There appears to be an issue with our backend which is causing abnormally high loading times and generally making the forum unresponsive. We are aware of this issue and are attempting to diagnose. For now the behavior is a bit unpredictable where you may have snappy responsiveness for a few tabs then goes back to nearly unresponsive. 

I will report back when I have more information to share, apologies and appreciate your patience.

Chris

Some of you may have noticed that there is an influx of spam that has been making it to the forum, just know that it hasnt gone unnoticed. We have updated the forum software, changed CAPTCHA's, and threw in an additional question but it appears that these accounts are being triggered around 4:30a-6:30a CST after allowing the accounts to sit dormant. Irritatingly, these have been triggered during my commute to work so I thank our Moderation team for containing the outbreaks when they occur, @John Ratsey and @katalin_2003 in particular. Even now they are hard at work keeping the forum from being flooded. Thank You!

I will continue to work with @Hiew to see what additional measures we can take, its worth noting based on what I have been reading it looks to be occurring on many forums, not just our own. If one of those Forums presents a solution it may be implemented here. As such, there may be some testing of new functions or features. If any of you discover something broken or doesnt add additional value to the forum please feel free to reach out!

Thanks Everyone for your patience!

Chris

Let me know if anything needs some extra care 🙂

We have a couple of small changes to enrich the forum for this announcement, some temporary and some I think to stay. 

First, I want to thank @Bullit for pointing out the lack of favicon/SVG for the forum. I had assumed that the globe that I looked at on my browser would be the same for all browsers, this was not the case. As of current I went and located a free license Laptop icon as you now see. I dont have any particular attachment to it but this is just to avoid issues for some of our members in their respective browsers. Thus if anyone wants to put forth some permanent icons for us to poll on later I would be happy to facilitate that. 

Second, I have thus far failed to locate where I can make the changes for the Reaction/Rep icon for our default theme :( I will need to reach out to Invision Community for further assistance as my GoogleFu has not delivered. Perhaps instead of the icon I may just change the color around it, I'll keep you guys in the loop for when ever that happens.

Third, I have started adding content to the Tutorials sub-forum. I will continue to make "HowTo" over time with additional features/functionalities as I come across them, however I encourage everyone to create HowTo's of your own to help us all out. 

Lastly, for anyone that has a reddit account. I as well as the Forum and its community would appreciate any exposure we can get to bring back more and more of the "old guard" (or just NBR members generally speaking). Please be respectful of any communities guidelines when doing so but for additional context please see this thread here: 

Thanks for being patient with me everyone, I will continue to move the needle over the busy season that myself and @Hiew have been experiencing. 

First off, congrats to all of us as we now have over 500 members on the forum! This is all due to word of mouth as many of you have had profiles on other forums and shared links to this forum. For that, I thank you all for sharing how NBR members could find NotebookTalk and chat it up with familiar faces.

I would like to also announce my intent to give a bit of standardization for the official threads, in particular the official threads that are directly related to specific model laptop(s). I will make another announcement in the future when that is settled.

Lastly I have accepted and made changes to a request made by @1610ftw to allow for the OEM Uniwill to have its own sub-forum, which is also better known as TongFang. This can be found in the list of Notebook Manufacturer sub-forum.

Also since the beginning of NBT, there has been no activity within the Gigabyte/Aorus as well as Apple sub-forums. As a result I have deprecated them for the time being. Of course any content related to such subjects are still welcomed! If content being generating for such brands we will be happy to re-make those subforums

There are a few topics to cover since the last announcement. 

The first topic to cover is the discussion of distributed computing, for some this is SETI@Home or Folding@Home which are both great projects to take part in. However, to most this is known as cryptocurrency more specifically crypto mining. For the latter, any and all discussion is ok by both myself and @Hiew. I, myself also engage in crypto mining and enjoy reading those topics for my own benefit of course as well as not to burn out my investments prematurely.

