[coastie65]

A thought had occurred to me, so decided to check. What I found is that rgreen has crossed the threshold to become a VETERAN. and fill the fifth bar, if he didn't have the GOLD STAR there. He has 5007 points. !http://forums.pcworld.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/8703/emo%2Ccongrats.gif! You are the fourth member to reach that plateau. coastie





!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

[JessOnTechComps]

Amazing! Well done, rgreen. In the short time I've been here, I've enjoyed the well thought out posts you've provided.

Jess

:D

[AuroraDizon]

!http://mitchellwebs.com/Tetons/8x10IMG5846_Bear6.JPG|thumbnail=true!
congratulations

[mphenterprises]

Congratulations RGreen. Over the course of my time within this Community, we have made an excellent 1-2 combo on many occasions. Here's to 5000 more posts.

[coastie65]

Yeah, you two have left me in the dust on many occasions. :D

[Tech4me]

h1. Rgreen.....!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1! .........

[mjd420nova]

Rgreen: Congrats, a real milestone and a feather in your cap. Maybe not part of the uniform unless you're a pirate!!

[Adama]

h3. CONGRATS, RG!!!! YOU DONE GOOD!
:^0

[rgreen4]

Thanks all. I'm a little late to the party. Princess has been taking up more of my time, and I have been concentrating more on the other areas of the community, and just plain slipped up. I slipped over to this area tonight after taking a break with playing with Windows 7, saw the heading and my reaction was "for what"".

Coastie, thanks for recognizing it, as I didn't. I remember something MPH said a while back when he was at around 2,000 and I have maybe 100, that after a while you just quit counting. I guess its like birthdays (I quit counting them too). However, the friends on the community mean a lot to me. I'll share a few photos with you.

forums.pcworld.com/message/185749#185749|m-185749 Reply #181 in the Doggy 2 thread.

She has an appointment with the vet to have her ears cropped on Feb 12. She will then require more of my time once a week as I renew the braces on her ears until they stand.

[coastie65]

Hey rg, I just happened to notice it myself as I don't pay any particular attention to it either. My Brother came by from Va. Beach and we worked on Andy's ear. Man, that thing is a mess inside, no wonder he is not eating and losing weight. I don't think my mom cane see well enough to get the stuff in the canal as it should be. He bought the Think Pad back from her as she couldn't use it as she can't see well enough. I had made some adjustments to make it easier to see but it wasn't enough. I was looking at this one: www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147934 . I think it may do the trick for her and it looks to be a good price for that thing. If she doesn't like it, then I'll have an emergency back up, just in case. I try to let the Birthdays slip by quietly myself at this point. That is a pretty big milestone to pass and I thought it should at least be recognized.

[rgreen4]

Great price. Ordering the same machine directly from HP with the exact specs is a little over a grand. I'm not fond of integrated video, but this one seems stout as it includes an HDMI port and apparently is HDCP complient. Of course it does not include the BR player, but as we have both said previously, who needs it.

You do realize that you may or may not be able to install XP MCE instead of the full version of Vista.

[coastie65]

Hey rg, I also found this one with a 17" screen. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147921 . She will only use it to check e-mail and surf a bit, maybe some shopping. As far as XP goes, I have XP MCE 2005 SP2b AND XP Home SP3, but probably won't bother with trying to roll it back. Both have good prices. Both have the HD bright screen function and that was one of her complaints with the Think Pad. She said it wasn't bright enough and I made it as bright as I could get it as well as increased the size of the print and icons for her. She didn't like the 14" screen. Been trying to hold back on big ticket items. Between the HDTV in April and the PS3 in Sept., I've pretty much had enough. Christmas doesn't count, as that wasn't technically a big ticket item , but rather a cumulative thing. Oh well, we'll see.

[rgreen4]

Actually, of the two, I like the 16" better. It has a slightly better CPU (2MB cache vs 1), more memory (4 GB vs 3), the 64bit version of Vista HP (the 17 does not state which means it's probably 32bit) so it should be a little faster.

I would recommend going to one of the big box stores and see if you can lay a hand on both models. I have the dv9500t which is two generations back (only 16 mo old) and had trouble until the last update of the Nvidia drives in reducing the resolution from 1680 x 1050 (which was too small for me) to 1440 x 900. You may want to go even smaller, say 1280x800 for her or even 1024x768. You may want to test the floor samples with the Intel GMA4500M to see how easy it is to scale and keep the proper relationship. I hate it when circles become ovals. Text doesn't matter, but photos do.

There propably isn't a whole lot of difference between the 16" and 17" in screen size, but when you actually lay eyes on one it may change. The 17" should have a second drive bay, but in an off the shelf computer it's probably empty. I don't know about the 16". When I ordered my machine I got the second 120GB installed for $100, but the parts to do it after market (connector, tray and screws) costs $140 plus the drive. I use the second drive for backups, but at home an external drive would do just as well.

[coastie65]

I'm reasonably certain, the 17' one is 32 bit. No biggie there. At 320 Gb, that will be plenty for her. I only have 200 Gb in here and so far it has been enough. The only place around here that you can play with the stuff is BestBuy, and she can't stand the place. I'm not real big on them either. If it is a 32 bit OS, then 3 Gb should be fine. It's not like she'll be running high demand apps ( except for Vista ). By the time I clean out the bloatware, including whatever security stuff that may be included, she should be fine.

[rgreen4]

I only have 2GB in my laptop with Vista 32bit and it does fine. No, what I was saying is that if you can go in and actually play with the machine a bit, and see if you can reduce the resolution without too much trouble with getting the ratio out of wack. On mine it was originally difficult to reduce the resolutions from 1680x1050 native without going to some wierd (not 16:10) ratio that pulled everything out of balance so that circles became ovals. When I first ordered mine it was available in 1440x900 or 1680x1050 screens, and I figured if the 1680x1050 was too small I could simply go to 1440x900, but it was not available. Nor was 1280x800. I could go 1280x1024 or something like that or 1400x1000, none of them 16:10.

As I said, for text it doesn't matter, but for graphics it is like watching a SD image on a wide screen TV in stretch.