G-Omaha's *** 8790 Review - 2nd Machine *** - Page 6

I have a decent camera; however, don't know where to post pictures -- too cheap to pay for it (I'd like one so that I can present a decent Avitar).

Gently rip off the glued rubber mats that are on each corner (spur??).

Remove the four screw and gently open.

Remove the 4 screws for each fan, flip the fan over, reroute the cables a bit, and reattach the fan. Repeat the procedure for the second fan.

Reassemble the top/bottom pieces (they snap together) and secure them with the screws together.

Reapply the pads peviously removed.

You are all set to go. Takes less than 5 minutes. You might want to tape the wires from the connection point to the fans to insure that they are not in the way of anything.

Amazon.com

Got the Combo locks - Be careful as you can reset these without much effort.

Room, it depends. Its a tight fit for the Laptop on the bottom, and then the A/C Adapter, mouse and cable on the 2nd Tier. You should be be able to get about a 1/2" amount of "papers" is there. I haven't tried to press it; however, it appears as if you could get about an extra 3/4" of papers to sit on the laptop - just need to have something to protect the paint and any "extra" pressure" the papers might cause.

Subwoofer Replaces the TV Tuner

I have replaced the TV Tuner with a subwoofer. I have decided against trying to redesign this thing so that I can use the Tuner and the subwoofer at the same time. I have; however, ordered a replacement tuner and software because I am not real "keen" about the quality I am getting with the Aver Unit. It's not bad; however, it is not good enough for what I need to use it for -- and it is not compatable with most of the software that I have tried.

I have ordered a Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 and SageTV Software. With these I will be able to have "Stereo TV", Video In via RCA Cable, Program Listings, Enhanced de-interlacing, Enhanced Video Quality, Hardware MPEG Decoder, an FM Radio, and more.

I have not really finialized plans about what to do with the Aver Tuner; however, will probably sell it for about $50 annd this will include the shipping cost and LPlug that I got from Radio Shack. If anyone is interested PM me and we can talk about it.

I won't have the new hardware for a week or so and I'll keep you posted.

The Subwoofer works pretty good. It appears to work better with this machine that I remembered on my first one.

External (Firewire/USB) 8X Dual Layer DVD Writer

Well, I have had my new "toy" for about a week now and have been using it like crazy. I have not yet tested the 8x media or the dual layer media.

I got a NEC 2510A for $83 and that included shipping.

It appears to be compatable with most of the DVD-R's that I throw at it. I bought some super cheap Digitial Matrix 4x DVD-R hoping that they would work for the Toshiba (2x or 4x) or Sony DRU-550A burners. No such luck, even though Mertline states that it is compatable with the Sony unit (they deleted all of my product evaluation postings for some reason - guess they only keey the good ones and marginally bad ones). Anyway, most (not all) of these have worked in this unit. For the Toshiba units, it's still the RITEK G04's that appear to work best.

The new unit burns a full DVD at 4x speed in about 13 minutes. The Toshiba in my 8790 burns the same DVD in about 20 minutes. I can not test the dual layer because the blank media is almost impossible to find - and real real expensive. I also have not tested the 8x speed. I did test the -R, -RW, +R, and +RW at 1x, 2.4x, and 4x speeds. All worked well and were faster than the Toshibas.

I am using a FireWire connection.

This is keeper; however, is about half as heavy as the 8790 so I won't be carrying this anywhere.

USB 2.5" External HDD - Heat Comparison

I received the External USB (2.0) setup for one of my old laptop HDDs ($17 including shiping). It is USB powered. I installed a 40GB, 4,200rpm (Fujitsu MHT2040AT) drive into the enclosue, partitioned it, formatted it, and then copied over 20GB of files from the 8790 to this device.

I was suprised that the external unit was quite warm during this activity. The heat for this HDD was about the same as that experienced on the palm rest of my 8790 (left side). It is warm; however not hot. From this I conclude that the heat on the Palm rests is from the HDDs and that external drives are just as hot as those that are located within the 8790. Now, after the access activity has stopped for the external device, if does cool down much quicker than the 8790.

Just a tid-bit for your general information.

No more USB slots available at this point.

Okay, I've finally burned my 200th DVD-R

This is on the 8790's Toshiba's DVD Drive. I made 3 coasters - all of them Digitial Matrix Media. Average burn time is about 20 minutes. The burn process starts at 2.0x speed and then changed to 4.0/4.1 speed at about 45% completion. Overall happy with the burner; however, the "rip" speed for this device is somewhat slower than I expected.

BTW - Did I mention that Digitial Matrix Media Suxs?

With a LCD you have no choice. You may set it toanother setting; however, it's 60Hz that you will get. LCD's don't "Flash/Flicker" so to speak like a normal CRT does.

Mine looks like a 35mm slide - only much much larger. Crystal clean and no flickers at all.

Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 and SageTV Software Have Been Received

I plan on installing and checking these items out this weekend - if I have the time. I'll let you know what I find out and my opinions as soon as I can.

Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 and SageTV Software Review

I would never have dreamed the amount of work that's involved in evaluating something as simple as a TV Tuner. Well, actually it is more complicated than that because wanted to do a head to head compare between the Aver unit and the Hauppauge units. This invloved watching several different channels with each configuration and also buring the TV program to disc and then later to DVD. After this I did the "time warp" thing under Sage TV and then recorded the output. Here's my observations.

SAGE TV and the Hauppauge "time warp" works very very good. No degradation of either signal at full resolution and max samplings. Also no system slow downs at all.

Recorded images to DVD. Again Sage TV was on top, then came the WinTV2000 that comes native with the Hauppauge and dead last cam the AverTV. The difference between Sage and WinTV2000 was very very slight. The difference between these and the AverTV was very obvious.

The ULEAD software was very good; however, was also very very slow if the disc image was not one of the USB 2.0 DVD formats. This software allow you to make a DVD image to HDD Folder, an ISO image, or record directly to DVD. I created on "coaster" because the DVD created was larger than the space available on the DVD media (8GB is somhow larger than 4.7GB - go figure). I redid the process and stored the image to a HDD Folder. WHen that completed, I ran DVD shrink on it and then everything fit on one DVD. The quality did not suffer very much; however, you can tell if you looked real hard (the original format was DVD-Extended and the original source was over 4 hours long).

I don't like the way that Sage TV is setup - personal preference; however, I feel that it is not very intuative and it will take some getting used to.

If you're serious about recording off of TV/VCR highly recommend the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 . The SAGE software may not be worth an additional $59 to you. I'm stuck with it and will use it.

27 Degrees C - All Time Low

I was rendering a Video and went with the wife and son to get something to eat. The Antec cooler was turned off and the 8790 was on "max fans". When I came home I found that the laptop was at 27C (as reported by Mobile Meter). Now that I have connected to the forums and started this response, the temp has risen to 29C. Brrrrrrrr.......