Lol "Continue"

Oh yea, Guy's gonna milk this man for all he's worth, lol

start with the drivers, they were released this month.

One Twitter person said that their latest driver rendered their computer unusable, not even booting into Safe Mode(or something, I forgot, but it made it hard to fix), so I'm hesitant to try that, but that does seem to be the first step. It only started recently, and I rarely update my notebook's graphics drivers, so my first guess was overheating. However, a can of compressed air didn't stop it from turning off my display & stop accepting key presses. I had the overheating problem before, and all it did was go to sleep(slowly). This time it sounded like my screen and speakers suddenly lost power, so I'm also suspecting a loose connection. It generally only happened when I was rendering 3D, but the very first instance was overnight when doing some maintenance task(defrag, maybe).

Considering my laptop is about 4 years old, I'm very tempted to buy a shiny new desktop for the awesome 3D rendering power & the ability to switch out old hardware.

sounds like the battery is going out. will take the power with it, even if on plug in power. Overheating can lead to 'loose components' as the thermal fuse goes out.

Either a nice cheep einbook machine or a new notebook does sound better than trying to nurse a dying notepad.

I'd be happy to suggest components if you've got cash though.

Just make sure the emachine has at least 1 pcie 16 slot so you can full access a decent video card (400+card)

My battery died years ago, and has been out of the computer since then to save weight. I upgraded the video driver last night, and unsurprising to me, the driver on there was just over 1 year old. Currently, my computer is running quieter, so that's a good sign. Of course, I let it cool down for over 12 hours(yeah, 1 hour's probably enough, but I didn't need it for 12 hours), and it's been doing very little in the 9 hours it's been on(I was at work most of that time), so the big test will be the next time I do some 3D work or get on Second Life.

It's very likely I'll be using my tax refund on a new computer, simply due to the huge render times on some of my projects. I've been waiting until I actually NEEDED more power, and my 3D work has definitely reached that level. I've done several overnight video renders for church projects in the past few months, and one actually took TWELVE HOURS because I'm rendering for 3 high-def screens(the time astounded a 3D artist friend of mine, because it's really a simple scene). Yep, I'm ready to upgrade, heh. Thankfully it's possible that I might actually be able to save up $1000 so I don't have to go cheap. This laptop cost me $750+tax, and I don't intend on going lower than that. I'll likely go with Amazon or Tiger Direct this time, partially for the tax savings.

I noticed that your profile says you use Ubuntu 10.10, which I'm sure is out-of-date information considering there have been 3 free upgrades since then. I figure you might like to hear that I plan on installing Ubuntu on my next computer, as well. Of course, I'll dual-boot with Windows 7(not waiting for Win8, especially since it isn't looking like an overly-important upgrade), but with my increasing focus on open-source software like Blender plus Gimp coming with a shiny new version(that I might actually use) in a few months, I might actually be able to go fully-Linux, except on very rare occasions.
I think the last version I used was 9.04, which I liked, but I relied on Windows programs like Photoshop too much to fully switch.

not three, 12 isn't out yet.

I do have 11.10 on my backup, no intention of messing with my windows 7 machine.

I've only really got windows because of my input card, doesn't like ubuntu, and my games, though most of the older ones run fine on wine.

Dual booting, even on a dual similtanious mother board is a pain(more so when you can't find the flop command) and if you're able to drop a grand I would get dual desktops. 2 e machines because of the bundled os, wipe one for ubuntu 11.x or 12.x then spend the extra 200 on an nvidia 400-500 series, just make sure the e machines have a pcie3. I'd probably buy one for investigative purposes, then go back next day for the second.

This and both e machines come with monitors and the new GTX series connect directly to tvs.

Personally I don't like intel, but this is a quantity over quality issue.

This is what I would of bought if I didn't pay off the car : 1104.04

You could always shave it down to less than a grand by dumping one of the 2 1t drives. and whence you do get ubuntu 11.x installed remember this: blender 2.62 has a bug in the weight paint system.

Oop, just started my tax refund and... I think I'll be saving up quite a bit longer. A $500 pc might be in my future instead, even. Still good, though, and the graphics card can come later.

that would be the e machine + 100$ graphics card (at least a g210), just make sure you have at least one pcie 16.

Or you could do the laptop thing again.