Hello All, new guy here.
I?m the happy new owner of a m6805. I?ve wanted a laptop for a long (read ? long) time but could never find one that offered a really good match between power and price. I finally decided that I had some spare cash and it was time to jump into the laptop arena. The idea of working from my porch in the spring simply got to appealing with this crappy winter? So I started to do some research and found a strong following for this line of emachines. Emachines?!? I thought ? are these people nutz? The more I read though the more I realized this is not the same emachines from the late 90?s. So I was convinced and set out to find the best deal I could. After a few weeks of patience and a couple of close misses I got my m6805 on ebay for $810. Woohoo!!!! This machine is simply awesome. I ended up getting it from a company in Toronto the deals in refurbs/shelf pulls/demo?s etc. From what I am lead to believe, mine was a Best Buy floor model. I was skeptical until it arrived and I ripped open the box (not original). The machine is in great shape (only a few minor scuffs on the top) and came with all the original trimmings: restore CD?s, manuals, cables, etc.
I spent a few hours and read through all the posts to this forum and found it was well worth it. There is a wealth of information here for the new M68xx owner. I was a bit concerned that mine would have cracked hinges as so many others. Not the case however, thanks to these forums I realized that I actually got one of the first runs of these units (sn: N3041 300 00297). This in turn has two advantages: 1. it was made before the hinge manufacturing problems started, and 2. it has the faster 5400 rpm HD. Boy did I luck out.
The first thing I did was wipe out the drive and use the restore disks to get the unit back to stock. I then did the following (which I learned about from reading this forum):
1. Updated the Bios (0f08.000)
2. Updated XP to SP2
3. Updated the Chipset (VIA Hyperion 4 in 1)
4. Removed the Bloatware
I then did some benchmarking and tweaking using ATItools.
1st Test ? Stock
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3DMark2001se: 9140
3DMark03v360: 2439
AquaMark3: 19,326*
GFX: 2,202
CPU: 7,885
2nd Test ? w/ Omega Drivers
----------------------------
3DMark2001se: 9593
3DMark03v360: 2500
AquaMark3: 20,249*
GFX: 2,325
CPU: 7,843
3rd Test ? Omega?s OC?d to 425/225
----------------------------
3DMark2001se: 11,736
3DMark03v360: 3091
AquaMark3: 26,362*
GFX: 3,168
CPU: 7,861
* (1024x768x32, AA: off, Aniso: 4x. Detail: V. High)
I could not be happier to say the least. It has been running rock solid with no issues at all since I did the wipe and updates. Not only will this machine be great for portable working/surfing is also rock?s for most games! What a joy it will be to not have to lug my ailing Athlon t-bird system with me the next time friends get together for a lan party (nothing like chili, beer, and 10vs10 CS).
There are still a few things I have not done yet. I have downloaded but not installed the audio drivers. Does anyone no if it?s worth it? The sound seems fine and even the newest updated drivers are from 2003. In addition I still need to update the broadcom drivers so I can use WAP. For the type of work I do (web dev/admin), I would feel safer with the extra protection. This is the one stumbling point in this forum. The exact location of the drivers posted here are no longer available. Could someone please repost which drivers we should use and where we can get them? Thanks.
All in all ? I am beyond pleased with this system. It?s got a ton of power, great flexibility (tweaking, OC'ing, etc), and its available for a great price!! In hindsight I wish I had picked up a m8610 or 11 so I could have the faster CPU and the DVD burner, but these are not necessities and the model I have suits me just fine. I would highly recommend these laptops to anyone in the market and I thank everyone here for sharing your troubles/fixes so that new guys like me can get our machines up to speed and rock?n quickly.