I'm still using it myself and I'm extremely satisfied!! The battery life is frickin awesome!! I just used it tonight to stream full screen YouTube videos over hdmi for about 5 hours and that's not on a full charge and I still got 10% battery life left. I can't recommend this laptop any higher! For $550 it's a great pc, for almost $600 you can upgrade to a C2D processor and 4GB of RAM.

 

cool thanks! The only thing that concerns me is the size of the screen, i'll have to find out if she has a preference.

 

They do make that model in larger screens 13, 14, and 15.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Home%20Premium

 

I was thinking of getting those. Do you have the 13"? How's that base CPU working out? Is it good enough to do HD video? The upgraded CPU doubles the price of this machine.

 

yeah i saw them but i am trying to stay at or below 550

 

Yeah the dual core pentium is pretty damn good. I only noticed some slight problems when watching hulu on a 1920x1080 LCD TV. It wasn't bad but I noticed a few frame drops but it was definitely still watchable, in fact I was quite impressed with how good internet video looked on that screen. You wouldn't even know that you weren't watching Cable TV with the quality of the video. I've had no problem running hulu on the laptops screen which is 1366x768. Either way when the flash 10.1 goes final this thing will be really good since it's graphics chip (GMA4500HD) will be able to take advantage of that but the GMA 950 on most netbooks won't.

I've played youtubeHD on the laptop screen no problem but haven't tried HD h.264s but I'm sure it will be fine since that graphic chip should offer hardware acceleration when running Windows 7. I have done SD h.264 and that handled it with no problems.

 

I've found the screen to be big enough I haven't felt myself being cramped or frustrated cause of the screen size. That's how I felt with a netbook though, they're just too small.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115668

 

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?Inv...gn=4810TZ-4129

 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/22/m...e-barred-from/

 

Saw this today. Still waiting for news on lawsuit from tooth4tooth.

 

That XML code isn't in Office 2010 and they just have to take the code out by jan 11th and they'll be cool. they might have to release an update that removes it from current installs but IDK.

Anyways I'm at Best Buy right now typing this from the Dell Adamo XPS!!!! It's the .39in thin laptop that has the capacitive touch swipe to open thing. It's pretty sweet! Damn this thing is thin! I'm very surprised they'd have this on display at best buy. If only it had better than 2.5hr battery life!



One thing I don't like is that the f key and the j key don't have that bump on them to tell you where to place your index fingers, it threw me off at first but I guess I'm getting used to it as I'm blazing through this post Other than that I do really like the keyboard. I had heard from Engadget that the display on the adamo wasn't that great but It's better than I thought it was, still the off angle viewing could be better.

Also I was just at the Sony store and got to mess around with the Sony L series multi-touch PC and it also was really nice, the optical touch was accurate and the system performed well, I was quite impressed.

Earlier I had messed with the HP touchsmart 12.1in laptop and I was a litle letdown by it's touch screen accuracy. Even after calibrating it it only took a few minutes to be off again.

 

That doesn't look sturdy at all, and how the hell does that sit on your lap?

 

it sits fine. you would think it wouldn't but it does. Skip to the 6:40 mark to see him use it on his lap

<object classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="265" id="viddler"><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/d766ab76" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="flashvars" value="fake=1"/><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/d766ab76" width="437" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="fake=1" name="viddler" ></embed></object>

For the record I'd say the screen of the Adamo XPS is better than the screen on my Acer Aspire Timeline but then my the Timeline cost about $1400 less.

 

I think this Adamo will be much better when the new intel Core i5 chips come out on Jan 7th, they'll be using a 32nm technology instead of 45nm and the GPU will be on the same package as the CPU. So I'd expect better performance and better battery life and maybe slightly improved graphics.

 

Special media package for N versions? /

 

what?

 

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate N (which I got from technet) on my girlfriend's laptop. It was a clean install since you can't upgrade to an N from a non-N version. Nonetheless, WMP is not installed on N versions of Windows, so you need to install the following update: Media Feature Pack for Windows 7 N and Windows 7 KN (KB968211)

So I download and install said update only to have it revert back to old setting after reboot. What a pain. My g/f is a below average user and I am trying to avoid installing a bunch of different 3rd party software that will just lead to more work for me.

Technet only has N versions of the 10/22 release of windows 7.

 

what does revert back to old setting mean? are you sure Technet only has the N versions? That doesn't make since it HAS to have the normal version. The N version is only available in the EU.

 

I have TechNet and I have access to all versions. The regular versions were released on 8/24.

 

I install the update, then it calls for a restart. The boot screen comes up that says, "configuring updates. please don't turn off computer" and it displays the status %. Well, it finished this and then restarted again. Then it came to a similar screen, except this time it said, "unable to perform update. reverting back to old settings".

This happened a couple times even after I uninstalled and re-installed the update.



I thought the 8/24 were just the RC versions.

Regardless, I was able to get it to work after changing to a different key. I discovered this only after I went through the validation proccess and it said I may have been a victim of software piracy. I got the key from technet.

 

Maybe you got a normal key for your N version....

