Day 2 of the new lappy.

And it should be a non-event, right? Just another computer.

Mostly.

I had trouble ordering software yesterday, and the same problems repeated today, with the corporate CC being rejected. I *think* it's just run over the credit limit (which wasn't ever very high) and will begin to work again next month. At least MO is on the way now.

This afternoon's adventure was persauding it to work in clamshell mode.

I can see why some commenters have been so vitriolic about Windows 8 now - the control options for many functions seem to be legacy running right back to windows 2000 in some, but not all, cases. So working through control panel, when selecting power settings and behavoiur when the lid is closed you never quite know what kind of dialogue you will need to deal with, and in the case of behaviours when the lid is shut, there are 2 lots of dialogues, both covering the same things anyway.

What is even odder is that some of these dialogues resize to match the screen resolution and some don't, so one moment the dialogue with be screen-filling, while the next it will be so tiny it's hard to interact with at all. Is windows code now so vast that it's not possible to go back through and provide a unified look and behaviour? It certainly doesn't look professional after OSX, and TBH looks pretty bad compared to XP. Having Dell and Intel panels too doesn't help, because they also look as though they were made to look a bit like native windows controls, and then a bit not. Nvidia also has a control panel, but they do their own thing and there's no confusion.

The good, the bad and the yellow-ugly.

There are 2 things that are really striking about this laptop. One is the low weight and slim construction, so that there is the same weight as the Macbook, but in a thinner & wider body. It's a really skinny minny, and that makes for less thick metal therefore more flex when handling. It's not horrid and creaky like so many ligh (and not so light) laptops, but the flex is still there. I DO like the low weight though, and it's a good trade off.

The second is that screen. At native 3200:1800 it's incredibly sharp, clear and lovely. There's a setting on the 'Mobility' control panel for colour called 'Splendid' which makes anything with yellow or orange in it look like it's had WAY too much artificial tan sprayed on, and turning this off helped enormously. There's also a sort of monitor calibration feature that allows adjustment of certain factors, but that doesn't allow one to save different profiles. S'okay, I can live with doing it 'right' once & leaving it.

There are 2 things less good. The screen is REALLY glossy, to the point where there is always a reflection behind your head, but even that wouldn't matter if the screen didn't have a yellow cast to lighter areas when moving ones head up or down - even top & bottom of the screen look a bit yellow compared to the middle.  Not a problem for normal use, not so good for image editing. Oh well.

Overall I *hope* it will be good & well-behaved. It seems a decent device, so lets hope.