The BEEBSTER 8886 Review - Page 4

After letting the mp3 player sit as I indicated, I tried it some more and it's been playing since 12:20, so we'll see how long it lasts here. It played for another 25 minutes... Lol, we'll see if tomorrow the batteries have regained some of their energy... I don't know if continuous playback makes a difference in their lifespan or not, but it makes sense that it might given the chemical processes that batteries use to provide voltage.

The batteries lasted another ten minutes today, and then I threw them away. These were really cheap batteries though, like 4 for $1.50, lol, so we'll see what happens with the industrial strength ones when I get them.

Has anyone who owns the 8886 used the line in? I would really like to know what they did because I haven't been able to get it to work, lol. I don't have any audiophile friends so I dunno how to use the line in. I've always used the microphone port, but in order to do that I have to use the splitter, which I need to convert RCA to a headphone jack, lol. Aw well, if anyone has experience with it, post if you can. Meanwhile, I'll keep at it. :-)

Well, not much else to report today. I am kinda stuck til I get back to UD on Sunday because that's when I can start using some peripherals and the net and some other stuff.

Thanks for the tip kreep... I did try that already. I'll have to ask around here to see if anyone knows. I'm back at UD now so I'll hopefully be able to get on the forums more frequently now that it's not dialup anymore :-) I tried a 6 pin firewire peripheral by the way, and apparently the 6 pin firewire port on the 8886 is NOT powered, it is simply 6 pin for the purpose of saving people the need to buy a converter from 6 to 4 like almost all laptop owners have to do. I will do some more with that later, though. Now it is time to get ready for classes :-)

A few more notes since I got to UD. I've not been able to get the 8886 on the network here yet because I have to get an IP address for it, lol, we have static IP addresses here and we're allowed 3 of them. I'll do that soon.

Many of my floormates here have seen the 8886 and are completely in love with it. I handed one of them the remote and he sat down in awe and turned on the Cleveland Browns game that was on cable here... lol, his jaw dropped to the floor. :-) Most of the guys on the floor here with me are computer gurus, so they're all looking at it, the ports, asking questions and just "whoa"ing at the answers. One of my friends was like "Jeez... this thing is perfect" :-) I couldn't agree more. It is simply the most practical computer I've ever used. They all loved the little things in it that were designed to make it practical... the many ports, the audiodj and how it controls windows music apps as well, so you can have the screen shut or you can be in a full screen application and still control the music you hear. Not to mention the remote control and the mp3 player.

One of my friends used the mp3 player.... she said that it was smaller than hers and she prefered how hers glowed and showed her the title of each song as it played, but she said it sounded great, lol. Personally, I don't think I'd want an mp3 player that glowed, especially if it had to fit inside a laptop, but hey that's just me :-)

One of my other friends sat down with UT2k3 for a while and didn't want to get up, lol. On his computer, when you fit certain shots and things explode, you get major slowdown, but on the 8886 he didn't notice ANY slowdown and he was so impressed he sat there and fired these explosives at a wall for like five minutes, lol.

EVERYONE commented on the gorgeous screen and how huge it was, so that's a major success.

I finally got the mac address for this beast registered on the network here so it's good to go. I just got all of the windowsxp updates FINALLY cuz before I was on dialup. :-) There were two driver updates available, so I guess I either didn't reinstall the latest driver last time I did a repair install of windows, or they're just new. Nevermind, one is for the tv tuner, it's a new version if I'm not mistaken... version 6. The one I had installed from the cd was 5.3 or so... so I'll see if this makes any difference with performance of the tuner (not that I'm asking for better performance, lol, to my eyes and to everyone's eyes that have seen it it was great). The second driver was just for my optical mouse, which doesn't really need anything, but I got it anyway.

Directx9 just came out today :-) I'm going to get it on here now and get the drivers for dx9 from ATI's site and get a benchmark score for it :-) The benchmarks were about the same as they were with dx8, so by the numbers I guess there isn't much of a difference. Battlefield runs like always, perfectly, with even less frame skippage towards the beginning when 64 computer players are spawning, lol.

