OFFICIAL Statement regarding the Sager NP9260 (Clevo D900C/D901C) Quad Core Information

Nope, just take a quick look at the easily available literature to see if there are any significant issues getting sufficient attention from the "public" that they should be taken into account.

It's a common-sense sort of thing. When you go to cross the street, do you just look straight ahead and assume you can go if the bit of road directly in front of you is clear of cars, or do you take a look to each side and, if you see a car coming, do a quickie "analysis" of whether you think you can get safely across before the car intersects your intended path?

Really, it's not rocket science.

BTW, in general, if a buyer refuses to make a reasonable inspection of the goods purchased prior to the sale, that refusal may waive the implied warranty of fitness. See, e.g., Ladner v. Jordan, 848 So.2d 870 (Ct. App. Miss. 2002).

That is precisely the point of the old adage caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. Silence, by itself, is rarely the equivalent of an affirmative misrepresentation. In fact, so long as a salesperson doesn't get down into detailed facts that are objectively either true or false, they can in fact make statements that many would regard as misrepresentations - it's called puffing.

Doing a quick google on "puffing & misrepresentation & sales" brings up a plethora of summaries and examples. For example:

Statements such as "the horse could be ridden and shown" and "there was no problem with the horse that would prevent him from being shown" and "the horse had participated in competitions in the past successfully" were not actionable misrepresentations by Seller regarding a lame horse Seller sold to Buyer even though Buyer had affidavits from prior trainers that Seller had been told 11 months before the sale that the horse was not physically sound enough to be a show horse, that the unsoundness was not evident merely by inspecting the horse visually, and that the Seller purchased the horse for a bargain price of $1,000 on account of the lameness. Such statements were "mere opinions, commendations, or puffing," thereby defeating the express warranty claim, and since the horse had actually been able to perform at the time Buyer purchased the horse, Buyer's implied warranty claims failed as well. Sheffield v. Darby, 535 S.E.2d 776 (Ct. App. Ga. 2000).

For a more amusing case, involving breach of warranty claims made in the context of the Tyson/Holyfield fight where Tyson bit Holyfield's ear, see the following: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/comdiv/Law Report Files/January 1999/Castillo.htm

As the court in that case points out, generally, either "a statement of fact or an affirmation of the quality of the thing sold is required to maintain a fraud or breach of warranty claim...." (citations omitted).

Finally, methinks you may have confused negligence with necessity. It is no defense to a claim of negligence that your only alternative was to not buy the risky, experimental system and instead buy another computer. Negligence, in general, consists of the failure "to use that degree of care that an ordinarily prudent person would have used under the circumstances...." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence

Thus, if an ordinarily prudent person would not have purchased the risky, experimental system in question, but would have instead purchased a different system, then anyone who goes ahead and purchases the risky, experimental system is, almost by definition, acting negligently - and if that person knew or should have known the particular risks they were getting into, then their actions might begin to verge into assumption of the risk, which is an intentional act as opposed to a merely negligent act.

 

With respect to assumption of the risk, whether or not the warranty agreement contained any express statements regarding the purchaser's assuming certain risks is not dispositive.

A person impliedly assumes a risk when they knowingly and voluntarily use a product that injures them. In this instance, the more appropriate variant would be that a person assumes the risk of meltdown of a risky, experimental system if they knowingly and voluntarily purchase that system. Further, the level of requisite knowledge is not as to the exact details of how the system might fail, but a merely the degree to which the purchaser knows that there is a substantial risk of failure if the product is used as intended. {Cites may be added later if I feel like doing more research}.

 

This forum is not "easily available literature." As far as I know Clevo has not published or announced anything to the general public about the suitability of quad-core processors, merely to resellers and OEM's.

In this case a reasonable inspection would not necessarily show anything, as the quad-core may cause long term damages even if it works fine at first.

The bolded above is not stated by the reseller, and is not generally available knowledge. Several news announcements have been made publicly about quad-core notebooks, and to the best of my knowledge they don't characterize them as in any way risky to the long term stability of the machine.


You seem to think that this system being risk or expiremental is generally available knowledge, which it's not. If that were the case, then I would agree with most of your arguments.