 

So I just bought a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium installed. My desktop at home is Vista.

I've been trying to get the laptop to connect to my wireless network at home, with no success. It can see the network in the available networks list, but when I try to connect to my network, it doesn't work. I signed onto an unsecured network in the building to see if there was a problem with the laptop, and it worked fine.

Any suggestions on what I can try to get the laptop working with my network?

Is there a known compatibility issue between machines running Vista and 7?

 

Try resetting your router? Are you sure you're entering the right passcode? What error is it giving you, can you take a screenshot?

 

In other news MS is now offering a program to encourage upgrades targeted towards SMBs that gives 50% off the upgrade prices of Windows 7 and Office 2007 between now and June 30th.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4867

 

Lastly, a quick reminder that the win741.com discount program expires Midnight tonight Central Time. So if you're a college student that hasn't taken advantage of the Windows 7 for $30 deal you better hurry up!

www.win741.com

 

Nothing happened by restarting the router. All it does is tell me "Windows was unable to connect to the network".

The password for the network is entered properly.

 

I wish I was a college student. Not just for W7, but that too.

 

W7 runs awesomely on boot camp on my Mac book...Very awesomely...

 

OH good I can badger you with questions!!! So everyone thinks I hate OS X, I don't I just prefer windows and sometimes get annoyed when I go back to OS X. Anyways I would LOVE a system that ran both. So I'm looking at my laptop being a MBP where the majority of the drive space will be for w7 and about 30-40gb for OS X. However I've heard things about crappy windows drivers from Apple leading to subpar performance especially in battery life. My other big concern is how well the mutli-touch trackpad works in Windows. It works good in OS X but I haven't been able to test it in Windows. So can you test battery life in Windows 7 (set the power plan to balanced) and give the multi-touch trackpad a good work out and compare it to how well it does in OS X. Can you configure right-click? You couldn't do it with the older version of boot camp.

I won't accept anything less than an experience on par with what the apple hardware does when in OS X (ibjupitersolosmartassremark). It still bothers me that I have to use Boot Camp (Apple's BIOS emulation software) to run on an EFI computer when windows 7 has support to run natively on EFI machines with no need for BIOS emulation. But I hear Apple runs a proprietary version of EFI which wouldn't surprise me but I'd love the option to natively dual boot the two.

 

not restarting, reseting. Which would delete all your settings like SSID name, password, etc and set everything back to default.

I was just working on a Vista machine that couldn't connect to ANY wireless networks but that ended up being due to bad drivers which I rolled back to the originals and everything worked fine. But being able to join an unprotected network and not a protected one seems odd. Now that I'm thinking about it reseting the router probably won't fix it but it might. If you've made a bunch of changes and it's going to be too much work then I wouldn't try that first. Look and see if it's new drivers on the laptop that may be causing the trouble and if so roll them back. you can roll back drivers by doing a search for device manager open that > the click on network adapters > find your wireless card in the list and double click on it > then in the driver tab if it isn't greyed out click on roll back driver...

 

Apple does not currently support Windows 7 with Bootcamp so you can't very well complain about it until they do. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the very issue you cite is the reason it seems to be taking so long for the official Win7 support with Bootcamp. Perhaps they're trying to work out native EFI booting?

 

Yes I know they don't support Windows 7 officially and were supposed to have that by the end of 2009 and it hasn't happened yet. However Windows 7 is not the first version of Windows to support EFI, Vista SP1 x64 was but if this "official" support for Windows 7 includes native EFI I would flip..... but we both know that's not going to happen.

 

Yo! Check this! It's called God Mode! It's easy to make too, create a new folder (ctrl+shift+N) and then rename the new folder too: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Then when you do the folder turns into a control panel icon and when you open it you get a shortcut to every option in the control panel of which there is 274 items.

 

That should piss off the atheists.

 

^^ Zinger.

Anywho, finally got a laptop for the wife. Ended up with the Toshiba A505-S69803 from bestbuy. Decided to go with bestbuy because they have 18 months with 0% interest on a BB credit card.

I'm impressed with the laptop. Great performance, behemoth of a battery, good display and has full keypad which she wanted(accountant). Only thing I haven't gotten worked out yet is VPN. Can't use IPsec cisco vpn, you need SSL anyconnect or a third party IPsec client.

 

It runs fine all...Calm down....

All drivers work, boots fast, keyboard and mouse work (sort of, Delete key doesn't delete, need Fn del or spome crap). Thinking about getting the Magic Mouse today, I heard it now works in Boot Camp. Im mostly going to use the Mac OS....The only thing thats not supported yet is Verizon's free Wi Fi (for FIOS customers). It doesnt run on Macs yet...

 

ok what about multi-touch trackpad gestures, two and three finger swipes, pinch and zoom, etc? Is it two finger click for a right click?

 

Here's a tip to enable the Administrator account in Windows 7. By default it's there but hidden. Open and elevated cmd prompt and type net user administrator /active:yes then if you want to deactivate it type net user administrator /active:no

 

So it's any folder name followed by a dot and the GUID.