partway through. Not sure what the hangup there was.



And G, no Sager Sake Sessions around my 8790. White wine's pretty much as far as I go alcohol-wise and that's generally not very much and not very often. I'm cracked up enough as is without throwing chemical imbalance into the equation

My drive is the Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-K12RA. I was showing my lil beast off at a local computer shop today and has mentioned the burning issue and the guy said that I should check Pioneer's site for a firmware upgrade. It was even written on the labels of one company's DVD-R spindles to upgrade the firmware on Pioneer units (I think the listed ones were A04 or something to that effect). Just got home, so I haven't had a chance to check that out yet.

The computer shop guy also thought that the extreme heat from the unit wasn't typical. But that's about all I caught. After that, he started speaking really fast and using words that I wasn't catching (the curse of knowing enough conversationally to make ppl think you're really fluent, but aren't).

Apparently there's no official update for my particular drive altho' Sony has released a compatible firmware update for it. Think I'll wait awhile for the official and just burn @ 1x until then.

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=24308

I thought the same thing. I thought it was really odd that Sony would be releasing a firmware update for a Pioneer model. Would Pioneer be rebadging a Sony unit?


Thanks for the link- it's actually where I got the link from that I posted above

Ah, Ricoh maybe? Dang, haven't heard that name in awhile. But yeah, it just seems really odd that Pioneer doesn't own up to producing this unit. And apparently it's even been out for quite awhile (going by the dates of some of the posts on the Firmware boards that we linked to).