Sure, there has always been laptopvideo2go.com (which hacks the desktop ForceWare drivers to work on laptops), but this has at times caused problems… and ignorant laptop manufacturers have even threatened to void the warranty on anyone who installs such drivers.

Now, NVIDIA has added support for pretty much all of the GeForce 8M and 9M series. That means that you can finally install a CUDA-enabled driver in Boot Camp on your last-gen MacBook Pro, for example. It also means that today’s MacBooks can also finally use CUDA in Windows (the driver that ships with Boot Camp on the new MacBooks still lacks CUDA). It also means you get to enjoy PhysX if your laptop maker was really behind in the driver game (yes, I am staring at you, Toshiba).

So, enjoy, you can grab the new drivers from NVIDIA’s web site.

What happens, is that after installing the latest ForceWare drivers, Windows Home Server doesn’t allow users to log in via the Console and Remote Desktop. Yes, a graphics card update that winds up locking users out of their Home Server.

I’ve confirmed this with another user’s WHS box, but regression is still coming in. I do not know if it is isolated to PCI/AGP/PCIe, or not. My system has a GeForce 6200 PCI card.

Note that you can still physically log into the home server (by plugging in a display, keyboard, and mouse), but reverting the update doesn’t appear to fix the issue. The only resolution we’ve found so far, is to do a dreaded Server Reinstall.

For some reason my Intel 865 integrated graphics is starting to seem like old faithful…

But, it appears that the new MacBook and MacBook Pro has its H.264 hardware decoding enabled. Yes, that’s right… Apple wants you to fork over $1,999 to enable upgrade to hardware H.264 decoding. Of course, if you boot into Windows, H.264 decodes on the GPU, meaning this is entirely a driver issue in Mac OS X.

I think, unfortunately, Apple will pull the same phony, false interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley (which has been dismissed by several legal experts). The claim is that Apple has to charge for software updates that enable new features. The only exception (Apple claims) is if they account for the product under a subscription-based billing system. That’s why iPhone and Apple TV owners get free, major upgrades… while iPod touch owners are out $20 (for two major updates). It’s also the same, false (in my opinion) reason that MacBook owners had to pay $1.99 to enable 802.11n in their systems.

Technically, Apple broke the law, in their own opinion on the 802.11n debacle. See, they enabled 802.11n in Boot Camp for free (when running Windows). Technically, they should have charged $1.99 for the driver update there. Apple, ready to sue yourself? Because, the SEC thinks this is all a load of… fill in the blank.

Here’s what I think will happen. Like many bang-head-against-wall issues with prior generations, Apple will make amends make you wait for Snow Leopard. I have no doubt that MacBook Pro owners will get PureVideo H.264 decoding in that release.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to hack through the drivers on the new MacBook Pro, to see if I can con and/or convince them to work with my MacBook Pro. I refuse to pay Apple for a product, that uses updated drivers as a selling point.

Closing Thought: I know some of you will be ready to knee-jerk harpoon me, and say that I haven’t given Apple enough time to release such an update. Apple has already released one NVIDIA graphics update for the new MacBooks, and in addition, they have refused to comment on this matter to-date. I am not asking Apple for instant driver gratification. I am asking them to commit to releasing this PureVideo support for the first Penryn MacBook Pro systems, and not make existing MacBook Pro owners wait for Snow Leopard.

But, if I know my readership, you don’t want to wait for it to fail two-years-and-a-day from when you bought it. So, what can you do to quicken the process.

Basically, the chip burns out after long periods of high utilization. So, our goal is to subject the 8600M to as much of that as possible. Now, playing 3D games all day long is a good start… but maybe you value your time a bit much to play Halo seventeen times over… weekly.

There is a better solution, but it involves Boot Camp. The good news is, it’s for a good cause. After installing Windows XP or Vista, download the GPU2 client for Folding@home, and run it.

The GPU2 client for Folding@home uses the computational ability of your graphics chip, to help better understand how cellular tissue works. Basically, it helps us better understand the fundamental building blocks of life. The Folding team at Stanford found that GPU processing is much better for this type of research than CPU processing… and it was a major step towards developing OpenCL, which will be in Snow Leopard.

So, just set the GPU2 client to run at startup when Windows loads. Then, when you go to bed, reboot into Boot Camp (you will probably want to set Windows to automatically log in as well, running the GPU client as a service in the background is a pain).

After a prolonged period of doing this (I have no idea how long, it depends on your specific MacBook Pro), there’s a good chance your GPU will burn out and fail. And, that will obligate Apple to fix it for you.

It’s Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death all over again… at least Apple didn’t listen to NVIDIA, and did the right thing with a proper, public recall.

Long story short, a rumor hit the web that all of the Nvidia GeForce 86M (aka the GeForce Go 8600M) were defective. They would all overheat and die. Now, I knew that wasn’t true, because I’ve put my successive MacBook Pros through the worst-case scenarios… and they came out just fine.

However, Dell finally stepped in and explained the issue. Turns out, some of the 86M chips are bad, but only fail when there is high levels of heat over a long period of time.

So, what’s Dell’s fix? Rather than recall the chips upon failure, and issue a warranty extension (that’s the Apple way)… they issued BIOS updates which crank the fans up to run quite constantly. At least they’ve learned from Toshiba’s woes earlier this decade, and didn’t secretly underclock the 86M… Apple did that with first-gen MacBook Pros and took quite a bit of heat (pun intended).

For those of you that aren’t fully versed on GPLv2 vs GPLv3 wars, and all the other open source wars… the Linux community has been having trouble with graphics drivers and various other device drivers. Specifically, they refuse to include drivers made by NVIDIA and ATI, due to their status as closed-source drivers.

Both the driver makers say that they need to keep these drivers proprietary, because they contain code that could be exploited by the competition (in competitor’s products). So, until now, Linux has been devoid of real 3D hardware acceleration.

Ubuntu 8.04 ends that. The first time software updates are checked, a user is prompted with an offer to “Install Proprietary Device Drivers” which then installs the drivers as part of a system software update. Was that so hard?

Now if we could just start work on that packaging problem. Well, maybe not.