Wheres the W500 review??

What hiccups? Also what else would you look to get?

 

I run Vista x64 Ultimate and well for example, if you google the problem that "Windows host process (Rundll32) has stopped working" you'll see how huge of a problem it is, how much it can affect your system, and how there are tons of people who still haven't resolved this issue. Vista is great and usually very easy to troubleshoot in my opinion, but when it crashes, it crashes pretty hard. This error is caused by the ATI Catalyst Control Center which you have to have for your video card drivers. You can read up on it here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=344814

I went through a lot of hassle, uninstalling/reinstalling the video drivers multiple times, and installing them piece by piece, like first just the driver, then just the catalyst control center before I finally got that error to go away. Halfway through my uninstall attempts, Vista would read the Device ID for the card and confuse it for being the Radeon 3650 graphics card, and try to install drivers for that instead (epic fail) which would not work in the least for this card. I had to disable the card and run around trying to stop the automatic driver installation so that I could install the proper Fire GL drivers. All just to solve this Rundll32 problem, which again, is very common.

However, others haven't been as lucky, and the fact that the drivers for this graphics card are only supported by Lenovo and NOT ATI, makes me really uneasy when I run into trouble because right now there are no other drivers for this card and the user base for the W500 isn't as big as I wish it was either. ATI supports every other card in the Mobility Fire GL series on their site, but for some reason not the 5700 which comes with the W500. Another thing which you should know if you're into gaming, is that it's also the only Fire GL card not supported by mobility modders.net or any other modded driver site. There may be support for the card in the future there or better drivers from Lenovo in the future too, but I doubt it, because not enough people are complaining to Lenovo about these issues. Right now the drivers are made to be optimized for CAD and not gaming.

The pre-installed drivers also come with a process named igfxsvrc.exe or something like that, which normally uses about 50% of your CPU at all times. That bugs the hell out of me. So I disabled those processes. Only thing is- I'm not sure if disabling those processes is what sparked the little Host process Rundll32 problem (though it didn't occur right after I turned them off, so I don't think so, but you never know). Currently, even in Welcome Center my GPU is not correctly identified on startup. I have to switch it to the switchable graphics setting of "Energy Saving," and then switch back to "High Performance," for the ATI card to really be activated. Then it works fine.

If I had to consider something else, I'd probably just go with a T400 and forget about my gaming needs. My main reason for going with the W500 instead of the T400 was the screen size and screen resolution plus the graphics card upgrade. The T400 is the flagship model, millions of people own it and there will always be tons of support for it. I'm not saying getting a T400 will solve any and all problems, but I just feel like it'd be easier to deal with since so many people have them.

My W500 is running perfect right now, and even puts some desktops to shame. It's really a sweet machine. The drivers are working, I don't have a single error, and my games are running very smooth. I just feel like every time I turn it on though that there might be some new error waiting for me that I'll have to sit and troubleshoot for another five or six hours just because of lack of support and drivers that aren't totally up to par.

Just look at the title of this thread. You'd never see that with a T400 obviously.

 

w500 is the best!!!!! I have had different t61 but this is very fast!!!! It will be for the ram DDR3...