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General discussion

Dell 700m freezes during game play

Jan 31, 2005 11:15AM PST

My husband recently purchased the Dell 700m. He installed the new Sid Meier's Pirates game and it continually freezes on him. Any ideas on how he can fix this? This is the first game he has installed on this system.

Thanks!

Jen

Discussion is locked

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Call it in now.
Jan 31, 2005 11:18AM PST

The sooner the better.

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Call and complain or return?
Jan 31, 2005 11:12PM PST

You mean call them and ask for help or ask them to exchange it?

Sorry to be a dunce Happy

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Call and call it defective.
Jan 31, 2005 11:22PM PST

Ask them how they want to resolve it.

If they don't want to fix it, then ask for a refund since the product is unsuitable for you.

Bob

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Not the laptop
Mar 16, 2005 4:00PM PST

It is an ultra-portable notebook. They aren't ment to run these high end games. When you buy a sub compact car you understand you are trading size and performance for fuel economy, cheaper insurance, etc. You don't take it back to the dealer because the car overheated when you were trying to qualify at Le Mans with it.

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Defective.
Mar 16, 2005 8:26PM PST

If your laptop can't run SETI for 24x7 would you call said laptop a good laptop?

Watch what's going on in the industry and you find that the same issue the car industry did for years and that is... ship and let the dealer fix it.

My advice is still... If you find any glitch, call it in EARLY AS POSSIBLE to make sure you are in warranty. Too often I hear the sad tale of "I felt something was wrong" and after the warranty ran out, the "something" failed.

Bob

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Pirates Freezing up
Feb 1, 2005 8:08AM PST

I have tried this game on a Dell XPS and an HP Pavillion, both laptops and it freezes up everytime no matter what. I have been able to play without locking up on my desktop. The Tech Support people at Atari tell me that it is a video driver problem and that most laptops don't have a powerful enough video card for the game. I might buy that for the HP but the XPS is supposed to be designed for high end gaming and has an ATI Mobiity Radeon 9700 with 128 MB so it should have plenty of juice.

Anyhow, if you have a desktop, I would suggest your husband just plans on playing the game on it.

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Same Problem
Feb 23, 2005 10:51PM PST

It might be a problem with the game rather than the computer. I currently experience freeze-ups during a ball on my cheap home-brew system (1.7 ghz celeron). Hopefully Atari will come out with a patch for this soon if the problem really is with the game.

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I know this was a while ago but...
Mar 16, 2005 3:51PM PST

The 700m is not really designed with playing the newer games, like Sid Meier's Pirates, in mind. This laptop is ment for office and media (DVD watching) type applications. I would be suprised if the Intel Video Chipset is supported by that game. I am not sure what type of DirectX support the video card has. Even if it was supported, I would not expect great performance out of it when playing the newer games.

Not trying to discredit the 700m. I just bought one myself. It is a great latop, especially considering it is in the ultra-portable class of laptops. This class has never been known for gaming ability. I knew when I bought it though games were out. Doesn't matter anyway since I am running Linux on it.