Questions/Confusion on new NP2096

Hi all. I appear to be all over these forums. Got a NP2096 2 days ago. Fired it up yesterday for the first time to check it out.

I have got to say the boot up is extremely slow. My son thought something was wrong with it, but I just sat there and waited. Once it booted up I noticed almost a dozen icons that are running in the tray. I'm wondering if I can get that down a little.

But anyway. My confusion... the manual says that for the first time to fully charge the battery then to fully run down the battery before charging it up again. Somewhere on these forums, I found a battery guide that says never run down the battery for risk of damaging it. Who's right?

And something strange. When I first booted into Vista, the screen was nice and bright. (Still running on AC) Several minutes later, the brightness was reduced. I found the power window and the screen brightness adjuster, but I can't get the brightness back to the same level. Am I missing something?

Oh. I tried the WiFi at my sons Karate School last night. It works great. But I noticed I needed a passwork to get on. Excuse my ignorance, but is a password required for everyplace that has WiFi? Starbucks, library, College, a pizza place down the street from the Karate school?

Finally, I'm running 64 bit Vista. Can someone recommend newer video drivers that are phyX enabled for the laptop. My son wants to try Mirrors Edge.

Thanks for the help.

 

No worries
We were all like that when we started

To check how many programs start up with your pc do this

Go to start and in the search bar type run, and choose the program that shows up
OR
Press the Windows key + R at the same time to open up the run box.
When open, type msconfig and press enter
Choose the startup tab, this shows you all the programs that run when you turn on the laptop.

Disable what you don't think you will use, if you are not sure. just ask us

Are you sure that you are running in high performance mode??
Go to the power options in the taskbar, and make sure it is set to High Performance
There is also an option to change the brightness using the keyboard.
Press the Fn key, along with a key that has a circle printed on it [looks like a sun]

That depends on the network, not the laptop some places secure their networks, while others don't.
If you are somewhere like Starbucks, you can usually ask the person at the counter to give you the password.

I would suggest checking out the Sager website, or just getting the latest nVidia drivers for laptops, version 179.28, which is available on their site

Hope this helps,
Ask anything else, I'll be happy to help

 

Thanks for the help. Power setting showed it was running in "balanced mode."
As for the video drivers... what about these...

http://laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22523

Except I don't know anything about modifying the .inf file.

Sagers website shows 176.31 drivers. Don't know if those are phyX enabled or not. The 179.28 from Nvidia are. I'll give those a try.

 

That's it
High performance means that your CPU and GPU run at full speed, while brightness is also maxed.

You should only change this when you switch to battery

Those drivers from laptop video are custom drivers, and they are harder to install than normal ones.
If you think you can install them, they sometimes give better performance than the nVidia ones.

Personally I like the ones available for notebooks from nVidia's website, beacuse you can just download them, double click, and they install
I say give them a try

Hope this helps
Good luck

 

If u r using Vista! then u gotta follow this guide asap!! - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

definite speed gains guaranteed!!
My lappy boot times decreased like anything!

Also here are some awesome tutorials - http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/

And - change the power setting to 'High Performance' that would spped things up!

 

I take it 'High Performance" is to be used while plugged into the charger and 'Balanced' is to be used while on the battery?

Also, while the laptop is at home, can I pull out the battery and run the laptop just off the AC adapter? Or does the battery have to be in always?

 

Technically this would be the best setup. You can use "Power saver" mode as well for the longest possible battery life.

You can remove the battery from the notebook while running off the AC adapter. This would also help prolong the life span of the battery.

 

Your brightness issue is due to WOW Video. Alot of us had the same problem. Go to add/remove programs and uninstall it. It's completely useless anyway.

 

I second that

 

hi all. I thought I would keep this thread going for as long as I can.

Still working on the brightness problem. I've gone into the power setting and maxed out the slider bar for brightnes and also set it for performance while using the AC adaptor. Hasn't really worked. When its booting, its nice and bright, 10 seconds into the Windows desktop and the brightness drops. The "Fn"+"Sun up" button only works soo far..but not enough. I'll try the WOW video tonight when I get home from work. I managed to reduce my boot-up time. Little better now.

For my next problem. Cannot get the dial-up modem to work. I've set it up with my ISP and everytime I try and dial, I get a blue screen and then it re-boots. Every blue screen gives me a different message. IRQ is less than or equal to 0, something about pagfile, something about removing new hardware or software. Sometimes there is no error message, just a blue screen with a stop error code then a reboot.

Prior to trying the modem, I installed the 179.28 video drivers. (and they work great.), Installed Comodo Firewall (Royal Pain.), deleted the trial version of MS Office and install assistant and installed my copy of MS Office Small Business 2007.

Added on: Just checked Compals web site regarding JLH90. They list 3 different modems/drivers for their laptop. Sager only lists one. Any chance Sager gave me the wrong driver?