aussie's 8890 review - Page 4

For completeness sake (and for any poor soul experiencing the horror of artifacts across their screen) I would also suggest you read this tale of woe.

Edit: 18th Oct 2003 - It turns out that the artifacts are caused by a BIOS issue - the 1.00.03-T7 BIOS fixes the problem.

Well I have almost completed the Win XP side of things. The next move in a couple of weeks is to install vmware and RH Linux.

Other things to do:
1. remove second internal 4200 RPM disk and put it into an external disk enclosure and set it up as my backup disk.

2. load some games instead of ATI demos .

Carry case

For those of you wondering about the usability of the standard carry case supplied with the 8890 here are my thoughts after using it for a while.

I normally work as a consultant, moving between client sites and need to have my laptop with me. As I am normally in a business suit, a backpack style carry case was out of the question. They are just not business like.

The standard carry case is a vinyl style case with a leather look exterior. As a case goes it is thinner than most Targus laptop cases, which actually makes the case look rather smart imho. Externally you have a single zip pocket large enough to fit the AC adaptor, AC power cord, mouse, Ethernet cable, phone cable, assorted other bits and with careful packing a book the size of the Programming Perl book in there.

Internally there are two velcro straps that hold the 8890 in place. It fits snugly to say the least. There is a bit of foam protection around the outer edge that would protect the laptop against hits. Given I am not running around a school or uni throwing my bags everywhere, the standard case has more than adequate bump protection.

Also internally, there is a simple inside pocket. The pocket has no smaller pockets for floppies or pens which initally I thought was a real pain until I came up with the idea of using a plastic floppy carrier that you use to insert floppies into a folder. Normally these things have 4 pockets with flaps to hold floppies flat like an inserted page. Slips perfectly into the inside pocket and keeps my floppies in perfect order. It acutally looks quite professional pulling out my floppies stored in the insert.

The standard carry case also has an adjustable shoulder strap that you can completely unclip from the case (which I do) and store it in the outside pocket if you ever need it. Personally I find carrying the 8890 in its std case quite easy using the carry handle at the top of the case.

One thing that is really good about the carry case is that is stands upright of its own accord. Some laptop carry cases fall over when you put them on the ground. With the 8890 inside it makes for a very professional look.

I also carry with me a foolscap clipboard folder with a pad and notes inside. With my old Toshiba's carry case the folder barely squeezed into the back pocket. At first I thought I was going to miss the back pocket until I realised that because of the size of the 8890 it is marginally larger than the foolscap folder. What I now do is to strap the 8890 in, then place my folder across the top of the strapped in 8890 and zip up the case. Much better.

All in all, I like the standard carry case. For business use, you could get a lot worse for a lot more money.

Replacement program for Hot Keys

For those of you (like me) that want to replace the supplied hot key program that drives those 3 buttons above your keyboard and be able to reprogram each button you might care to read this thread.

It turns out the Logitech iTouch hotkey program works really well with the 8890. You can configure each and every button (unlike the standard program). It also gives you a better (imho) onscreen display of volume, mute, caps lock, num lock etc.

Audio noise

Some updates that may help people with a persistent hum in their audio. It would appear that if you have your laptop plugged into the AC adaptor and have an aerial plugged into the TV tuner which is not correctly earthed you will create what is called a ground loop.

The laptop is fine, the problem is caused by ground currents flowing between the aerial and the power adaptor. This can be exacerbated by cable TV systems if they are not properly grounded either.

To fix the problem you need to ensure that the AC power adaptor and the aerial are properly grounded or share a common ground. Most likely cause is poorly done house wiring or poorly grounded aerial systems.

Hotkeys, onscreen display, audio dj buttons

To bring all these topics together:

The standard AP-key (ie. Hotkey) progam that Sager supplies generates the blue/yellow stripe when you change the volume via the DJ buttons.

If you prefer a green bar (along with indication of caps lock, num lock etc) as an onscreen display (OSD) then you will probably find Logitech's itouch program better (as I mentioned in this thread. One downside is it does not understand the third hot key button. The Audio DJ volume buttons still work and you get this cool green bar graph across your screen rather than the blue/yellow one that AP key does. The other Audio DJ buttons are not affected by iTouch as they are picked up by other software like Windows Media Player.

Virtual desktops - windows power pro - IE6 bug - MyIE2

One very useful piece of software is Windows Powerpro (www.windowspowerpro.com) (description screenshot IE6 bug). It supports up to 9 virtual desktops and handles the programming of the third hotkey button (see here).

It comes with a price. Complexity. (You thought I was going to say $ didn't you ). It must have the most options of any program I have ever come across.

Using virtual desktops also triggers a bug in IE6 which if you followed the link above can be solved by switching browsers. I chose MyIE2 as it uses the stock standard IE6 rendering engine but wraps a different front end around it as well as supporting gestures.

I find that I am so used to using gestures to open/close/change windows that I do it on everything else, but of course other programs don't have it (pity). The gesture commands have to be one of the most natural and best things about MyIE2.

I have found one or two minor limitations with it but compared to the benfits I would be hard pressed to go back to IE. The big one for me was that if I use Yahoo finance and upload stock data into a spread sheet, MyIE2 will start Excel but it does not bring up the full Excel menu bar like IE does. As it turned out it forced me to create a couple of macros anyway to process the data into the Metastock format I need so now it is a moot point. I did find a work around anyway in that you can tell MyIE2 to forward the respective page to IE so you could do it from there if you had to. The other thing I have had to get used to is that some java popups don't create a floating window. It must be different java code. Some site like the DailyFX charting applet create floating windows properly but my brokers web site does not - the applet stays as a tabbed window still within MyIE2 - go figure. Even that has been a bonus because now I use MyIE2's tile window feature which creates a really good overview window when I am watching the markets.

Step 4 is really not a step per se. It is just telling you that you will need to format the disks and that the following steps will achieve this for you. Confusing I know.

Hang on a second - did you rebuild the array after you created it. You need to choose option 5 from the fast build utiliity.

Reading BSOD messages

FYI

RAID failures - no operating system found

Original thread.

For those of you who have been after a temperature monitoring program that works with the 8890's try MobileMeter. It works straight out of the box. We can thank krobotkin for this find

Original thread
Link to English version referenced in thread.

Hey thanks G-Omaha.
We aim to please :-)

No, been busy with a new girlyfriend 8-)
You know, they are almost as much fun as playing Far Cry