New G1 owner with a couple of questions.

I recently purchased the G1 from Newegg and so far I am super impressed by this laptop.

Couple of issues I hope someone could help me answer.

One is screen resolution. I know that 1440x900 is a 16:10 resolution. Is there any reason why I am not seeing that as a option in games that I play? Such as HalfLife 2. I see the native resolution of the monitor when I select a 16:10 display but 1440x900 is now where to be seen.

Second question is that I am seeing HD access during games that can't possible be using more RAM that what I have available. I was playing Titan Quest and was seeing the HD access light flicker on and off and wondered if I had someone used up all the physical RAM I had and it was fetching information from virtual memory but when I ALT+TAB'd out it was showing that I was only using 1.1 Gig. The light dosen't pop-up while I am just surfing the net so I didn't think that it could be a different program that was doing it. Maybe I should monitor the process and see if something else is accessing it alot.

This is a Vista version of the laptop by the way.

Thanks.

 

the screen is 1680 x 1050

and i believe the hdd light flickering is perfectly normal...

 

I understand that the screen's native resolution is 1680x1050. What I was wondering is that since the resolution options gives me other resolutions besides native why can I not get 1440x900! It's a 19:10 aspect ratio resolution that isn't offered on a 19:10 monitor?

And I wouldn't mind the HDD accessing but it's causing my games to skip some when it does it. Just wondering if anyone had the same problem and was able to fix it somehow.

 

weird my G1 does 1440x900 in widescreen supported games and my desktop no prob

 

Are you using XP or Vista?

 

The G1's Native resolution is 1680x1050 as IZZO mentioned.

As for playing games at 1440x900 resolution it is depended on the game itself, for example BF2 and BF2142 both don't support 1280x1024, instead they have 1280x940 which is a weird resolution.

Nonetheless for your games try this website, they have little tweaks and such to get your games playing in widescreen format.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Your hard drive should be fine, I had a look at my laptop while idle, and the light flickers every 5 seconds, this is also because there are processess running in the background that are cycling. If you want you can use HDtune to check the health of your hard drive.

 

XP PRO Service Pack 2

 

I have the XP version of the G1 and 1440x900 is a standard option in the display panel (just checked it).

 

Now that I think about it there was a G1 version that came with XP where the screens native resolution was 1440x900. Check and see if you can get a higher resolution from your laptop. If not then you probably have that earlier version.

I still have no idea why it wouldn't be selectable on a higher resolution screen.

In HalfLife 2 it gives me like three options. 1680x1050, 1620x1020(or something like that), and 1280x720. Whats up with those crazy options?

 

Its not a problem of the screen, its the game and how they are designed what resolutions they support.

You able to change your resolution to basically anything from the lowest, 800x600 to 1680x1050 on your desktop.

When gaming this is going to be very different for each game, Oblivion, Half Life 2, BF2, BF2142, WOW and etc.

As I previously mentioned, go to this site, its purpose to help people get the resolution they want for all their widescreen gaming needs.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Click on Forum, then look at the PC Solutions, there's a huge library of games, recent and old of solutions on how to change resolutions for particular games.