nmX.Memnoch

The only thing that kills it for me is the contrast ratio. I normally don't look at anything with less than a 1000:1 contrast ratio. I know that the contrast ratios are subjective and vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but a low ratio is still a low ratio. Aside from that it looks to be a capable monitor...especially at that price. NewEgg doesn't have that exact model now and the one they do have is $549 + shipping. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824254026

Thanks for stating the obvious (to most of us). He asked the question...I answered with the necessary information. Yep...and his is one of them. The 2nd PCIe x16 slot is probably x4 on his board.

As you have found out already...the keys aren't interchangeable. For example, you can't use a Retail on an OEM disk.

As long as you have the required PCI Express X16 slots and enough power you shouldn't have any problems.

You're right, they will replace it...you just have to be very persistent. My first 2407 had a single dead sub-pixel--barely noticeable. Fortunately my power button crapped out within 2 weeks so I got it replaced under the Advanced Exchange warranty I have and the new panel has zero dead/stuck/bright pixels. But yeah...at least that can be said for Dell. Most of them will tell you to get bent no matter how persistent you are. I've been dealing with Dell for over a decade now and I can say that I've never walked away unsatisfied. Sometimes it took being a serious PITA, but it was always resolved in the end.

The x64 DVD is now available on MSDN (at least for VL subscribers...not sure about everyone else).

Ooooooooh...those are supposed to be really nice, too. I have the original 2407WFP and couldn't be happier (unless of course I had the newer HC version...or the new 2408WFP....or the 3008WFP). That's why I don't skimp on my monitor purchase anymore. I did that with the first two and then realized that I upgrade them far less than any other component of my PC so since then I've done exactly what you said...purchased the best/biggest LCD I can afford at the time of purchase.Dell also has a new Premium Panel Guarantee:

My Asus P5B-E has eight...but it's six via the ICH8R southbridge and two more (one of them being eSATA) via an integrated JMicron controller. Odds are, the one you saw is the same way as the ICH7/8/9 southbridges only support up to six SATA ports. I believe that NVIDIA's and AMD/ATI's southbridges also only support up to six SATA ports.

Most newer motherboards have up to six SATA ports on them. Six is plenty for most people. I have two RAID0 arrays setup in my machine using four drives...which still leaves me with two SATA ports available (my optical drives are still PATA for the time being). How are you planning on configuring the drives and why do you need eight SATA ports? If you really need that many you can get a nice PCI Express based add-in RAID controller and throw it in the second PCIe x16 slot (if you're not going to do SLI/Crossfire). Put your optical drives on the onboard SATA ports and use the add-in controller for the RAID array(s). I have to, yet again, throw in my recommendation for a 3ware SATA RAID controller should you decide to go that route. If you're going to use RAID5 I really have to recommend getting an add-in RAID controller. The onboard controllers all use the CPU to do the RAID calculations, which will decrease overall system performance. One thing of note that some may not be aware of. The onboard Intel RAID solutions "limit" you to four drives per array. If you plan on using more than four drives in a single array you'll have to get an add-in controller.

Yes, but they added an L3 cache that will be shared by all three die. They will use the L3 for communcation instead of the FSB. That should help with the FSB latencies. I do agree though...they should just get their native quad-core design out the door. I did some more research on CSI as well (which as it turns out, the official name is indeed QuickPath Interconnect). Both it and on-die memory controllers (OMC) will be available at the same time, as opposed to a staggered release like a originally thought. I'm not sure how much I really like the idea of an OMC though. Unless they take a different course of action than AMD did, you'll have to match the motherboard and CPU with the RAM. Right now I can take a P35 DDR2 based board and through (pretty much) any LGA775 CPU from Pentium 4 up to Core 2 Xtreme on the board. AMD, of course, has the same problem which is one of the reasons they haven't implemented DDR3 yet. I'm going to wait and see how Intel handles it before I pass judgement though.

The full SP1 integrated DVDs are being posted to MSDN now. I'm currently downloading the x86 Business/Home Basic/Home Premium/Ultimate ISO (it's the only one currently available).

It's not just the battery that you have to worry about...it's all of the components in the laptop. As puntoMX said...you could (probably would) end up frying the entire thing. Remember, computer components are very sensitive to massive voltage changes and 5V is a lot to those components.

