en480c4

You wouldn't be at all surprised if you saw the boxes and boxes (and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes...) of parts Nate has in his basement. It's shocking!

No, it's a Grand Cherokee. The Compass is based an the Neon platform and as such, is an affront to all Jeeps that came before it.

Dusty's not playing nice

I'm glad you're kidding because I stand by it. They are a bunch of lying, incompetent turds who couldn't fab their way out of a wet paper bag. The pictures I have here and here make what JL did to that R10 look like quality work. Gotta love shipping it almost a month late, not fitting with a horrible mounting system, screwed up angles... hell not even symmetrical from one side to the other, then promising to reimburse me to fix it locally because shipping it back was cost prohibitive, only to stop returning calls and emails and me be out upwards of $400, 8 hours of my time, Nate's time and his dad's time, and to be so pissed off about it that I ended up dumping the Jeep after finally getting it squared away. I even keep my montypics photo hosting account up so those threads still have the pictures they deserve! Though I do have to admit... In the end it did look pretty good.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the DA-500. I've been very happy with mine and would only be upgrading if I was moving up to something like the Electrocompaniet ECD-1, which would be a significantly bigger investment. It may not excel in any area in particular, but it also doesn't seem to have any glaring faults. As a result, it still strikes me as an excellent value, especially for an older design.

:kitty:

I have to say I'm very impressed with the R10 owner's composure over there. I've been in similar situations where I've been lied to, ripped off and hung up on, and I can't say that I've handled myself as well. In fact, I'm vindictive enough that I'll occasionally drop in on a forum I no longer frequent just to bump a thread and spout off about what a piece of shit the company owner is. Speaking of which, don't ever buy a winch bumper (or any other product) for your Jeep or SUV from Kennesaw Mountain Accessories. The owner's a piece of shit. It's too bad that it came to this, but I'm glad that the R10s weren't held hostage for the in lieu of full amount "owed" for all of the butchering work done by Jena Labs. In!

Yeah, definitely no issues with it...

I'm disappointed I won't be able to get over and give it a listen before you ship it out. But it's great to hear you were able to get it up and running with no little trouble and that all is well. Congratulations are definitely in order. With everything else on your plate, the fact that you were able to plan and execute this build in such short order is nothing short of incredible. :golfclap:

Well, I finished getting everything updated last night. The preload was only XP SP1, so needless to say, it was a lengthy process to even be able to connect to my wireless network at home. And I think I may have found an older version of IBM's Restore & Recovery software that is compatible with the T40, so I'll be able to create restore CDs from the recovery partition. I may also invest in some ghost imaging software. But so far I'm pretty impressed with it. It's a nice little machine. Can anyone recommend a good battery vendor? It looks like the current battery will give me 2+ hours, but I'd really like to be able to get more.

Need to be able to run Autocad on it.

Arrived... Everything seems to be fine. Though I FUCKING HATE IT when they don't provide a recovery CD and only provide the recovery partition. And the software for creating recovery CDs from the partition isn't compatible with the T40. So without jumping through a bunch of hoops either trying to ghost the image or buying the media from Lenovo, the HD can't be replaced/upgraded. :rant:

As I would expect, looking great!

I've read nothing but good things. I'm looking forward to getting it set up. Wuhoo!

Excellent news!!!

If you want to contribute the difference, I'm all for it. People seem to think their used Macs are made of solid gold. And new is certainly out of my price range at the moment. A MacBook Pro is in my future at some point. This is just a stop-gap measure, spending little money.

Ya think?

Used ThinkPad T-40. Should arrive tomorrow. I can finally be rid of the Gateway!!!

And after you buy one!

While I miss my Grand Cherokee, it's times like these where I don't miss the HO V8 that was getting between 12 & 14 mpg. The vee-dub may piss me off, but 20s around town pushing 30 on the highway and only filling up once a week is very, very nice.

Just a heads up for anyone interested...

Pico + your headphone of choice. I'd say the HD-580 w/ 600 grills and 650 cable is probably the best value out there, but a used 225 could be a good match as well. Spend the rest on music. I was very impressed with the Pico running out of my HTPC at a mini-meet I hosted. It sounded wonderful with my modded HF-1.

Why? Your efforts would've been wasted, considering...

Great news! Looking forward to seeing you wrap up one of your projects!