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DelphiGreg *FINALLY* made a decision: i8600 - Page 2

post #21 of 45
9/13/04 at 7:02pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xarthan
wow where did you find the 20 coupon? I could only find a 15
Here, in the coupons thread. They seem to come out every now and then, but only for a short time.

Note that I had ordered this config at $1900 a day earlier on a 15% coupon, then found the 20. They were also having a promotion for "free" CDRW/DVD and hard drive, as well as free shipping. Yeah, its still $100 more in my pocket but if you need it now, get it now.
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post #22 of 45
9/13/04 at 7:05pm
Thread Starter 
Initial benchmarks came out as expected: 9978 for 3dmark2001 and 2792 for 3dmark2003. Now too bad for out of the box. Some scenes, especially in 03 were a bit choppy. Much better than my other boxes. Maybe the extra 512MB tomorrow will help.

Screen is perfect and lovely. There is a bit of light leakage on the bottom, but well within expectations from other users experiences. I am STUNNED at the clarity of the text as I type this. Looking forward to actually working (coding).

Time to FDISK and reinstall Windows!
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post #23 of 45
9/13/04 at 7:05pm
ah kool, well i figured out why i never used em. it's 20% off $1699 and my systems don't go that high in price

but damn i didn't know about the 3% fatwallet deal.... man I could have saved 200 bucks by now
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post #24 of 45
9/13/04 at 8:11pm
wow wow wow
congratulation on the new i8600 :hug:
got it last month
It was AWESOME

to Xarthan: why dont you try to get to that range (1699) and try to bargain with Dell? I got mine for $1500 after tax (free 2nd day shipping). It was supposed to be $2200 after tax. If I didn't try, i would never get that kind of deal you know? I was planning on a $1500 laptop. But the online 10% off from dell and 20% off coupon saved my life

BTW: about 8 months ago, i got a deal on a brand new full-loaded SONY centrino for 40% off ($2500 ~> $1500), but i didnt go with it (think it is a little bit expensive for me ). In the end, 1500 is still cheap
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post #25 of 45
9/13/04 at 8:13pm
Thread Starter 
Weird thing on the reinstall. Used my own XP Pro CD, but the activation key wouldn't accept. Broke open the XP CD that came with it and reinstalling again (taking very little time).

The system is starting to show its speed, especially the hard disk.

Nothing is overly hot, just a bit warm on the palm rests and underneath (haven't tried on the lap yet).

Another observation is noise, or the lack thereof. Don't think the fan has turned on once yet, and the few CD's I've inserted are nearly silent.

Leave it to M$ to drop an issue tonight...
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post #26 of 45
9/13/04 at 8:32pm
Thread Starter 
Hmm... Reinstalled with the Dell XP Pro CD. Not only did I have no problems, but I didn't have to enter the CD key.
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post #27 of 45
9/13/04 at 11:16pm
Thread Starter 
Not that it is too surprising, the XP Pro reinstall went smoothly. Its going to take me several days to migrate all of my files and development environments over to the new box, but this one looks like a keeper. Still don't think the fan has come on yet, and I LOVE the fn-F10 CD eject (I'm easily impressed )

Once thing I have noticed is the text looks, well, normal, not as nice as I saw earlier. One of the XP install screens mentioned something about "better font rendering technology". Is this like the "smooth fonts" option (which I cannot find)?
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post #28 of 45
9/14/04 at 12:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by delphigreg
Not that it is too surprising, the XP Pro reinstall went smoothly. Its going to take me several days to migrate all of my files and development environments over to the new box, but this one looks like a keeper. Still don't think the fan has come on yet, and I LOVE the fn-F10 CD eject (I'm easily impressed )

Once thing I have noticed is the text looks, well, normal, not as nice as I saw earlier. One of the XP install screens mentioned something about "better font rendering technology". Is this like the "smooth fonts" option (which I cannot find)?
R-Click on desktop, goto properties, goto appearance, Effects, select the second one as Clear Type

Pop: Oh i would, but i only have a budget for a laptop for around 1100 bucks
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post #29 of 45
9/14/04 at 4:01am
With the CDs supplied by OEMs, you typically don't need to enter the CD key. The font rendering options I think you are referring to is ClearType. Go into Display properties, appearance tab then click effects. Here you can select whether to us cleartype or not.
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post #30 of 45
9/14/04 at 7:39am
Thread Starter 
Yep, that was it--- thanks!. Love how they buried it.