 

I don't like to play with words neither I write english that well (I'm Portuguese) but the point is if one is no expert (most users) and there is contradictory information in the market (put forward by "experts") that person is not in a position to make a sustainable decision on what to believe. So basically he/she as to trust that the supplier is selling the product accordingly to its claims, granted that by doing this there is a risk but is one that is standard for any kind of business transaction.

"risky, experimental system"

This is the judgement of some people, not the judgement of the supplier. Are your defining "experimental system" as not endorsed by the manufacturer? Hope not otherwise all the d900c would be a experimental system as of not endorsed by Intel according to my temp readings and Intel specs.

"Nope, just take a quick look at the easily available literature to see if there are any significant issues getting sufficient attention from the "public" that they should be taken into account."

In that case no one could ever buy products from Microsoft, Alienware etc etc. I do understand your point but that kind of argument works only in very special occasions. For instance when bad reviews are widespread and easily acessible (Jounals, Magazines, Several sites on the NET, TV, Radio, Literature, etc etc) not simply on a forum on the net that you may or not read. None of my work colleges (over 100) for instance knew that a laptop such as the d900c (mine is blue) existed. The first time they saw it "Wow wow wo, does it do coffee too?". I work in IT.

It's funny, as a Portuguese I get the impression that in the US people sue companies, organizations and other people for absulutely ridiculous things and get their way with it, but also companies escape liability for things that are absolutely obvious.

Trance
PS: I'm not saying I would buy a Quad Core (I don't want one or need one), maybe if I lived in Canada.

 

Any more posts and the title of this thread'll have to be changed to Warranties 101; that would be a shame, so I'll just shut up on the topic.

Last comment: If you are serious about understanding all the nuances of warranties and their enforcement, get a hornbook on the UCC and sales or speak to your attorney.

 

Any official statements about using the Intel extrerme C2D X7900 in the M570RU? PCMicroWorks has just announced their new "Horizon" system, which looks an awful lot like the M570RU, with the X7900.

The T7700 has a TDP of 35W while the X7900 has a TDP of 44W, according to this document: http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/31674504.pdf

Will that raise the same sort of concerns as were raised about running the Q6600 in the D901C?

 

This is all academic. The odds of Eurocom shipping a Quad Core laptop while Clevo is saying they wont stand behind it are very close to zero. Once Clevo signs off, all of the companies will start shipping. Taking some pre-orders is alot different than delivering product.

 

Davdob, you hit the point directly spot on!

Shyster1, the announcement about using the X7800 was posted back in July, and it still holds true for the X7900.

In an email from Clevo to Sager, Clevo stated the following:

"In order for the X7800 to work there are 2 pre-conditions.

1. For the M570RU to support the X7800 – there are two conditions to support
a) Environment degree: max. 30 Celsius.
b) It can’t do over drive due to thermal issue."

Sager will not be accepting these 2 pre-condition therefore Sager will not be making the mobile extreme processors available as an option.

Others may choose to do so at their own risk.

 

I'm sorry man but your a bit late to the party. These are not pre-orders. There are now 5 resellers shipping the D901C with a Q6700 cpu in it. Welcome to last month.

 

awesome. Let me know when you or anyone you know is holding one.

 

Will do, PM do? or do you want to send me your email address?

 

Thanks for the reminder. BTW, since, as Wu Jen posts, a number of resellers have been shipping D901Cs with the quad-core CPU, have you heard any scuttlebutt about how those shipped systems are doing?

 

We wouldn't know anything about that since neither Sager nor PowerNotebooks.com will have nothing to do with them unless and until Clevo certifies the Quad Core processor.

I am eager to see if someone actually receives one and posts their findings. Then of course I will be eager to see of those findings change over time, assuming they are actually shipping.

 

Why keep it private?

Let's see the results here on the forum.

 

toward Wu Jen... u prolly know PCmicroworks is allowing the Q6700... do you plan on upgrading your system with that processor? plus it shud be covered under their warranty.... and i havent rele read all the new info here, except there apparently has been alotta controversy over wat a warranty handles... bottom line... if the thing just fails... and u had a warranty.. the reseller must do something.. even if its buy a new system...

 

Bottom line, you should take the time to read Shyster1's posts about warranties before you take the position that "..... the reseller must do something.. even if its buy a new system..."

