Hel 80 Owners Lounge

I actually recently uninstalled NHC, because I think it was causing lockups, but I never determined that for sure.

 

It is fixed. I don't know how or why, but it is fixed.

 

YAY! I'm now an official member of the Compal Hel80 Owner's lounge thanks Donald for all your support you guys rock

 

I also tried NHC and it caused problems with my graphics. It worked great, except my frame rates dropped to like 3-4 in 3dmark05! I switched to RMClock, but it seems like I got better battery life in NHC. At least my frame rates are back to normal.

 

Yeah, I am pretty sure NHC is what caused my problem. There was a new version released yesterday though, so I am going to give that a try.

 

i can confirm that NHC did cause the drop fps! I removed NHC, used DriverCleanUpPro and then reinstall the latest drivers. Boosting again!!

 

For some reason my HEL80 always wants to go into hibernate or standbye mode right when it boots up. This happens almost everytime i boot it up and it's very strange... does this happen to anyone else?

 

So is NHC considered a bad idea? I just installed it and I like the UI, but I don't want performance hits.

 

just received my HEL80, and i've noticed a dead pixel
any ideas? i'm running that pixel fixer video for the psp,
but for now, it doesn't fix it
anyone else got a stuck pixel?

 

I have a fixed pixel too; I think it's just a fact of life. What color is yours? Mine's cyan.

What's this business about a pixel fixer video? I didn't think anything could repair that except luck (on my Dell, I had some fixed pixels come and go at times; really pretty poorly fixed ;-).

 

Mine is red, gonna let this video run for a couple of hours.
Will post back if it works

 

I have a bright green one

 

hate to quote myself, but has anyone else experienced this? i've looked in my power settings and can't figure out why the machine just goes into standby mode. it's either standby or hiberate (i'm not sure of the difference). if no one has experienced this, any suggestions?

thanks-

scott

 

Gosh! Who has a green fixed pixel ANYWAY? I'm gonna go practice my numchucks.

 

Try to flicking at the cover of the screen near the pixel, my dad has a green bright pixel on his TFT which disappears when you flick at the cover near it. And try not to damage the screen ofcourse.

 

Whoa! Bad advice unless you mean flick at the LCD cover on the BACK of the screen.

Please do not flick at the LCD screen itself...the result could be MUCH worse than having a lit sub-pixel.

 

Hmm, you're right. What I meant was flick at the cover of the LCD screen near the bright pixel. I don't know why I said to flick at the pixel, because I never do that. Thanks for correcting me.

 

You can carefully flick directly at the screen...massage it gently

 

I don't think I'd want to do any of that business; it's a pretty pretty screen and I'd hate to risk damaging it to get rid of a fixed pixel that (I'm guessing) might come back anyway. :-O

 

No dead pixels on my screen.

 

Some people here experienced a lot of background noise on the audio output when using the battery. Well, I had my battery set to max. battery in NHC, and it reduced the background noise seriously. I would give it a shot.

 

After a half day with the notebook, first impressions:
+ great screen (except the fixed pixel, don't know what i'm gonna do about that)
+ very fast laptop
+ looks much better in person than on a picture of it
+ fingerprint rocks
+ sound is pretty ok (for a notebook) (speaker sound is fine, no noise with/without battery)

Haven't gamed with it so i'll have to post that later

- Having Fn & Ctrl switched is really annoying (how many times i've replaced something with 'C' instead of copying today , but i will get used to it)
- I've ordered a special keyboard with it and some buttons don't work but i'm sure this is not an issue for any other HEL80-users.
(keys missing: \, <, >) annoying because i'm gonna need this notebook mostly for programming where thoose keys really are needed.
- Keyboard is a little bouncy, but it's hardly noticeable.

In general, I really like this notebook and I'm feeling sad I'll probably gonna have to send it back to the shop.

 

Now that my HEL80 has been up and running for a while, I have to say the more I use it, the more I like it. The system is taking its first business trip this week. On the flight, I got about 2:45 of battery life. The vast majority of that time was spent watching a DVD I ripped to the hard drive, mounted via Daemon Tools. I am confident I could have squeezed more out of it, had I actually bothered to encode the movie to XviD.

The screen is excellent. Not a dead pixel to be found. The only game I've played on it is Half-Life 2 so far. I'm a performance rather than a quality freak so I leave the resolution at 1280x1024 (thank goodness for NVIDIA's fixed aspect ratio scaling option in the drivers) with 2x anti-aliasing and 4x anisotropic filtering.

It seems to get along all right with XP Media Center Edition. I'm not crazy about Intel's wireless management software. It works just fine and is easy to configure, but it's a resource hog. I tried to uninstall the client and leave just the drivers. But if I do that, I can't connect to my home wireless network. It would bug me more if Intel's software were buggy, but it's not.

