a couple quirks on my T42 2378 FVU

[S P]

Howdy folks,

I have a T42 2378 FVU and noticed a couple of quirks and was wondering if anybody else may have noticed them or if it's just me. This has the Pentium-M 1.7g 2mb L2 cache, 40gb 5400rpm drive, 1400x1050 14" screen, and the Radeon 9600 chip. Came with 256M and I put another 256M in it for 512M total.

When running off the battery in super power save mode I notice that sometimes the current draw will stay up around 1.00A which is quite high and eats away at the battery pretty quickly. It "should" be settling out at about 0.68-0.72A. Sometimes when it gets "stuck" if I put it into sleep mode and then wake it up again then it'll shut off whatever was drawing all the current since it settles out to 0.68-0.72A then. Any clue what might be causing this little quirk? I haven't yet figured out the exact scenario when it hangs at 1.00A, but I think it's only on a fresh boot. If it's already been in sleep mode once it'll always go down to the lower current draw. I think.

The other quirk is that sometimes coming out of sleep mode the video is really really laggy. i.e. I have 5 different IE windows open, and switch to another one, and then there's a second or so lag while it redraws the entire window. Most of the time it's pretty much instant (like it's saved in video memory?) but once in awhile (like right now) it seems to have to redraw all the time? I have the 14" 1400x1050 screen with the newer Radeon 9600 chip (I think it's the 9600) so perhaps this might be a driver issue? I also have 512M of RAM so I know that's not a problem.

Aside from those two little quirks I LOVE the laptop. Great battery life and the screen and performance are awesome. I also had a T41 but for some reason that one died after 27 days (returned). My wife also has a T40 (Pentium-M 1.6, 40gb, 512m, i forget the model code) and that's been flawless also.


Oh, one thing I noticed on the wife's T40, my T41 that died, and my T42. There seems to be this "surging" sound which is really hard to explain once in awhile. It almost sounds like some sort of fan is cruising along and then something kicks it suddenly from a low to a high speed, and then backs off almost immediately. It's really quiet and subtle so you never hear it if there's any sort of background noise. Since this is common on all the T-series I've had I assume somebody else has noticed this also.

Thanks for any help!

S P

[admsteiner]

The other quirk is that sometimes coming out of sleep mode the video is really really laggy. i.e. I have 5 different IE windows open, and switch to another one, and then there's a second or so lag while it redraws the entire window. Most of the time it's pretty much instant (like it's saved in video memory?) but once in awhile (like right now) it seems to have to redraw all the time? I have the 14" 1400x1050 screen with the newer Radeon 9600 chip (I think it's the 9600) so perhaps this might be a driver issue? I also have 512M of RAM so I know that's not a problem.

Same thing with my T42-2378FVU, not sure of the cause though

Oh, one thing I noticed on the wife's T40, my T41 that died, and my T42. There seems to be this "surging" sound which is really hard to explain once in awhile. It almost sounds like some sort of fan is cruising along and then something kicks it suddenly from a low to a high speed, and then backs off almost immediately. It's really quiet and subtle so you never hear it if there's any sort of background noise. Since this is common on all the T-series I've had I assume somebody else has noticed this also.
S P

Same with me. I posted a message here and it seems like that's the normal thing for it to do, just expel the hot air for 2 seconds and shut off for the next couple of hours...

--Adam