So Tiger is a good place to order from? I'd like to get a higher end computer just because I do like to play some good ol computer games every now and then. Sim City 4 was one of my faves!

 

Tiger is hard to beat. Hard to beat their return policy too.

If you want a good gaming machine, get the fastest cpu you can and not worry about dual core or quad core. Those are only good if you do more than one thing at a time. My buddy got a 3ghz single core box for $200 a year ago. He's a W.O.W. nut.

The 2.6 ghz one I'm getting is really only twice faster than the pentium 3 I got in 2002! But it will do 2 things twice faster at the same time. And when I'm running various trading platforms and a bunch of explorer windows, I need as many cores as I can get really.

 

Well, I had my girlfriend's brother (the owner of the new 230) tape up the airbox (he only had masking tape, I'll replace with duct tomorrow), and do a few adjustments to the carb and it didn't pop right off. He's new to ATV's though so maybe it'll pop off for me tomorrow. Have any other ideas on getting it started or should I just try to keep adjusting the carb?

This computer stuff is just so frustrating. Part of me wants to just get that Gateway with the 1GB dedicated graphics vs the ASUS's 512MB, and hope it'll last a little longer. The laptop from school before this Toshiba Portege tablet, was a Gateway Tablet, and it was really nice; one of the best computers I've had. I haven't had many of them though. My family has had a few Dells, all have sucked; and a couple of HPs, they're just clogged with all sorts of junk AOLish and free-to-try programs (or at least they used to be).

The one thing I wish these computers had though was a back-lit keyboard! That would be so nice! One cool thing about the ASUS is all the LED lights on it and there's a small LCD screen above the left side of the keyboard where you can check emails, monitor system performance, instant message, etc., for when you're running a full-screen program.

I wish you could try them more before you buy them. Just try out the games I want to run and see how they do.

OH and I'm pretty sure the ASUS has a facial recognition login feature using the integrated webcam! That would be cool!

The 2 main specs that are holding me back on the ASUS though, are its 2.13 GHz vs Gateway's 2.26GHz (but will I even notice???), and 512MB Video Memory vs the Gateway's 1GB (but again, how big of a difference is that, really???)

I just don't know.

EDIT: And this spec is playing a LARGE role too: ASUS: $899.99 Gateway: $1149.99

 

Another cool feature on the ASUS is the quick boot feature. If you just need to check your email or something quick, you can boot up the computer but not Windows, and go into a super basic operating system. That way you don't have to wait five minutes for Windows to load.

 

Doesn't the carb have a choke? Did you try that?

I can't believe video cards have that much memory now days! Either of those figures would be a VAST overkill to me. To you??? I don't know.

You certainly wouldn't notice a difference in the 2.13 and the 2.26 though. The mobo, bus speed, etc will have more to do with it. Back in 2002 I pieced together a system that cost me $3000 with a dual cpu Iwill board and 2 - 1.13ghz tualatin 512L2 cache cpus. It would easily outrun a 2ghz P4 and was the fastest thing around until probably 2005. Pentium 4 got off on the wrong foot with RDRam and ended up having to be backward compatible with DDR (which took off and RD was left in the dust). I've been out of the loop since I bought this system back then, but things have gotten so processor intensive, that I've been forced to upgrade after 7yrs on the same pc. Although, people are still impressed and curious why my machine pulls up webpages faster than theirs. The best I can figure is its the L2 cache and not lots of crap loaded into memory (startup progs, Gay-OL, Dell/HP crap, etc).

Did you look at Tiger? They not have anything you like? The Gateway you're looking at has a bigger screen than the Asus. A couple inches worth $300 to you?

You need to ask a real gamer to know if you'd notice a difference in video memory. I'd think the GPU and memory speed would have more to do with it than memory size, but I'm not exactly sure.

 

Yeah, Asus has always been top of the line. You could do a lot worse.

Gateway is probably ok too, but I'm just saying they're bankrupt. Charter cable is bankrupt too and their customer service sucks, to say the very least. Why should they care??? They're bankrupt and they have a monopoly! I have no options and they have nothing to lose.

Dells suck, like you said. And HP is filled with HP crap, like you said. At least they used to be, like you said.

 

I told him to choke it, but who knows if he knew how. I'll work on it a bit tomorrow.

I'm not sure on the video cards. I know even the 1GB Gateway can't run the best games on full settings.

Tiger didn't seem to have the best selection of video card equipped laptops in this price range. Best Buy only has 3 though, haha.

And no, 3" isn't worth the $300 bucks, in fact I prefer a slightly smaller laptop. I'm just wondering if the 1GB of video is worth the $300 extra.

Here's a topic I posted in the Gamespot forums w/ a poll. Right now its a 60/40 split in favor of the Gateway.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums...7455#310987455

 

Charter is a joke! I have them down here at school for my internet and get this! I order 10mb service and I would do speed checks every now and then and usually get just pathetic speeds, something like 3-4mb. I just kind of figured it was the speed test site or something trying to sell they're speed increasing programs. So when Charter put up their own speed test and I still clocked in around 3-4, I called them. After about an hour chatting online, and an hour on the phone, we found out the jacka$$ that put in my modem, put in a modem that was only capable of 5 mbps!!!!

The good news is I got refunded the difference in price between 5 and 10 for all the months I had it, (Aug 08 -Mar 09) and they re-instated my introductory rates which would be $30 a month for 5mbps.

So it turned out to be an alright deal!

 

You're lucky they didn't tell you to take your finger, lick it, and stick it up your moon-pie.... In a heavily spanish accent of course.

 

Got to http://www.tomshardware.com/us/#redir and see what he thinks of the graphics cards and cpus.