I looked dozens of different laptops from different vendors, and I don't regret buying the HEL80 for one second. I want to thank this forum for its vast repository of information, and also Powernotebooks.com for providing 1st class service during the ordering and shipping process. Now I hope I'll only speak to Donald and company via this forum or when it comes time to upgrade to Merom (next year), not for any sort of technical support.

 

Tell me more, where can I find that option?

Edit: Ah found it. Great option indeed.

 

just placed an order for the HEL80 with Donald from powernotebooks. the experience is A++.
if you value professional customer service and need a notebook he is a safe bet.
however, talking of safe bets, the expectation is just a tad worrisome - how many of you had or heard about dead pixel/s on glossy versions of the HEL80?

 

You find the usually, today's LCDs are alot less likely to have dead pixels. I got mine early last month and the 3 weeks I got to use it worked great no dead pixels will let you know if I ever get it back.

 

In the 4 LCD panels I've owned over the last 7 years or so, I've only seen one fixed pixel. And the manufuacturing techniques are only improving so that should result in much less dead/fixed pixel issues overall. But nothing is perfect...

 

Question, the HEL-80 is said to support S/PDIF. But I don't see a S/PDIF connector on the laptop, and the manual doesn't mention something like S/PDIF at all. Have I overlooked something?

 

Researching the "Coming out of Hibernate" issue we cannot find a hardware issue causing it.

However Windows XP really does have a problem Hibernating with greater than 1 GB memory installed. Check this out.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=909095
http://www.ntwizards.net/2004/10/13/hibernate

Do those of you having this problem have 2GB Memory?

 

From what I can see in the manual, SPDIF output is through the headphone socket.

 

It's happened to me a couple of times, and I only have 1GB.

 

I am thinking Compal is really off the ball on figureing out problems, they really need to check with some actual engineers on these issues.

 

I have a single one gig stick of ram still, and I am unable to get the screen to turn back on when windows power settings turns it off.

 

So you can just use a SPDIF cable (or what cables are needed for that?) for digital sound?

 

I may be able to do you all one better. I just saw this posted on another site. Apparently MS has just issued a hotfix that may address the problem we've all been having with hibernate.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917332/en-us

To download the patch, follow the links at www.laptopvideo2go.com. A big thanks to the folks on that site for discovering this.

 

I assume that this is the case. The manual doesn't say whether it's electrical (RCA-plug) or optical (Toslink plug) SPDIF - I'd assume electrical, since I can't see how they could make a headphone socket which can also act as a Toslink socket.

 

Buckin' Feauty.

Worked for me!

One of two issues I've had with this machine. Now if I can just get updated Elantech drivers I'll be set.

 

Argh, I have a Dutch XP and so I can't install the patch from laptopvideo2go.com. Where can I find localized versions of this patch?

 

I'm sure MS has some kind of toll-free European support line available. Call them and reference the hotfix number listed in the link I posted. I would hope their support outside N. America is as good as it is inside.

 

Hmm, I'm not sure that will work for me considering my XP isn't exactly legal.

 

It is possible to have analog and optical in the same socket.
The question is that if it has optical it should have a red light from the inside. And it doesn't...

The specs are wrong and the manual is wrong too: HEL80 doesn't have optical output!! Also it doesn't have Audio-DJ like publicized...

 

Where can I find a "HEL80 fix-flex-keyboard-with-double-sided-tape" how-to?

 

Page 36 of this thread, post # 352

Dirk, there is a "Search this Thread" tool at the top - right of this page that would have found the entire discussion for you.

 

Thanks for your help Donald!

I just placed an order for a HEL 80 from Powernotebooks.com

1 PowerPro L 8:15
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) "Matte" LCD w/PCI-e nVIDIA GeForce Go
7600 w/256MB
Intel® Core™ Duo T2400 1.83GHz Processor w/2,048k L2 On-die cache
- 667MHz FSB
1,024MB (1 SODIMM) CORSAIR DDR2/667 Memory
80GB SATA/150 Hard Drive at 5,400 RPM
Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW Drive w/Softwares
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g
Smart Li-ion Battery (9-Cell)
Arctic Silver 5

 

can some one elaborate on the subject of the TPM module ?
purpose
cons
pros

thank you

 

Purpose: security.

It's not supported by Windows XP, you'll need Windows Vista to benefit from it.

 

TPM is supported by Windows XP. For complete details go to http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx.../channel/productOverview.jsp&pageTypeId=17099 and
http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx.../channel/productOverview.jsp&pageTypeId=17099

 

Just got mine today
very elegant , great screen zero dead pixels.
extremely quiet , cd/dvd not as loud as people say especially in comparison to other laptops ive seen.
very quick, sturdy and generally impressive so far.

the wrist support on the left hand side gets warm fairly fast. have not used it for extended periods of time yet so i dont know if the temperature rises further.
you guys experience the same ?

 

thanks a lot

 

This is normal on all laptops. The hottest components are under the left wrist area. Even under heavy loads, the HEL80 seems to keep relatively cool compared to other systems that I've used.