Averatec 3270 Questions

I have a few inquiries about my new Averatec 3270:

First of all, I want to say I'm very pleased so far, it even seems to outperform my Gateway 7422GX (Mobile AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 1024 MB RAM, 64MB Mobility RADEON 9600) on batteries. And it's less than half the weight!

But:
1) Is there any way to disable the scaling processor speed? It cuts in half when it thinks full processor power is unneeded, and, unsurprisingly, it isn't always right. I know it's a battery-saving feature, but it happens even when plugged in!

2) Is there some inherent intereference caused by having two 801.11g wireless computers right next to each other? The network on this seems to intermittently cut out, and then my Gateway's will go out. I have to cycle both network cards to get it back.

3) The base of the monitor on the back side gets very hot when running. Is this normal? The bottom of the PC gets very hot aswell, but I think that's from having it sitting right on the desk; I'll be getting a coolpad.

4) The touchpad scrollzones don't seem to work in Mozilla Firefox. Any way to fix that?

Thanks in advance.[ ]

Edit: Oh yeah, and can I get rid of the infernal Pheonix cME? It brings up this message about the trial period being up every time I start my computer (right after the BIOS screen). Will I lose the AVERATEC default recovery partition if I do?

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I guess when Gateway bought eMachines, I should have run away, eh?

 

Unfortunately the latest Synaptics touchpad drivers will not work with Firefox. It's a real bummer. You can revert to an earlier driver to solve this, but those earlier drivers weren't as good, especially the touchpad scroll function, which is much smoother, much nicer, much faster with the latest drivers.

It's an issue well talked about on Firefox forums, and it seems to pissing off a LOT of notebook users. In the end though, I went back to IE because of too many problems with Firefox. It just does the strangest things sometimes. Once, I tried to copy and paste a bit of text into the posting form of a technical forum, and Firefox seemed to be adding text to the clipboard! Specifically, the words "Press Ctrl". Right in the middle of a sentence. Tried the same action in IE, no problems. I have NO IDEA why Firefox sometimes does stuff like this. It's a shame, because at it's heart, Firefox is a far superior browser.

 

The Synaptics touchpad on the 3270 and 3220 work just fine and all we use here is firefox. tap zones are the coolest. You can't get me to go back to IE ever. tabbed browsing alone is enough to do it, even without all the killer extensions. It's like pulling teeth to do research with IE, having a gazillion windows open all over the place.

The recovery thing...well, unless you run it you don;t even have the recovery partition (as near as I could tell by the response that I got from Averatec support when I told them I went to XPpro)/. It's stupid anyhow. I would buy a copy of ghost (can get personal editions for free if you keep an eye peeled for rebates) way before I would buy their thing. At least I know that ghost has been around for a long time and works.

wireless devices can bother each other. make sure youre running the newest drivers, too. Depending on the conditions and how strong the drivers are running...yeah, they can lock up outright. One wireless driver I saw had a bug that would get hung up with your wired device and make the wired device croak off as well as the wireless not working at all. The only fix was to completely uninstall and reinstall your wired driver then they would both work for a while and then randomly croak hard again.

But keep them at least a foot or two away from each other or you are going to have them trying to blast over each other constantly. Remember that they're on the same channel and they are not only dealing with ethernet style bus contention but having to cope with RF tx/rx issues as well. The systems as well as the AP can get confused when you do this...

I'm running XPpro wiht the newest OEM drivers for the wireless, so if you haven't modified your system it is definitely not an apples/apples comparison with anything my system's doing.

I could have chose not to install the power now feature...I used the one off the AMD site (because the averatec ones weren't released yet)...soooo. again, your mileage may vary. This setup seems to respond pretty well and I do not want my CPU running full bore 24/7.

You can configure it to run differently on power or on battery. forget where the devil it was, but I did see a spot to turn it off and /or limit it to certain modes of olperation.

Yes these units run hot, but there's something on one of the forums somewhere (google up averatec forums its on one of them somewhere) that outlines steps and little utilities you can use to greatly minimize thermal issues...

BUt start with the battery and fan training routines in the BIOS system config screens. THey help a LOT. The 3270 runs miuch, much quieter and cooler than the 3220 we have.

 

Thanks for all your help. I have noticed the system running much cooler since running the fan calibration, and I got a small wireless mouse to use most of the time anyways.[ ]

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I own a Gateway and an AVERATEC networked to a 3-year-old HP...could be worse, I could own an eMachines and a Compaq networked to a 1996 Packard Bell.

 

Forgive my ignorance; I'm a notebook newbie.

What is fan calibration and how do you do it? My 3270 runs warm, and the fan is just about always running. Sometimes the fan runs quite loud, other times lower (but still quite audible).

Is the normal for most notebooks and laptops?

thank you.

gail

 

Check my reply to you in your other post.

 

I was just browsing, and saw your post. I own an averatec 3270, as of recently, and was curious about a few things you said about an OEM driver and something about a power now feature. What are these things for? And what is Ghost? And, what is the Phoenix cME and its purpose? What is the recovery partition? Is it important? Necessary? Could I delete this program from the lap top? Should I install another similar program before hand? Thanks, Jennifer

 

What are tap zones?

thanks!