 

I agree resellers aren't to be trusted and everyone should never deal with them because they are all worthless to honoring warranties. Is that your position?

Somehow I don't think that's the message you want to put out.

Edit: And I don't think your going to go smearing Eurocom, Pioneer, PcMicroWorks, Xtreme Notebooks or any of the other's offering Quad Cores atm are you?

I'm personally waiting for the X6900 to be released, depending on it's price vs the Q6700 I'll make my decision which way to go. If I go the Q6700 route I won't hesitate to post about it in the D901 Owner's thread. I've never held back any information from our community. Why start now?

 

Seems interesting, q6700 would be a nice upgrade, but i am not sure the cooling system can deal with such heat. I ve been running a few test on my e6700 9260 and its getting cpu heat between 41-58 celsius with high loads (as per speedfan under vista 64 bit). I am not sure if those numbers are accurate, but if they are how can the np9260 deal with processors that have twice as much heat dispersion. Unless there is a modification of the cooling system it just seems doubtful quadcores processors can ran without heavy stability issues.

 

That's not super high. Here are my speedfan results, as posted in the D901C Owner's Thread. Note: No notebook cooler used.

ACPI Thermal Zone: 36C (Fans on Full (Fn+1) / Normal Load - Web Browsing etc)
Core0: 24C
Core1: 24C

ACPI Thermal Zone: 53C (Fans on Full (Fn+1) / FULL 100% CPU usage load for 5 min (Running W-Prime)
Core0: 52C
Core1: 52C

ACPI Thermal Zone: 50C (Fans on Auto / Normal Load - Web Browsing etc)
Core0: 40C
Core1: 39C

ACPI Thermal Zone: 61C (Fans on Auto / FULL 100% CPU usage load for 5 min (Running W-Prime)
Core0: 58C
Core1: 59C

I don't think cooling will be a problem to be honest. This is one of the coolest running notebooks I've owned.

And with 5 Resellers offering the Quad Core atm, it looks like the list just keeps going.

Vodoo PC, Eurocom, PcMicroWorks, Pioneer, Xtreme Notebooks

 

True these are good for the current dual cores we have, but what can we expect with a Q6700 . Quad cores are bound to make a lot more heat, if we are already reaching 60 c with dualcores, quadcores risk to make it like an oven. Do you know if these resellers have modified the cooling system in anyway?

 

my older D900T with p4 3.6 (which it is rated at 125 watts) produces alot more heat than the quad core and the notebook cools it just fine. heat and cooling is not the issue.

 

You have a quad core? ^^

 

nobody has, but they can be ordered now. But Clevo clearly states that they dont recomment it so it makes things a bit doubful about resellers that package it. Guess we will have to wait until people get them and get some readins on temperature and stability... wont probably know until 1 month or more opf people getting them... if no major issues and overheat or voltage bricks maybe viable... personally until clevo says its ok i wont try it!

 

I think I have made my position pretty clear. ANYONE...that is OEM, reseller or end user who installs the Quad Core at this time...prior to Clevo's certification of it, does so at their own risk. ANY OEM or reseller who warrants it at this time is very suspect and I would not advise anyone to rely on that warranty (take the time to read Shyster1's comments...particularly regarding assumption of risk by the end user). While it could possibly work (although others have reported that it doesn't) until Clevo certifies that it can be warranted long term anyone attempting it is pretty foolish.

Take another look. No one has shipped one with a Quad Core yet, and your list of those offering it is shrinking.

 

Can you please post your emails from these companies to show us that you absolutely KNOW that none have shipped a Quad core equipped notebook?

And exactly how is my list shrinking? It's growing...there were only 4 companies shipping when we 1st started this discussion. Now there are 5.....lets see 4 to 5....yup that's shrinking alright.

Edit:
Well, apparently Xtreme has been selling and shipping quad core units. According to this article.

 

Hey, guys.

Just jumping in the middle here in case you're interested...

I have had my Clevo D900C (customized by Xtreme Notebooks) for about two weeks now. I'm still getting my apps installed and tested, but I wanted to let you know that my experience to this point has been excellent. The drivers provided by Xtreme Notebooks work perfectly. Even the BioShock Demo, which I have heard has problems running on Alienware notebooks running the 7950 GTX video cards runs fine on my machine with the same cards, SLI or not... a little bit choppy at the highest settings, but it's a cutting edge game, so I guess that's to be expected.

