BluePhoenix4k

i agree to the last two posts. for a good player that gives u several choices of how to display ur video, try GOM Player.

don't use itunes if you're worried about such things ;) .

imho people that think of running windows on a mac shouldn't buy one in the first place. everybody says that osx is a great os (which i don't doubt), but if u have to rely on two operating systems to get the job done, then rather stick with vista and get everything done without constant switching.

edit: about the design part. if you just look at their notebook lineup the design part is fairly insignificant. sure, they look good, but that's about all. my ibm looks great as well (more than 70% of the laptops i see are silver, it's nice to have something that sticks out of the crowd) and it works a lot better for what i need it. having to completely take apart a laptop to change the dvd drive is just wrong (just one example).

just taking up the example of eragon, the movie in my opinion was total crap. it didn't follow the stroy of the book for half the time and the ending was crap as well. it's probably one of the worst examples of a movie adaption. a good example would be lord of the rings, it didn't have as much detail as the books did but it did a nice job in showing the most important parts of the book while sticking to it.

u guys can earn money with those rooms :D

having just read that microsoft is planning to bring out windows vienna in 2009 i don't see any point of buying vista. sure, if it comes with a new computer it's ok, but spending money for a half hearted xp upgrade ... i don't think so.

just get a thinkpad t series with ati graphics and be happy :) . if you don't want to spend that much money take a lenovo 3000 series with the same specs. call me a fanboy but imho nothing beats a thinkpad in the way it's build and with a great blend of performance and endurance :) .

some firewalls block them as well, worth checking that :)

no need to feel unique if you're using opera ;)

right, commercially viable while being cooled with helium .... o.O

it depends if the fan on your cpu blows the air onto the cpu or away from it ... although i think the later is pretty uncommon today.

haven't had the time to read all the posts so far, so i'm not gonna comment on any :D .

in my opinion the iPhone simply doesn't have the right features to be a good deal. it doesn't have 3g, so as a business phone it's a no-go imho. it has lots of memory, yes. it has itunes compatibility, yes. but it's too big to be carried around as an mp3 player. i don't tink anybody will be going to the gym with this around his neck or in the pocket ... rather stick to the nano or shuffle for that. it is only compatible with software that is specifically made for it, no real open source. (afaik) and i personally don't like the touchscreen stuff, i'd prefer a keypad with more tactility.

if i had the choice i'd rather take a nokia e72 or the new communicator.

stupid brat, if that guy would've known how to keep a windows installation clean such thing wouldn't have happened. I have my current XP installation running for 1 year by now and it's perfectly stable. Just keep a backup image somewhere and your always good to go in a couple of minutes again.

well, do u only need it for gaming? or will u do something else as well? and how much is your budget? for me a thinkpad t60 is the perfect combination of pretty much everything, especially if u already have a desktop at home. i'd never buy a pure gaming laptop, they're simply too big, too heavy, they get awfully hot and u'll always need a charger around u ... it totally defies the meaning of a portable computer.

Maybe ur laptop is just not running on maximum performance but on power saving? My Laptop always switches to full power as soon as it's plugged in, but I know some that do not do such a thing and then the person in front of it is wondering why everything is so slow. Other than that, if you have a memory reset button in the driver setup I think u might have an ATI card? If that's so, then u should also have something called "powerplay", with that u can set the graphic card to full power in different ways, either for battery mode or while being plugged in. Furthermore u can turn down the amount of detail the card has to render during gameplay seperately for Direct3D and OpenGL. If u feel that the performance is not that good, I'd suggest that u take a look at that. My experience is that I don't notice much of a difference with those settings in terms of graphic quality but it does increase the speed.

for me personally a download accelerator makes no difference. i use opera at the moment and the download manager that is included is enough for me and fast enough. the last prog i have used before was leechget and i think it's still pretty good ... best of all it's free.

neither one, opera 9 :D ... imho it's the best one out there ... i haven't tried firefox 2 yet.

ibm keyboards are still the very best if you have to type a lot. or the natural keyboards from microsoft, if you liek the divided keypad.

i don't get all those worrying people ... just get the new battery they offer and everything is ok. in the case of buying a new one, just buy one that has been produced in August or September '06 or if that doesn't help, exchange the battery again. it's not sony's fault if the owners of the laptops don't come to them and exchange the battery, everyone knows about this by now.

or u just take a program called mediamonkey (www.mediamonkey.com) which does all the things that have been mentioned here before :) .

try out a software called virtual dub, i think it has a function for keeping the subtitles the way they should be while resizing.

thinkpads are pretty good, if you can live with the slower graphic performance. it's ok for most of the games, battlefield 2 for example runs pretty ok on my t43. but at the same time they can be pretty expensive.

i know this is a german website, but maybe u can still use it: http://www.cyber-system.de/ . it's a fairly known brand in germany, especially for it's customization and the changeable graphic card :) .

can't beat the click wheel? you're joking. in terms of user friendlieness every simple d-pad beats the click wheel. how often do i see people trying to go somewhere in the menu realy quick and then they scroll right past the menu point they've been looking for. any touch pad on an mp3 player is not a good thing if you want to do things fast, it's only style. i would be able to use my old iriver mp3 player blindfolded, just because it has a nice and simple joystick plus 3 buttons. on my meizu player i can at least tap the touchpad to go deeper into menus or scroll, that's still ok, but if i would have to rely on touchpad only i would die by the time i manage to find what i'm looking for.

I'll start with MediaMonkey, since this program makes life with my music collection super easy. After that comes Opera, the only browser that is fully customizable. Followed by TuenUp Utilities to keep the computer clean and tidy. And as a Thinkpad User I have lots of other small applications that make the daily work a lot easier :) .