Where I, Hiew and the Support Staff will be drawing a hard line on however, is the active shilling of dubious crypto currency in order to generate hype. We all know how all coins reach differing levels of hype be it Ethereum, Dogecoin, Shiba etc etc. The active shilling of such items will be met most harshly. It is very difficult for me and Hiew to see this as anything more than taking advantage of our community, I am sure Staff have their own individual opinions on the matter. Not accounting for that, its extra work and thus far I have seen amazing response times and effort from our Staff, I couldn't have asked for more from the individuals that have taken the chance on us given the enormous task of being the spiritual successor to Forum.NotebookReview.com colloquially known as NBR. 

So as to not allow our members to fall into landmines, we will update the rule set and make an site announcement for this change. 

That being said, discussing cryptocurrency is permitted and I do encourage its discussion if members wish to engage in that topic. If you "promote" a coin you believe in, be transparent. If you own a stake in it, or had read its White paper and believe in its intended focus then please do share that information. Be fair, be transparent and mature. Be mindful that this our community. Those who seek to profit off the ignorance of others will not be tolerated. Those that seek to discuss, learn and increase the knowledge base will be praised, even if only by myself.

Second, as most of you may be aware we had moved things around a bit to cut unneeded costs on the back end. For the most part this process was pretty seamless. For some though it seemed to have cleared out your preferences as far as Notifications within the forum. If you are seeing odd behavior please do check that your intended configuration is still being applied. 

1. Push notifications - As far as I can tell, the perms on your browser were tied to efgxt.net. If you haven't re-enabled them, its best to delete the old permissions in your browser and/or re-enable them for for the new domain name NotebookTalk.net. 

2. Check your individual profiles if you are seeing undesired behavior. 

While this seems to only have happened to a select few, its often the case that people don't report issues if they are minor in nature. Please do reach out if you are having issues. I cant guarantee a swift turn around but we will do what we can with the resources available to us.

Third, due to the recent outage that we had, it has reminded me to create and share with you all differing means to reach out and/or for us to do the same.
@NoteBookTalk is a twitter handle that we control, we haven't done much with it at this time as we aren't really social media buffs.

@NoteBookTalk is also a Telegram address that me and @Hiew both manage. We are still learning the in's and out's on group management outside of our circle of friends so please be patient with us, however I do implore for whom ever is willing to try and add themselves to the group so we know if we need to alter some things (which presumably we will).

https://t.me/+MupLeKQTEqE4MjI5

We also have a teamspeak3 server, this is mostly just for friends to hangout but we have been debating how to alter the perms and such for forum uses. Presumably the forum will be the main means of communicating, we don't intend for this to replace the forum.

ts.factionelite.com / No Pass

The way things are set up right now is all users that join the teamspeak have limited permissions, in short order we may create a couple more channels more so as a utility to let us know if something is awry and need attention. Of course if you wish to use the Teamspeak, anyone is welcome to do so!

Fourth, We will be instituting mandatory tags for new threads going forward. This will aid the forum in how it comes up when people use search engines. We intend to create a point system for anything above the mandatory requirement. Since you would be actively assisting in the forums growth in an additional route, there should be some level of recognition for the effort. The more effort (tags) put forth, the more recognition (points) will be granted.

Like anything else though, those who actively take advantage to inflate their profiles will be admonished and met with appropriate levels of discouragement. 

Fifth, We hereby grant this forum permission to extract from within the NBRchive to re-post into the forum. Naturally this will become more limited in scope as we dont have a means to transfer it 1:1. However this can be mitigated by copying the original post and with its post, a link to the archive. Also, if you are not the original poster of said threads you will be required to give credit where credit is due. Please do make the attempt to @mention them if they have a place here, if not citing them individually will have to suffice.

Please be patient with @Aaron44126 as he is the one personally hosting the archive but that doesnt make him a subject matter expert of all of what was NBR. He was amongst the few that created the archive which can be found Here. Aaron may be able to grant some level of direction in certain cases, it will be expected that you put in the effort.

