mattcheau

for future reference, the P1xxEM/NP91x0 models take, and the service manual recommends, a 12.7mm optical drive. pretty standard, but just in case anybody is wondering if a 9.5mm drive would work too--it will, it just won't be as snug. the service manual actually states a 9.5mm caddy as being the factory option to install a second HDD, but i'd go for the 12.7mm for any caddy as well. source: my own NP9150 with this caddy

contemplating DisplayFusion. i've always only used the freeware version. 69% off the 29.99 regular price tag ain't such a bad deal. oh wait a minute, did you say which games...? 50% off 3dmark and 3dmark11 both sound pretty good too.

i think you'll find the general consensus at present is that 8GB is plenty of memory in a mobile gaming rig. there's no title i'm aware of that comes even close to using half of that. of course if you're multitasking while gaming, then your memory usage naturally increases. to know if it'd be worth it to upgrade/double your memory for you personally, you could use a monitoring utility like Mumak's HWiNFO or even windows' task manager to see what percentage of your memory your actually using at any given time. the flip side of the coin is that a memory upgrade is relatively cheap and can only help, rather than hinder, system performance. worst case scenario is that you don't notice any performance increase whatsoever. i find that the biggest consumer of memory i use aside from gaming is web browsing. a browser with 15-20 tabs open can easily shoot to 200MB+, which is more than an insignificant usage. put that on top of a game and you're probably using at least 1GB in addition to everything else that's running in the background or otherwise. TL;DR it's probably an unnecessary, albeit cheap, upgrade that can only increase system performance even if you're not always using it or noticing it.

hai guise and gurlz. kinda/sorta a new member. registered a few months ago, activity starts today. i think i'm going to like it much more here than over at that NB--ah, nevermind.

bad news brian, the NTSB intern: