I took advantage of a Labor Day sale at Fry's and picked up a new notebook. Man did I miss that place while I was living in South Dakota, another good reason to move back to So Cal as the only 'decent' computer parts store in Sioux Falls is closed on Sunday! As usual I walked out with something other than what I walked in thinking of when I walked in. lol
I ended up with an HP DV7 system: i7 processor, 6GB ram, 1TB (2x500) HD, BlueRay, 17" screen, HDMI output. It is still considered an "entertainment" system, but with specs like this I couldn't pass it up. This thing is REALLY fast!! The dual HD will be nice for VMWare, one tip I got a while back was to put the virtual system files on a drive other than your primary OS drive to increase performance. The 6GB should help there too, along with the 7200 RPM HDs. The Bluray is nice although it wasn't something I was really looking for as I don't have any disks for it (yet). The fingerprint scanner is nice, you can use it instead of a password to gain access to the system although I haven't tried it yet. I was worried about the battery life, especially with the 17" screen and additional HD, but I copied files from a USB powered external drive and used it for about 2 hours on battery power and it just kept going. I am not sure about W7 home premium 64, but I am Ok with upgrading it to professional if need be. I do have VMWare so the loss of native virtualization isn't THAT big a deal to me. So far the only program I have had issues with was Poker Academy; running it as admin (even though the user I was using WAS an admin) allowed it to process the updates. Initially had issues getting SQL Server 2008 on it, did some research and rather than fighting with it I downloaded the R2 version from MSDN. Problem solved. VS2010 installed just fine. VFP goes on tonight. I was looking at a Toshiba system, but for what it would have cost me to upgrade from 4 to 6GB RAM I got the HP which also doubled my HD space, gave me a bigger monitor and Blueray drive. Plus my last notebook (as well as my wife's current notebook) was an HP's and I haven't been disappointed. I did have some issues with my previous two Toshiba's over time, but was willing to give them another shot until I found this one. I was also interested in the Asus notebooks, having being a fan of their motherboards for years. Nice looking system, great specs, nice price... then I read the reviews. BSOD's, keystroke failures, graphics lockups, DOA system boards... and Asus isn't doing anything about it. I feel sorry for those who took the plunge on one this weekend with the $150 price reduction without checking the reviews first. Only nits I have on it are with the trackpad and the BlueRay drive. Both issues I can live with and knew about ahead of time: - The pad is large, but is one big surface; sometimes it is hard to tell where to "click" as there is no way to tell by feel if you are on the 'button' part of the pad. The buttons are also very firm, almost hard to push making drag/drop operations a bit more of a challenge. - The eject button on the Bluray drive is hard to press unless you have long fingernails (which I don't) or something use to push it with like a paperclip. There is also no modem and no PCMCIA ports, but that seems to be the way notebooks are being shipped now. I haven't used a PCMCIA port in years so no loss there, but the internal modem will be missed as sometimes I do use the computer for old-fashioned faxing. So far I'm thrilled with the system; just wish I had more time to play with it. Lou __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5431 (20100907) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/00c201cb4e9f$9d855a40$d8900e...@com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
