Thanksgiving report
Nov. 22nd, 2007 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWell, I spent Wednesday evening and Thursday morning fiddling around with my computer and the new 22" monitor. I'm quite happy with the new computer, except for two things: the video card doesn't work, and the DVDROM drive may not work.
The video card's not working is not a factor of it being ATI instead of nVidia, but rather the fact that it is just plain defective. Sometimes on boot-up, instead of the desktop I get just plain video noise, sometimes it causes a freeze up and I have to reboot, and sometimes, after playing a few minutes of Max Payne or Half-Life 2, characters start getting that funky OpenGL graphical noise around them, the kind that looks like crinkled up sheets of stuff attached to them, and a brand new card simply should not do that. I'm going to be requesting an RMA for it and sending it back. I've gone ahead and bought an nVidia 7300LE from eBay that should do me for a month or so until prices fall further on the 8600 and 8800s. (Another odd thing is that DivX movies will not play on the main monitor, which is connected to the ATI card—but they will play on the CRT monitor, which I've connected to the motherboard's on-board graphics port. But I'm not sure whether that's a function of the card messing up, or of it simply being an ATI.)
The other thing is the DVDROM drive: it won't play DVDs on PowerDVD or VLC. I press play, and they don't even start. But it will play them under Windows Media Player, and the DVD player programs will play DVDs that have already been ripped to the hard drive. I'm not sure whether this is a function of the drive being SATA and the programs not knowing where to find it, or the drive itself being faulty, but I've checked online for information about the drive and a lot of people seem to be having trouble with it. Likewise, when I checked the manufacturer's website, I couldn't even find a new firmware for the drive that I could try burning to see if it fixed things. In fact, I couldn't find the drive listed at all. I think it's going to go back to the vendor, too.
This afternoon, I went over to Sandy's folks' house for a ham Thanksgiving dinner, and then to play "The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin" with Sandy, his wife, and her parents. We played two games; I didn't win either one.
Right now, I'm about to get ready for bed so as to get up earlyish tomorrow morning and head down to Best Buy to try to find some deals. It'll probably be a long wait in line; I expect I should load some ebooks onto my Nokia and my mp3 player.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Bring on Black Friday.
The video card's not working is not a factor of it being ATI instead of nVidia, but rather the fact that it is just plain defective. Sometimes on boot-up, instead of the desktop I get just plain video noise, sometimes it causes a freeze up and I have to reboot, and sometimes, after playing a few minutes of Max Payne or Half-Life 2, characters start getting that funky OpenGL graphical noise around them, the kind that looks like crinkled up sheets of stuff attached to them, and a brand new card simply should not do that. I'm going to be requesting an RMA for it and sending it back. I've gone ahead and bought an nVidia 7300LE from eBay that should do me for a month or so until prices fall further on the 8600 and 8800s. (Another odd thing is that DivX movies will not play on the main monitor, which is connected to the ATI card—but they will play on the CRT monitor, which I've connected to the motherboard's on-board graphics port. But I'm not sure whether that's a function of the card messing up, or of it simply being an ATI.)
The other thing is the DVDROM drive: it won't play DVDs on PowerDVD or VLC. I press play, and they don't even start. But it will play them under Windows Media Player, and the DVD player programs will play DVDs that have already been ripped to the hard drive. I'm not sure whether this is a function of the drive being SATA and the programs not knowing where to find it, or the drive itself being faulty, but I've checked online for information about the drive and a lot of people seem to be having trouble with it. Likewise, when I checked the manufacturer's website, I couldn't even find a new firmware for the drive that I could try burning to see if it fixed things. In fact, I couldn't find the drive listed at all. I think it's going to go back to the vendor, too.
This afternoon, I went over to Sandy's folks' house for a ham Thanksgiving dinner, and then to play "The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin" with Sandy, his wife, and her parents. We played two games; I didn't win either one.
Right now, I'm about to get ready for bed so as to get up earlyish tomorrow morning and head down to Best Buy to try to find some deals. It'll probably be a long wait in line; I expect I should load some ebooks onto my Nokia and my mp3 player.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Bring on Black Friday.