Seriously, I despise ECS for what I gone through with this laptop.
First, it couldn't run my dell-pulled 1.3ghz pentium M at full speed (only at speedstep speed 600mhz, power mode settings, speedswitch xp did nothing to fix it), which caused me headaches. Because of that, I flashed the bios to the latest on the website. Flash was reported successful, but it killed the laptop (would no longer POST). And it happened to other ECS G551 owners as well. After several complaints, ECS subtly removed the bios off the website and didn't really offer "free and needed" support to those that flashed the bios. I used my manufacturers warranty and got a new one (refurbished I think it was).
Got it back, but somehow it froze in windows and the power button didn't work. And unlike Asus, ECS didn't bother to put some sort of physical reset button. I tried pulling out the AC power and also the battery which I left in. That killed the laptop too, would no longer POST. I opted to use direct ECS repair which costed $35 this time.
They fixed it (so they repaired my refurbished replacement). Luckily for me, the wait of a month allowed me to win an ebay auction for an OEM 1.7ghz pentium M for just $75. This time, the new cpu can run at full speed. I also installed mobile mod ATI catalyst 4.4 drivers (modifier tool from rage3d.com).
Now this are the remaining problems:
I am using 2 sticks of 256mb pc2700 sodimm. One is original samsung pc2700, other is micron spectek pc2700. Both are true pc2700 and identified by sisoft and cpuid to be pc2700 ram. But the damn notebook is running it only at 3:4 ratio, so its only being ran at pc2100 speeds. I tried running the modules seperately to see if it was a conflict, but didn't fix it. I email ECS about this, but they simply just tell me to recheck if this is pc2700 ram.
Second problem is that after gaming for a while at different resolution (not the native 1400x1050 resoultion) the lcd might start making hissy weird noises when it goes back to the desktop. I'm not sure if its a laptop problem, could be a refresh rate problem ever since I tried upping the refresh rate on a 60hz limited LCD with winxp refresh rate fixes.
Can anyone help me out? I am just annoyed by the ram speed problem now. They said it supports DDR333, but it doesn't in my case. And the bios is limited, no options that control any speed settings. Thanks.
First, it couldn't run my dell-pulled 1.3ghz pentium M at full speed (only at speedstep speed 600mhz, power mode settings, speedswitch xp did nothing to fix it), which caused me headaches. Because of that, I flashed the bios to the latest on the website. Flash was reported successful, but it killed the laptop (would no longer POST). And it happened to other ECS G551 owners as well. After several complaints, ECS subtly removed the bios off the website and didn't really offer "free and needed" support to those that flashed the bios. I used my manufacturers warranty and got a new one (refurbished I think it was).
Got it back, but somehow it froze in windows and the power button didn't work. And unlike Asus, ECS didn't bother to put some sort of physical reset button. I tried pulling out the AC power and also the battery which I left in. That killed the laptop too, would no longer POST. I opted to use direct ECS repair which costed $35 this time.
They fixed it (so they repaired my refurbished replacement). Luckily for me, the wait of a month allowed me to win an ebay auction for an OEM 1.7ghz pentium M for just $75. This time, the new cpu can run at full speed. I also installed mobile mod ATI catalyst 4.4 drivers (modifier tool from rage3d.com).
Now this are the remaining problems:
I am using 2 sticks of 256mb pc2700 sodimm. One is original samsung pc2700, other is micron spectek pc2700. Both are true pc2700 and identified by sisoft and cpuid to be pc2700 ram. But the damn notebook is running it only at 3:4 ratio, so its only being ran at pc2100 speeds. I tried running the modules seperately to see if it was a conflict, but didn't fix it. I email ECS about this, but they simply just tell me to recheck if this is pc2700 ram.
Second problem is that after gaming for a while at different resolution (not the native 1400x1050 resoultion) the lcd might start making hissy weird noises when it goes back to the desktop. I'm not sure if its a laptop problem, could be a refresh rate problem ever since I tried upping the refresh rate on a 60hz limited LCD with winxp refresh rate fixes.
Can anyone help me out? I am just annoyed by the ram speed problem now. They said it supports DDR333, but it doesn't in my case. And the bios is limited, no options that control any speed settings. Thanks.
