I actually have to agree with fixxor on this one. I found the 9800 to be a pretty solid card back in the day. In fact... I am still running a machine on the 9700pro series, both of which run halflife 2, ep. 1, ep2, portals, and tf2 just fine.

The 9800 pro to my understanding was the same card with more pipes and more video memory.

Actually, I think the 9800pro I got was bunk. The S-Video output was attrocious, and a lot of my entertainment efforts, in those days, involved parsing S-Video out to a big screen. In additition, it got about half the FPS of the card I was replacing in most games. Maybe because it was a Saphire.

But this sh*t ATI is pulling with this X1200 - deliberately setting up drivers to refuse to install it under XP, is just straight out. There's probably some third party Catalyst drivers that'll recognize it somewhere, but I dun wanna give ATI cash for joining the "force Vista down your throat" club. I'll be returning this laptop on my way home this afternoon.

I'm sure Vista will be a fine OS after a service pack or 2. If you remember, XP was pretty crappy back in the day, really anything prior to SP2. Sp1 was alright I suppose but it still had huge security issues. Zomg the spyware THE SPYWARE!

Yeeah... Seems the people who say, "Well, it'll go like Win2k->XP" - seem to be forgetting that Win2k is, to this day, vastly superior to XP.

I was hoping that Vista would go more like WinME - with an effective lifetime of under two years... Being built on the same flawed thought process: toss a bunch of new junk on an already aged kernel.

However, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Microsoft has been getting money from competing companies (Sony, amongst others) to push their product. (Seems there used to be laws against this sort of thing). So, unlike with WinME, I don’t think Microsoft CAN go back and scrap the idea for a better kernel, without losing the financial support that has made this Vista push possible.

This is also the first time, to my knowledge, that hardware manufacturers are deliberately sabotaging their products so that they only work on the latest operating system. I mean, before Vista was released and the various mainstream computer manufacturers got paid to shove it down our throats, most products had not only XP drivers – but Win98 drivers.

Now you see main stream graphic card’s “universal” drivers picking and choosing which hardware will work on which operating system – even though the extensions for all operating systems are clearly there, with said hardware using the same chipsets and all. You see this with motherboard's and built-in wireless LAN as well.

It used to be the level if cooperation between software/hardware companies for planned obsolescence was pretty subtle, but jeeze, they don’t even try to hide the collective cattle prod anymore do they?

By the gods, I wish I could go Linux…
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"If you constantly find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to reform." - Mark Twain
Thothie

If you don't mind not having a mic you can.

I can't use the mic on my laptop in Vista anyways... But sadly, there's a bunch of other software I use that doesn't seem to much like the Lindows/Wine suites either (granted, it's been awhile since I took a real stab at it).

Turning this thread into my laptop blog, but I figure midas well let the buyer beware…

Traded the Toshiba in for a new HP laptop, with an nVidia card, let us compare:

OpenGL based CAD software = WORKS! (vs. crash)
NS @ 1400x900 x0AA = solid 60fps (vs. 20-40fps)
MSC @ same settings = 50-60fps (40 when viewing reflections) (vs. 10-20/5)

HL2:EP1 @ same settings = a solid 60fps (Vsync-on) (vs. same)

So, moral to the story is, if yer playing old games, or using odd software:
nVidia 7150M > ATI X1200 (and indeed, I suspect, nVidia>ATI in general).

Now whether I can downgrade this puppy to XP is another issue – I’ve a feeling I can’t. but at least I don’t have to, unlike the ATI. I’ll fiddle with that within the next few days.

However, I must say, Toshiba makes a much better laptop than HP.
• Toshiba laptop’s venting system prevents “lap burn” and lets you safely set the laptop on a bed, while Hewlett Packard laptops vent from the bottom and back and are easily blocked.
• Toshiba laptop’s touchpads have friction, while the HP touchpads are the same sticky plastic the case is made of.
• Toshiba’s bloatware and Vista OS total to 12GB – while HP’s bloatware and same Vista OS totals 40GB – despite the fact they seem to be running basically the same crap, save for HP has an additional custom media center for use with their remote control. ( PS. Have we as a people gotten a wee bit too lazy when our portable devices have remote controls? )

Only advantage the HP laptop has over the Toshiba is a built in microphone – which is handy for taking memos (even if Steam doesn’t recognize it) – and I was quite surprised the Toshiba didn’t have one. Oh yeah… that, and it works in OpenGL. But if you can find a Toshiba with a nVidia card, I’d go with that over an HP.

That’s three brands of laptops I’ve been through in one week (the first was Gateway, which of course, I’d just flat-out avoid). With all of them, I think you more or less have to format these suckers from scratch for decent performance. They all come with so much demoware, bloatware, and spyware (custom rendered undetectable by Windows Defender, as part of the OEM package), that the additional system load is just staggering. You can’t use the restore disks on the new laptops, as they’ll restore all the bloatware as well. Takes about a day to comb all the crap out of em.

Sadly, Lady X got me the first laptop and a printer for herself on a rebate deal (with purchase of any laptop), so I was restricted to the selection they had at Fry’s, lest I wanted to rob her of her printer. In the end it cost me an additional $400 all in all, and I still didn't get the ideal laptop. As such, I'd avoid laptop shopping at Fry's - as their laptops are all basically the same (widescreen, touchpad, vista, bloatware) - so even though they sell 30 different laptops, there's very little real selection. (CPU, gfx, and size, is about it.)

When I'm done with all this, maybe I'll get to post in the political thread again.
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"OMG! Mario's gone into porn!" - Ex #7 upon seeing Ron Jerremy for the first time.
Thothie

so since ati isnt compatible with vista, does anyone know where i can get a copy of xp?... for, dare i say, free?

I think His Pinkness frowns upon us passing out pirate information on His forums. I suppose you could go so far as to recommend hunting on eMule or DC++ or some other pirate service, or try to configure Lindowz or some other quazi legal Linux based Windows emulation.

I should warn ye, as I discovered, some of the ATI line is not compatible with XP either. Like I said, the Catalyst drivers are designed specifically to not install in XP on the X1200 series, which is the main reason I took my Toshiba laptop back, despite the fact it is clearly superior, and cheaper, in all other respects than the HP I replaced it with.
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"Spin: arrrr, pirates of the south west
Spin: thar be large pipes o'bandwith near ye'ol univarsety.
Pirate: yearg, ye may be an ta somethan thar.
Spin: what say ye we pull yonder USB hard disk longside yonder NMSU puter and begin tha lutin and plunderin.
Pirate: yearg. The master done gaved me a testin machine with a grand ol CDR.
Pirate: Avast!
Pirate: MP3s off the starboard bow!
Spin: stere clear of ye porn pop ups rollin in from tha east.
Pirate: I have mah trusty Opera browsa to help me fend em off.
Spin: encrypt the data holds, batton down thar security patches, argh thar be spyware abound." - www.bash.org
Thothie

"cl_gammaramp 0"
very nice