I've read that they did some more compression optimizations that actually gives them more bandwidth with the 256-bit interface on the 9-series chips than the had with the 32-bit interfact on the 8-series chips. Time will tell, but I can't see them releasing the top end chips with only a 256-bit interface either.....but stranger things have happened. Maybe instead of a single 256-bit interface it'll be 2x256-bit. Until solid information is released this is all just speculation anyway.

In every increment that the monitor supports. @Bad boy Warrior: 1680x1050 is a 16:10 resolution, not 16:9.

I fail to understand why desktop features would be included in a server operating system. That's just additional cost overhead that 99.99999% of us don't want/need in our server OSes. Personally, I never saw the reason for people to run Server 2003 as a desktop OS. I could understand some perceived benefit since it has a newer kernel than XP SP2. But Server 2008 and Vista SP1 have the same kernel. Yes, some things are tuned a bit differently, but they're more geared towards making server-based applications work faster. If you want the desktop features, buy the desktop OS. Just my 2 cents.

I have two 24" monitors on my desk at work, both running 1920x1200. I've had this setup for about 3 years or so now. I have never had any sort of eye strain with this setup, even when I've had multiple applications open on both monitors for hours on end.

The resolution support should come from the monitor. If a graphics card says it supports "up to NNNN x NNNN" then it should support all resolutions up to that point. Specifically speaking though, I know that NVIDIA cards do support 16:10 resolutions of 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. The frame buffer amount is the limiting factor on resolution and color depth support...and even just 32MB of frame buffer should get you the necessary support. If the selections from within Windows don't show you the proper resolution then you either have the wrong driver installed or the driver didn't install correctly. Put it back to Plug and Play Monitor and reboot. The resolutions the monitor supports should become available then (I never install monitor drivers).

Most LCDs only support a 60Hz refresh rate. LCDs don't refresh like a CRT anyway so the refresh rate isn't as important. Something "close" to that resolution? Since 1680x1050 is the native resolution of the monitor you need to set it to exactly that resolution. Some higher end LCDs can scale other resolutions so that they look decent when not running at the native resolution, but others look absolutely terrible in anything other than the native resolution. We have some Viewsonics at work that are completely unreadable if you don't run them at the native resolution.

Intel's next architecture change is finally going to get rid of the shared FSB limitation. It's about time they get onboard with a point-to-point interface like hypertransport. I think they're doing it in a phased approach. The first change will be to include Common System Interconnect (CSI)--or QuickPath, or whatever they finally decide to call it--and then the next change will be to move the memory controller on the CPUs. And if I'm not mistaken, the Itanium CPUs are actually going to get CSI first.

I believe that Microsoft uses their CDIMAGE.EXE utility. They use it with an option that only writes duplicate files to the ISO once. You can find information about CDIMAGE on the MSFN Unattended XP site.

Nice...that information was just posted on TechNet Edge. That's an awesome site, BTW.

And they decided to not do that with the release of Server 2008. As mentioned in the following blog post, this was done for ease of patch releases. Did you notice that when Service Pack 2 was released for Server 2003 it was also released for Windows XP x64? Expect the same with Service Pack 2 for Vista...it'll also be released for Server 2008 at the same time. http://blogs.msdn.com/iainmcdonald/archive...ings-right.aspx

Did Hyper-V ship with this release? I thought Hyper-V wasn't going to be in the initial release, but would be released "within 180 days of RTM"?

Yes you can disable the default admin shares via GPO, but you take a chance on breaking other things like SMS. That gives them full admin rights to the PCs...which is why they can connect to the admin shares. *sigh*It probably doesn't. Lazy programmers have a tendancy to write their applications incorrectly so that by default only admins can use them properly. And then when someone asks why a regular user can't run the applicaiton they just give the default "it requires admin privs to work" answer. What you need to figure out is what areas of the workstation that AutoCAD requires write access to, then give regular users write access into those areas. Once you do that you can probably remove the admin privs. For example, if for some unknown reason AutoCAD needed write access to C:\Program Files\AutoCAD\ then you would give users write access to that directory. It's a little more research and work on your part, but it can (and will) save you a lot of headaches later on.

If the prices are that close definitely go with the 8GB model. The reason I say that is not only do they use more expensive ECC memory, but the current line of Precision workstations also use FB-DIMMs, which adds yet another price premium to the memory cost. I can say with certainty though that you will love the machine. I'm currently typing this on a Precision 490 w/ Dual Xeon 5160 3GHz, 4GB FB-DIMMs, 2x250GB SATA RAID1 and a Quadro FX 4600 768MB video card. The build quality of the case is top notch, the machine is very stable and performance is through the roof.