We have another announcement coming up soon regarding this forums identity, look forward to that soon! As always please feel free to discuss this announcement in the coming thread.

Thanks everyone 🙂

-Chris

This afternoon at approximately 12:10 PM CST for about 15 minutes, the forum was down. This was unplanned and currently awaiting explanation from our hosting solution as to why this issue occurred. Both myself and @Hiew are not pleased, when we find out more we will share what we can.

This is not a reflection of the confidence we want our community to have with this forum, so if we dont see a satisfactory response and/or becomes a trend we will be looking at alternate solutions.

Thank you all in advance and happy posting! 

-Chris

To remedy this, I've changed the image dimensions to unlimited as a trial period for all members while I monitor the impact on the server. I don't expect this to be much of an issue at our current size, however high quality image files may need to be limited in the future. Maybe something like 16:9 ratio (1920x1080) instead of 1:1 as before.

All members have a storage limit of 50mb total for the time being, I'm working on setting up donations to allow for much larger storage limits amongst other things. I've also removed the "maximum storage per submission" setting which previously constrained users to something like 5mb per post.

Please feel free to create a topic under https://notebooktalk.net/forum/114-internal-announcement-discussion/ if needed!

With this in mind I'll have to shut down the forum (efgxt.net), transfer the database to the new server, enable notebooktalk.net as the new main domain, and redirect efgxt.net to notebooktalk.net. I'm planning on doing this once DNS is fully propagated (usually 24-72 hrs from this post) and I will give a 12-24 hour announcement on efgxt.net before this happens. This will most likely going to go through on Saturday the 26th after 8 MDT.

This also leads me to say sorry about the lack of communication on my part, though@Recieverhas been filling in some of the gaps. I've been quite busy with work, I've taken on a new role with a ton on my plate. I've finally caught up with work and will be making more changes and improvements once the website is fully transitioned to the new domain.

There seems to be a little concern regarding what more we can do to encourage additional membership to the forums, I share some of those concerns of course considering mine and @Hiew's time and fiscal investment we have put in thus far. Of course would like for the forum to thrive as well, so we have some ideas on how to facilitate the first and most important element. You all!

Chapter 1

First, some small things to get out of the way. I cant be counted on to have amazing idea's to put forth for the forum all the time and there will be some things that I may not see the merit for, key word being "seeing". There will be times where the community may need to get the point across, we have something in place for that, and I may enhance it a bit to give it proper exposure if need be.

Site Suggestion Polls has been put in place. Now, I must stress this item. This is for the community and its individual members to put forth the best argument they can towards what they would like to have put in place. With that in mind, structure your argument and make it as clear as possible. The Site Suggestion Polls require approval before the threads will be created. If it looks to be anything but a genuine request for the forum to consider it will be rejected. Keep in mind that Site Suggestions arent limited to the Suggestion Box that @cucubits so kindly created in the earliest phase of the forum. You may use that sub-forum to better formulate an idea you may have amongst other members or the staff. Then make your pitch in the Site Suggestion Poll.

Chapter 2

For the efforts made with the NBRchive, I have bestowed @Aaron44126, @Sandy Bridge, and @Hiew with the badge "Custodian of History". I know they didnt do it for acclaim or anything, but it should still be rewarded, in however meager way that I could that would stay with them, and can only be awarded manually. I recently spoke with Hiew, and he was quite baffled that most of his internet sleuthing regarding a Mobile Precision he was working with all roads led back to NoteBookReview. If not for the actions of the aforementioned, all that trial and error that eventually came to be known as knowledge would've been lost.

Chapter 3 - How we may stand apart

I have seen some rumblings about additional means to provide content to encourage additional membership to these forums. I must confess I haven't been able to put the time in that I originally intended. I have begun making some Framework for the first project that I have in mind. I will be reaching out to various members (provided they have time and are willing). I dont want to share too much at this stage, but know that we are working on something that I believe will set us apart from anything else, at the very least, that I have witnessed thus far.