I have installed Vista Ultimate 64 on another partition and am playing around with that, too. It seem to work just fine, but I've been spending most of my time under XP.

The laptop is surprisingly silent under normal operations. Push it with an advanced game and the fans kick in and contribute some noise. But at that point I really don't notice as the game conditions are too intense and the audio to involving to be distracted by the fans.

I ran 3DMark06 on it under XP. The results are at the url below. My machine actually has 4GB of RAM, all of which are recognized under Vista... XP shows about a GB less for some reason. Anyway, here's the link:

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?projectType=14&XLID=0&UID=10696646

I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have.

Jason

 

Quad Core CPU Q6700...oooh yeah! Thanks for the info jhaxton. Please keep us updated on your notebook! Take time and post in the D901C Owner's Thread.

Edit: Just a quick question, but what is your BIOS version?

 

Hi jhaxton,

what processor is in there (q6700? go stepping at 95 w?))? You didn t specify if it was a quad core or just a regular dual core. If it is a quad core what kind of temperatures are you getting from speedfan or any other temp software?

edit: If it is a quad core any modifs you know about from the original cooling system shown on regular dual core systems? From some readings it seems quad cores give out less heat than a x6800 at 2.93, but the voltage is still a bit high at 95 w ... guess will have to wait for a few ligit reviews or Clevo to say it is supported as they have everything to gain from saying it is working, better be carefull than too hasty and get alot of warranties to deal with . And yep would be interesting to know the bios version also .

About the 3 gigs under windows its normal, its becasue 32 bit cannot read over 3 gigs, have to be under a 64 bit operating system to get the full 4 gigs.

EDIT : Seems xtremenotebooks have pulled off their quad core option from their website and replaced it with call for more powerfull cpu options : http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/inde...&model_id=1269&include_type=16_inch&category=
This seems doubfull...


lates man!

 

Welcome man. Quads seam to rock & roll after all. Yeah, tell us more.

Trance

 

Actually he did, if you bothered to click on his 3dMark06 Link, scroll down and it has the hardware that it was run on.

Exactly what is doubfull(sp?), I just called Xtreme and they are still offering the Q6700. They wouldn't tell me the BIOS version or if they made any motherboard modifications though. I guess they thought I was a competitor, lol! But as of this posting they are still offering the quad core.

 

K well thats good to know. We'll see how it goes, if there are good reports, might upgrade it myself to a q6700. Time will tell... i ll wait until i get some sort go ahead from clevo or hear some good reviews and reports from trusted sited ;p

 

Eurocom has pulled the option entirely, and extreme appears to be playing word games. Someone clearly told them to stop with the Quad Core, and that someone is more than likely Clevo. Either that or they have done more internal testing and arent satisfied. With this kind of back and forth, I think this is a very very clear case of Caveat Emptor.

If you are so desparate to get quad core that you feel the need to deal with it at this stage, I guess I am wrong and these guys are actually delivering units. But you better have good confidence in their commitment to stand by their warranties, because even they seem to have some trepidation at this point.

 

I'll check my BIOS version when I get home. I've actually spoken with the prez of xtreme notebooks and, although he didn't say what they did exactly, he did say they "did a lot of work" on the hardware. I do not believe my notebook is stock

As for the tempurature questions, I'm not really sure how to answer. I do run a laptop cooler pretty much all of the time just because I want to be nice to my machine. Although I do have experience building computers, I haven't built one in a very long time because I got tired of making mistakes with putting components together that should play nice, but didn't... too frustrating. Xtreme seems to have got it right with this one.

BTW, I am now completely spoiled. Got this hooked up to a 24" Dell monitor in my home studio. I bought this not only to provide me with a mobile platform for audio/video recording, but to replace my audio/video workstation at home. Now it looks like I'm going to replace my home office PC with this, too. I'm just thinking, how cool is that? It's going to do the work of 3 computers. That should definitly keep my home studio/office a bit cooler

And it looks like I'm going to have to get back into games again. I wonder how UT would play on this thing...

