Close call - and I loath Microsoft

After having my SXGA 8890-V for about a month I could not be happier with it, until last night.

As befalls all demos, things did not go as planned. I took my new baby to an investor meeting so I could show someone some new financial models I had been testing.

Of course I had to show off the 8890 using some of the ATI demo's and the Coral Reef 1080p video.

First thing to go wrong was I could not log in. No kb, no little black password dots, nothing short of a complete forced power down would unlock it. Finally got over that then the demos started to play up. Massive artifacts everywhere - I nearly soiled my underwear so to speak. What the??? . I thought so much for Sager reliability - I had nightmares about dead video memory, cooked CPU's, molten memory sticks - you name it, I thought I had it. Perfect system to total crap in 10 minutes.

I was about to ring Sager and tell them to refund me every cent I had paid for this. Then I thought well I don't play games that much I can put up without the beloved 9600 Pro (nooooooooo....)

I should have guessed, it was not the hardware. Somehow, Microcrap XP (Pro) had gone and screwed with my setup. Don't ask me how. Don't ask me what went wrong. I reinstalled the old non-WHQL 7.93 ATI drivers and it all came back (almost), then installed the WHQL version from Sagers website on top of those. Still ok.

Bottom line, XP is a load of bat's dung imho. I don't know about other people here but I rely on my laptop. If I am going to get this sort of random modification happening, I can see myself totally trashing XP and going Linux even if I have to run half my apps in emulation mode. Just to top this off I struggled for two days trying to solve a problem with MS Outlook not displaying my appointments. Sheesh. I paid good money for this Microsoft crap (yes I am one of the few who has a legitimate copy of Office ). Even their tech staff don't have a clue. Maybe I should have bought a Dell or something - that way I would have the crappy hardware to go with the crappy software.

Sorry about the total rant. It was just a close call - this 8890 is my first Sager and I had my confidence a bit dented by the experience above.

And a quick question for anyone with the SXGA 8890's, do you get the "jaggies" along the edges of the walls of the ATI fire demo? I think that somewhere something is still turned off and I am not sure what to do about it. I don't remember it happening before all this crap, but it could be I just did not see it before until someone pointed it out to me.

Edit: 17th Oct 2003 - it turns out that it is a BIOS problem. I had 1.00.03-T2. The 1.00.03-T7 version supposedly fixes this.

Have you done any Microsoft updates lately. My system is patched up to the latest M$ recommendation. Although I am not sure that is such a good idea .

I just found it really wierd that the system was running like a clock then wham! all these artifacts, kb problems.

Do you have the ATI fire demo loaded at all. I am paranoid right now about these jagged edges I am seeing on the display. I don't remember seeing such ragged edges before all this happened. If you do have it loaded could you check to see if the straight edges have ragged edges or are they smooth like I tend to remember.

What an absolute CHAMPION - smooth lines, no jaggies. You are the man .

Fixed it up perfectly. It would seem that the "application preferences" that the demo had originally set which I assume were at 4x have been altered by what ever event triggered the other crap.

Thanks for the heads up on that BIOS update. I don't think that was my problem but if it comes up again I will give Sager a ring.

I owe you big time eludwig - my baby is back to its big bad beautiful self .

Thanks guys. I must admit because I am not an avid gamer (this box is fast turning me into one tho ), these settings are still a black art to me (I learn fast). I did eventually find the culprit in all this. It turned out to be a rampant install program that had gone and trashed a couple of random entries in the registry. Luckily I had made a backup copy of the registry and found what had been played with.

I tell you what tho that registry thingy is a bit of a liability. Too many things to go wrong in one place.

Thanks for everybody's comments on this. I agree about having a working setup. I suppose that is what I was attempting to get to - some sort of registry Nivarna or XP karmic harmony .

I am pretty peticular about backing up most configuration files, it is just a pity it happened before I had my final config in place.

I find a lot of Windows programs tend to be less transparent about what files they need, scribble on, etc etc than what I am used to under Unix/Linux. A lot less is hidden with Unix and the configuration settings tend to be better explained.

This experience has also taught me something about owning a complex top-end system like the Sager, it is the quality of support from people like yourselves that rates far higher than any price difference or feature set that the Sager's have. To anyone reading this forum considering any other brand of laptop, just ask yourself this, if you had a similar problem and were waiting on the other end of a telephone connected to some call centre in India or where ever and the standard "company answer" is no we don't support that or you can't do that, which sort of support would you rather have? Personally I'll take the Sagerites here on the forum anyday. Cheers guys, you rule .