We may release an alpha stage product just so we can start cataloguing to later update as we learn more about what the forum's software can provide for us. Some of you are quite keen on keeping the momentum going, and I do appreciate that!

Knowing where we come from, I do appreciate everyone's patience.

Chris

P.S. Announcement Discussion can be had here.
 

We have re-introduced a minor but very relevant template and sub forum. The "What Laptop Should I Buy" Form. I also felt it prudent to add a place where people can introduce themselves. Some of us had spent a lot of time over at NotebookReview and shared some details among colleagues or brothers in arms. New, old, if you are willing to share, share!

All the best, 

Chris 

I have been paying attention to a number of requests or oddities that appear, that need a resolution along with what current areas of the forum have interest enough to carry themselves or ones that need to be consolidated. This is by no means a permanent solution and over time we may gain more traffic in these consolidated spaces may grow to have dedicated locations once more.
 

I know it may appear as though not much is going on the surface, however we are very much making progress in certain important bends that over time you all may come to recognize in the coming days. I am also getting feedback from various sources and trying to make the best path forward for the forum, and you all, the community are also a part of this process. 

• We are going to be reviving the currently missing WLSIB template, as that had always been a mainstay and allows for uninformed to pick the brains of the community. 
• Some of the forums will be rearranged and/or consolidated. The content will be retained.
• A number of idea's are currently in infancy, and I look forward to getting the feedback from you all as we determine its viability

This Friday I will be opening a poll for what we will name the forum, I think it would be fair to leave it open for one week, unless there are zero votes for 48 hours. I have to balance the community with attempting to establish the name of the forum. With that in mind please bear in the mind the following: 

1. Anyone that has a suggestion must get it to me by Friday @ 10PM CST. Please PM me with the suggestions and we will attempt to grab the names if they pass internal scrutiny.
2. Anyone that knows members that are here and registered, but dont surf everyday to ping them so they can make sure they get in their vote.

There are many irons in the fire, and I cant wait to share them with you all! However just like how we didnt open the flood gates as soon as this forum was technically up, we will make sure it can work well here. 

Thats all I have for the moment, and I look forward to continued dialogue with everyone! 

Chris

Such matters to look on will be the following: 
 

• The name of the forum going forward.

As we have announced multiple times, efgxt.net is a place holder. In fact the top header used to be NewbookReview as we continued working on the forums here, only to be changed to NBR 3.1B hours before sharing the links with you all. We do fully intend to have this changed going forward. I do ask that you guys/gals wait until about a a week after NoteBookReview's closure to make official changes on that front. Its not quite an issue of the link no longer functioning (as we intend to forward it for some time). This decision was made in order to allow for a respectable amount of time to permit more and more NBR members to trickle in, and have a say in how the name should be made officially going forward. 

One thing to note is that we will only be polling names that we have already acquired, as sadly we must protect ourselves from bad actors purchasing domains that we projected potential to purchase. Until we make the poll for this change I would ask that any and all name submissions be sent to me or @Hiew via PM, so that we can acquire them ahead of time especially if they are in a price range that we can do that with. If its something we cant acquire we will notify the member that made the suggestion and will leave it to their discretion to share it for forum consideration.
 

• TapaTalk, will we support it?

A few members have inquired over various mediums to the support of Tapatalk and after some internal discussion can happily announce that we do intend have Tapatalk support. This has yet to be done, but cursory investigations look quite positive.
 

• Can we make any guarantees to continuity?

Beyond the initial primary functions of this forum, this has been an issue that I want to have squared away. The second question I had for @Hiew after finally asking him if we could make a forum (even if ONLY temporary) was the differing means to focus on specifically continuity of this forum. I believe this to absolutely be possible. The backend functions have been provided by Hiew but I would like for backups to be in the hands of specific people that we trust to do exactly what they are charged to do in the event that we have a top to bottom failure of management to follow through on the tenants that I have already explicitly stated before or in the worst case scenario of me and Hiew suffering mortal wounds and the forum needing to be handed over to the next custodians of this forum. 