 

Yep, personally i would wait, unless you are doing 3d rendering there is not much use in quad cores right now. Game wise its pretty useless as mainly 2 cores iare being used... the two others simply sleep in the background ie: supreme commander supposed 4 core support ;p. In the future that might change, then again in the future clevo might also tell us it is safe and better more efficient qund cores with less voltage might be released. In the end it doesn t pay to be first time adopters in this case...

 

Ya, mon. The reason I went with a quad was strictly for audio work with Ableton Live. It supports multi-core, but not hyperthreading, which was killing me in the audio world on my old workstation, which is a hyperthreaded single core. My initial tests with my this new machine show going quad was the right move for me, but it probably isn't for everyone.

 

I wonder what kind of work they did, probably a modified cooling system, as a reseller i doubt they touched the mobo voltage and such... anyway would be interesting to find out these changes... guess thats for them to know and us to wonder ;p

 

I think what this is shaping up to be is that some resellers are trying to put in the new G0 stepping Q6600 and Q6700 stock. This is not working.

Other resellers are going the extra mile to put in more cooling, mobo revision etc. This appears to be working.

I think this is a good thing, it'll seperate the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. The resellers that can go the extra mile and make it work will be the ones to watch.

 

I agree.

Those who have the patience to wait for Clevo to do what is necessary so that the Quad Core can be installed in a model that can be properly warranted for an extended period will be the wheat, and those that cannot wait will be the chaff...to watch...out for.

A little patience will eliminate the need for any "Caveat Emptor" or "Assumption of Risk" and will reward those who want a laptop model with the Quad Core installed that is safe and long lasting with a reliable warranty.

 

I think I may have hit upon something.

The X6800 CPU is 75TDP...now at maximum it is drawing 226-242 Watts.
Idle Temp for me is around 40C and a maximum of about 61C.

The Q6700 CPU is 95TDP...now at maximum it is drawing 269-289 Watts.
Idle Temp is around 44C and maximum is showing 66C.

What I think they are doing is undervolting the Q6600's and Q6700's it would lower the actual wattage down to X6800 levels and also reduce the temp down to X6800 levels.

Undervolting is a relatively simple fix. No BIOS revision needed. No motherboard monkeying needed either.

What do you guys think? Jhaxton can you run CPU-Z and tell us what your VID is? I.e. Voltage? If its lower than 1.184V then it's more than likely been undervolted. Can you post it (along with that BIOS #) ?

Thanks!

Edit: I found most of the true wattage info and C at Anandtech Forums and Techgage Hexus had a good article on the Q6700 as well.

Now my question is how can the X6800 (stock not OC'd) which shows in many tests to draw way more than 220Watts, actually be drawing more than 220W from a 220W power brick? The LCD needs power, the HDD's etc. I know I'm missing something fundamental here.

 

Wu, the more I read from you the more I like you man. You seam to be an extremely reasilliant, organized and persistent person. Keep up the good work.

Trance

 

Wu Jen,

Thanks for posting some of those results. Its not a surprise that the power draw is larger than on spec. The very first post here points out real world results are alot different than controlled lab results.

I would be concerned that sort of draw would put alot of stress on the other mb components. Im (obviously) skeptical that this is an issue that will adequately be taken care of by the resellers modding existing Clevo boards. But right now for all we know the quad core could be outspeccing the MB 100% of the time.

Undervolting seems like a tough way to go to me. That would be a bit like buying a 500hp car with a screwy fuel injector that only let you get 300hp out of the engine. You would sacrifice the very performance you were buying the quad core for if you went this route.

 

Jhaxton,

can you run wPrime?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=123570&highlight=wprime

 

Undervolting to get around the heat and power drain of the quad core would really be the bad way to do it.

While undervolting does not down clock the processor, it does affect stability. This is why it takes so much time to find the right undervolt setting, as even five of the same processor from the same production batch would undervolt differently due to the tiny differences in both lower / higher quality and defected (deactivated) transistors out of the millions each processors has.

Undervolting is for people that are looking for a bit quieter systems or a bit longer battery life in laptops that are used for basic tasks it does not work well for users that require their system to run heavy tasks at will.
Notice how anything electronic that has any ratings it’ll always be a x amount +/- x%? Let’s say we have a CPU with voltage rating of 1.5v, it is rated for it to provide 1.5v to x millions of transistors. This would translate into 1.5v plus or minus x% divided by x millions of transistors in order for each transistor to work as designed.

