I’m looking at getting a new laptop that doesn’t suck at gaming (like my 700m).

I’ve been looking at the Apple Macbook Pros, Dell Inspirons and most recently the Dell Vostro. The Vostro 1700 has a keypad on its keyboard, which I find a really bad decision. So, I’m looking at the Vostro 1500 right now. Decked out to specs that I’d be happy to use, it’s ~$1175 shipped including tax.

Now, to get the wife’s approval .

So after ~6 months with my DLP HDTV, while watching Hell’s Kitchen on my HTPC, after an hour of playing Gears of War on 360, I heard a popping noise, then beeping, then the picture on my TV went blank. I turned it off for a few minutes, then turned it back on, seemingly no problems.

I wonder if that means that the lamp is going dead. 6 months is pretty fast, I heard it takes at least 2 years for the lamp to go out. Then again, I have the TV on for probably an average of 4-5 hours a day, probably more than the average TV user.

So I’m going to call Samsung, to see what the problem could have been. Amazon says

Warranty
It’s backed by a 1-year warrant on parts (including lamp) and laboe [sic], with in-home service backed by Samsung toll-free support.

In true style, I was wearing my Woot! t-shirt today. Then I come to find out that they start a Woot-Off. Coincidence? I think not.

Whoever though up this message, that pops up every few minutes after you’ve done a windows update and not restarted, should be shot, revived, and shot again.

Seriously, I KNOW I need to restart, you’ve TOLD me that 100 times. Let me get work done without your annoying interferences…

To be fair, if you do a system update on a Mac, you can’t even close the update window without selecting “Shut Down” or “Restart”, a similar annoyance.

This might come as a surprise, but I don’t power on my computers for the sole purpose of updating them. If I’m doing something and they want me to update, I will. If it’s an annoyance, maybe I will no longer.

:growl:

So I was plugging in XBoX 360 #3 for LPoTA5, and when I first turned it on there was a flashing red ring around the power button. At first I was convinced it was the red ring of death, and was of course upset about it.

But then I realized the video wasn’t plugged in, and that’s what happens if you turn it on without video plugged in.

Phew, crisis averted .