A reader wrote to us about an issue with ixMicro’s Road Rocket video card and Wallstreet PowerBooks:
I have an ixMicro Road Rocket for my PBG3. It’s a great little item, except for one thing. Whenever the screen does a major redraw — i.e. opening a large window, opening a new email message, un-window-shading a large window, etc. — the screen dims about 20%-30% for a second and then the brightness fades back in. It’s a bit hard to explain, but it happens whenever the monitor has to redraw a large area of the screen.
I called ixMicro about the problem, and the tech support person walked me through the usual steps: making sure I have the latest drivers, switching monitors, trashing preferences, zapping PRAM, etc. When the problem didn’t go away, she was going to swap mine out for a new one. She put me on hold, and when she came back she said that another tech person had told her this was a “natural” phenomenon. She had been told that it was a problem with the card that they could never fix, so it’s considered to be an inherent limitation of the Road Rockets.
My question is whether or not other Road Rocket owners have this same “natural” problem. If it really is “natural” I guess we have to live with it for the convenience of monitor spanning. But if no one else has the problem…