You can undervolt enough to the minus x% but not more, as if you go under that it you will start to not have enough voltage to go around for every single transistors. They may work still but will start to lag in flipping their on and off switches. At this point you’ll start having crashes or, even worse, data corruption from missed calculations.

This it won’t happen as much during light usage, but for any heavy task the transistors needs to work at optimum spec and having any transistors lagging or just not doing their thing will result very unpleasant results.

 

Hey, folks. Here ya go (run under XP with all typical stuff running... virus scan, firewall, email, internet explorer):

wprime results (no cpu errors during tests)

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=641068

CPU-Z reports Voltage at 1.175v

-------------------------
CPU-Z version 1.40.5
-------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of cores 4 per processor
Number of threads 4 (max 4) per processor
Name Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700
Code Name Kentsfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66GHz
Package Socket 775 LGA
Family/Model/Stepping 6.F.B
Extended Family/Model 6.F
Core Stepping G0
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 2659.9 MHz
Multiplier x Bus speed 10.0 x 266.0 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1064.0 MHz
Stock frequency 2666 MHz
Instruction sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 2 x 4096 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line si
ze
Northbridge Intel P965/G965 rev. C2
Southbridge Intel 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) rev. 02
Graphic Interface PCI-Express
PCI-E Link Width x16
PCI-E Max Link Width x16
Memory Type DDR2
Memory Size 4096 MBytes
System Manufacturer CLEVO
System Name D900C
System S/N 0123456789
Mainboard Vendor CLEVO
Mainboard Model D900C
BIOS Vendor Phoenix Technologies LTD
BIOS Version 6.00
BIOS Date 06/06/2007
Module 1 DDR2, PC2-6400 (400 MHz), 2048 MBytes, OCZ
Module 2 DDR2, PC2-6400 (400 MHz), 2048 MBytes, OCZ
Windows Version Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build
2600)
DirectX Version 9.0c

 

it appears to be slightly under volted. can you tell us what motherboard revision you have? you should be able to locate this during the initial boot screen you can press the puase/break key to pause the screen. you may need to enter the bios and select the default boot screen with the beep sound as if it loads a custom graphic it will hide any of that info.

 

the wattage numbers can't be right. the power supply itself is only rated for 220 watts so it is not possible to supply a flow of more than that for extended periods of time.

 

Phoenix TrustedCore(tm) DeskTop
Copyright 1985-2006
All Rights Reserved
BIOS Revision: DC900C 1.00.03
KBC/EC Firmware Revision: 1.00.03N

CPU = 1 Processors Detected, Cores per Processor = 4
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66GHz
TCG is enabled
4095 System RAM Passed
4096 KB L2 Cache
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
Fixed Disk 0: ST9120823AS
Fixed Disk 1: ST9120823AS
Fixed Disk 2: ST9120823AS
ATAPI CD-ROM: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530A

 

you could very be the hero of this thread, jhaxton! i do not have the new D900C so maybe wujen or others can decipher your information.

 

Hah! Not looking to be a hero, but thanks!

Now I'm off to fight with Acronis... hopefully, they'll give me a way to fix my MBR after I stupidly decided it would be cool to install their OS boot management utility... but that's another topic altogether and thankfully it is just resulting in an error message at this point and is not affecting my ability to boot.

Back on this topic, I hope the info I provide will be useful to you all. So far, XP has been very stable... just one BSOD in 2.5 weeks and I think that was related to a driver upgrade. I blue-screened Vista a couple of time, but, again, that was related to software or driver installs and did not persist, so all is good - except that darn MBR... I just ordered a USB floppy drive in case I have to rebuild this thing from scratch sometime soon and want to keep XP - oh the joys of a having new baby

 

For reference, so we have a reason to cry in our beer... The E6600 pulled out of my Raptor-60 [D901C] and oc to 3.4 mhz in my desktop runs the WPrime in 13min 15sec versus the XtremeNotebook Quad score of 8min 32sec. Wow!

So if we could oc a q6700 cpu in a Clevo, the windows and doors would fly open or what? But then, wouldn't this toast all the Laptop competition out there and create waiting lines long enough to... What am I missing here?