I have tested the battlefield connection and it works great. I'll post how to get on it when the time comes. I believe it will be on Saturday the 11th of this month at night eastern time... so prolly between 8 and 10 is when I'll officially have it up, but I'll prolly have the server up before then, and leave it on at night, lol. Some of my friends here (the ones that aren't getting drunk... which is a small minority unfortunately nowadays at colleges) will prolly join up for a little while because the demo doesn't support bots (I forgot about that), so it will be more fun with more people. If you're reading this, post to the WAN Party thread in the General forums so I know you're coming :-)

In the full version, you play a coop game in multiplayer to enable bots. Just select coop at the top right and then pick your maps and on the left pick how many bots you want and on the second page of the left side you can choose team ratios and bot skill. :-) Hope that helps! (We're playing with the demo, though, unfortunately... hope you'll join up!)

By very close I'm hoping you mean before this Saturday :-) cuz I'd love to have you at this game :-)

More to report about Linux now. There's a new Linux version, it's a try me before you install me kind of deal called knoppix... very cool. You just put it on a cd, and it's a bootable cd that will boot into the linux operating system. You don't install anything. My friend got it for me, and I tried it on the 8886 but it froze up during hardware detection like it did during hardware detection for the mandrake install I tried. SOOO, I'm waiting for one of my linux buff friends to come try it because I have no idea what I'm doing :-) I'll report on that when that comes up.

Also, I've been using the cd playing function more and more while the laptop is off... I'm so glad to have it there. Especially since I have speakers attached and it serves as my only music form in this dorm room, lol. I don't have to turn on the lappy to listen to music :-) which saves time, heat, etc. My friends all ask if it has that capability, so apparently it is in more demand.

Glad to hear you are benefiting from the review :-) Yeah, lithium ion batteries will be expensive, but they'll give great results, and if you get a charger, you can use them lots and lots. :-) Let us know how it goes!

It lasts a LOOOOOOOONG time. :-) Too long to time at this point. I'll check it later. WIthout external speakers... I expect it to be a whole heck of a long time.

In addition, I played doom3 alpha on here today... It ran beautifully for an alpha, lol. I got some slowdown at some points, but it was remarkably smooth despite the lack of optimization. Not to mention scary as HECK, lol. The shadows... SWEET. Lights are swinging and shadows... Random loud noises... People (ha, if you wanna call them people) coming out of dark places... Yeah baby, yeah. And blood... you could practically smell it. :-) Gore on an LCD... quite real.

I got it from an ftp... Lol, it's one that requires a password so I can't really give it to you... you might try a quick search for it. I don't have it anymore, I just wanted to try it out on the 8886. If you can't find it with a search, try winmx or directconnect or a program like that. Best of luck!

Yesterday night was a big night for the 8886. It served a battlefield server (not the WAN party, that's tonight) for UD. I started a server on here with 64 computer players and whenever someone joined the computer player would be kicked. My brother was here, so he joined up, and so did two neighbors and three other guys around the dorms. The 8886 handled beautifully :-) It slowed down every once in a great while because of the network, lol, 64 people's movements are a ton of info to relay to 6 people while getting those 6 people's info and relaying them as well... But it was good fun :-) We played Omaha Beach and it was 7 vs 57 and we were the 7 and we had to hold the last fort on the beach against the allies, just because that's challenging. :-) Wow, talk about hyperaction... Each one of us covered an access point to the base and had to mow down dozens of guys in order to keep the last fort up on top of the hill... I had 130 kills :-) Let's just say that if you want to game, the 8886 can handle your fancies.

Tonight is the big night for the WAN party! Hope everyone's ready!

Just installed the Catalyst 3 drivers from ATI, the ones that are for dx9, and I have dx9 installed... it actually dropped my benchmark by about 230 points to 6770. I don't know if those numbers will reflect performance... I did this mainly to see if any changes happen to games (for better or worse, lol). I'll keep you all posted on what happens....