Funny thing is, I enabled this on my Toshiba... its the best that lappy has looked in a long while. Its still gonna be a football in a couple of weeks
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post #31 of 45
9/14/04 at 8:58am
Yeah. It is pretty deep. Unfortunately windows xp doesn't have a Cleartype tuner. Even my iPAQ 2210 has that. I believe you can get one though.

Your old laptop still seems to be ok. You should sell it or give it to a family member, not turn it into a paperweight. Thats what you are supposed to do by accident...
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post #32 of 45
9/14/04 at 10:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MitchellO
Your old laptop still seems to be ok. You should sell it or give it to a family member, not turn it into a paperweight. Thats what you are supposed to do by accident...
The screen is a little dim (especially compared to the Dell--- will take comp. pictures), but other than that it does the basics okay (worked fine for me for 3 years). Wife will probably get it, but that opens another issue... she hates getting computer hand-me-downs. I'm doomed.

Got to have a little fun at work this morning with the new lappy; quite a few order lattitudes (not sure on model, but they are the 13" or 14" ones). Guy removing his (smaller) laptop from his case looked at mine, then his, then mine. I smirked and said "its also more powerful than yours"
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post #33 of 45
9/15/04 at 9:39am
Thread Starter 
A minor issue has come up with the sound. I installed the audio drivers off the Driver CD from Dell, but during boot-ups the start music will sound broken (pausing). Now, it could be the fact that I'm cold booting while on battery and the CPU is scaled down. Could also be due to the 256MB of ram (upgrading tonight).

I'm also noticing that in UT2004, when initially entering the game, things are a little shaky. Not on battery at this time, just slower to get going in the game (especially compared to the Toshiba). Ram?

Or, now that I am thinking, could it be possible that I didn't get a 7200 RPM hard drive? Some disk things have been a little slow, but all in all relatively fast. Anyone, off hand, have the model# for it?
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post #34 of 45
9/15/04 at 10:56am
RAm will improve game performance, especially load times for games. I saw a big improvement going from 256 to 512 in gaming.

Take your hard drive out and find the model number. Did you get it through dell or did you buy it seperately?

Also, have you gone to RUN > MSCONFIG > START-UP? You could have lots of unneccesary programs running, which will obviously slow you down.
There are plenty of resources on the web to determine which programs you can turn off and which you should leave running. But with windows xp, most items in the strat-up tab can be turned off.
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post #35 of 45
9/16/04 at 7:50am
make sure you remove all the Dell crap, and then see how it is. Better still, do a reformat to get rid of all the junk dell puts on there. Definately upgrade your RAM. 256MB is minimum now.
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post #36 of 45
9/16/04 at 7:53am
If you do a reformat and use the same disc (dell's oem windows xp), will you still get same crap? Or, do they put their "crap" on one of those other blue disc's?
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post #37 of 45
9/16/04 at 8:01am
Thread Starter 
Update:

* Did full reinstall with Dell XP Pro CD (see earlier posts); the only crap on where is what I've been loading (and will continue into the weekend )

* HD is a 7200 RPM drive, confirmed by looking at the reported model # through Hardware manager.

* Added extra 512 MB (up to 768 MB) which has helped performance. Did not notice the boot time audio issue, but also wasn't paying full attention. We'll see in the coming days.

*** LOVING THE BOX ***
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post #38 of 45
9/16/04 at 6:22pm
The Dell crap is on a separate disc.
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post #39 of 45
9/16/04 at 6:28pm
Thread Starter 
Noticed the audio issue again this evening (Windows start up sound sounding fragmented or broken). Do have the latest drivers. Any ideas???
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post #40 of 45
9/16/04 at 6:31pm
might be bad speakers? how is it when it's playing mp3s? did you try using an external speaker during bootup?
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