We also have the desire to be as transparent as possible in this regard as well, however, being 100% transparent does introduce inherent security issues so, some elements will not be announced, ever. They will remain in the charge of certain members here that will accept such a charge should the need arise. While I would love to state that there will never be a need, failure to plan is planning to fail. Not to mention, I would like this forum to survive us and at some point be passed to the next generation. Whether or not said members are able to project that role (via a profile badge or otherwise) will be also discussed internally as well as with the community.

• Does NBR 3.1B own my content?

I dont have the "legal" know how to make this proclamation however I can state that I have no desire to own your content. The ones that generate said content belongs to them. This is direct reflection of the issues of being able to post the content from NBR here. If you came up with a great modification, or discovered something that enables better functions, heck even a meme, that content is your own. Please feel free to post here and any other forum! This dictate will never change.  If you desire for content to remain here to post elsewhere at your own discretion then I would ask for a disclaimer to better protect yourself from bad actors. Naturally we cant enforce things outside of the forums but internally your content is yours. 

• Funding

The issue of funding has come up here and there and many of you have offered donations to which I have refused up to this point. I have a particular personal flaw due to my personal experiences that money always muddies the waters, especially with Friends and Family. In order to refuse that type of scenario here I have asked to please hold on that. We do have some ideas for funding but ultimately it comes down to a sobering point of which I will make here.

If no one provides anything at all over time, the forums may likely close. Right now the forums expenses are at a point where me and Hiew can maintain them. However if you wish for this forum to grow or continue to increase its functions then funding will need to come from somewhere. In the age of "social media" where you become the product is now commonplace we would like to make the content provided here the product that over time brings more people. This means that we as a community will need to come together and put our money where our mouth is and contribute.

This also means that it is incumbent upon the community to make sure anyone and everyone in management (as of now @Hiew and @Reciever) work towards bringing the best forum possible. I have had some ideas as to different means to support the forum in terms of fiscal contributions. 

1. Premium Accounts
2. Donor Accounts
3. Subscriptions
4. One time donations
5. Crypto donations and/or mining addresses

I am not of affluent means, and I also am very defensive for when I accept money from anyone. 
In this regard I wish for, if nothing else, to be beyond reproach when it comes to dealing with money in relation to the forum. 

• Who are you? 

An interesting question when seriously considered. My name is Chris, currently a technician for a B2B operation in Dallas / Fort Worth area. Introverted loner who enjoys synthwave probably more than I should. My only reprieve is probably NoteBookReview and its community otherwise, the only friends I have are those in Canada of all places. Born and raised in California, having been living in DFW since 2009. Went from the service industry to IT and had been doing various contracting work. An issue that I have (that Im sure some of you had seen in the past) is I always try to thread the needle. Sometimes successful, typically not but I do enjoy the good faith argument. 

I had been a member of NoteBookReview since 2012, though I dont think I posted as often until after I stopped participating at OCN. Ask anyone in my group and they used to say something akin to "he likes to make laptops run as good as the desktops". @Hiew would often tell me just stop and come to terms with my Ranger being a server, not a personal computer lol. 

• Rules and Moderation

I was hoping if this stayed community driven as one group to allow for the moderation team to have the mods continue their roles on the forum. Sadly this did not happen and there are now 3 potential options on the table for everyone to consider. The issue now at hand is that if what I was initially hoping for is seen as endorsement from the "old guard", by extension can be seen as putting our thumb on the scale. I will need additional perspectives surrounding this problem as moderator roles have to be done well. A peculiar problem, as we need passionate people that can also take a step back and objectively maintain order in a heated discussion.

Chill out, join up, make a few posts or just poke around while we add content and spruce things up!

Things down the pipeline:

• Theme tweaks and changes
• Special groups
• Subscriptions (including access to locked sections of the forum, and other products e.g Custom theme colors, premium support...etc)
• Other Features we're considering
• Anything is subject to change