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When Lost returns on Tuesday, the surprises will come thick and fast. How would you survive if you were trapped inside a twisty J.J. Abrams story? There’s only one way to find out: by playing the J.J. Abrams board game.

(Click the board game to make it super big.)

We compiled a set of common J.J. Abrams plot twists, from all of his TV shows and movies. Pretty much every square of this board game is something that’s happened in at least a couple Abrams joints, and some of them are common across the whole of the J.J.-verse. (If you can name which J.J. Abrams shows or movies these shocking reveals and turns of events are from in the comments, we’ll give you an extra free throw of the dice, or maybe a “Get Out Of Causality Loop Free” card.)

We’ve created a starter set of “J.J. Widget” cards for you to put on the center of the board:

Feel free to suggest some other candidates for “J.J. Widgets” in the comments. If we get some awesome suggestions, we’ll include them in an “expansion pack” of cards next week.

How to play: Take two six-sided dice and throw. Divide the result by fate versus free will to get the number of squares you can move forward. When you land on “Causality Loop,” you have to keep rolling until your die roll equals the product of Faith x Science. If you land on “Symbol Overload,” take a card from the “J.J. Widgets” stack in the center of the board. And yes, if you reach the final square, all of your questions will be answered!

(And before anybody points it out in comments, we know that J.J. Abrams isn’t really in day-to-day control over Lost any more. But he launched it and it’s still part of the J.J.-verse, which he runs alongside a brain trust that includes Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Jeff Pinkner, Bryan Burk and others. In fact, you could argue that J.J. Abrams is really ten guys.)

Dell recently issued a BIOS fix for its Studio 17 with Core i7, designed to solve a serious crashing issue. However, after the release of Intel’s new Core i5 processor and a number of vocal user complaints about its Core i7 product, the company has made the lower-powered and priced Core i5 the Studio 17’s default CPU choice. Though, as of this posting, we did not see a Core i7 option on Dell.com, a rep assured us that the Core i7 model, labeled the Dell Studio 1747 has not been discontinued and will return to the site within days.

When we reviewed the Dell Studio 17 with Intel’s Core i7 processor (aka Dell Studio 1747) in November, we gave the notebook a 4-star rating due to its blazing performance and relatively affordable price. However, we noted two major problems we experienced with our review unit. First, the initial system we received stopped booting (and made several beeping noises) just after testing had been completed and, second, we noticed that the exterior of the chassis got hot, with the underside of the system registering a troubling 112-degrees Fahrenheit after just 15 minutes of playing a Hulu video.

We returned the first unit to Dell, which repaired it and sent it back to us a couple of days later, saying that the first issue we encountered was an isolated incident. The repaired unit worked, but we did experience experience a couple of mysterious blue screen crashes the first time we tried to play Hulu videos on it, though these seemed to disappear on subsequent tests. After we informed Dell about the uncomfortably hot temperatures, they sent us a second review unit to test. This second unit  did not break or crash, but was just as hot as the original.

Readers Respond

Without having tested an entire assembly line of Dell Studio 17s with Core i7, it was impossible for us to tell if the one defective review unit we received was a fluke or a harbinger of trouble. However, after the product began shipping, we began receiving negative reports from many users, claiming that their Dell Studio 1747s (with Core i7) had died after a few days or hours of use.

A number of users also posted on forums that their Dell Studio 1747s slowed down after intense use. For example, a French-speaking user posted this experiment, which claims that after running two CPU-intensive programs, Prime 95 and Furmark, the CPU speed dropped from 1.6 to 1.06-GHz. Notebookcheck.com, a professional review site, did not see a clock speed drop but did see their test notebook’s 3DMark06 scores drop significantly after 12 hours of intense use. We did not test our review unit for performance throttling before we had to return it to Dell.

Dell’s BIOS Update

Recently, Dell  issued a BIOS update that fixes what they call the “7 beeps problem,” the same issue that bricked our first review unit. Dell advises that, if you own a Dell Studio 1747 that is working properly, you should install the BIOS update to insure you never get the 7 beeps problem. If your Dell Studio 1747 has already stopped booting, you can call Dell support or try re-seating the CMOS battery to bring the system back to life.

Whether the new BIOS update (termed the A04 BIOS) makes the system cooler or resolves its alleged performance issues remains to be seen. If you have a Dell Studio 1747, please let us know if the BIOS update has improved your system by posting in the comments below.

Own another Dell notebook or netbook? Sound off here on what you think of the brand

Oppo has begun its week by launching the lowest-cost Blu-ray player in what’s normally a high-end line. The BDP-80 is similar to the BDP-83 but drops the secondary video processor, moving all work to the main decoder; it sheds 24p DVD upscaling in the process. Slightly older DACs as well as the absences of IR and RS-232 (serial) ports also help separate the BDP-80 from its earlier but more expensive predecessor.

The player is still fully capable of all modern Blu-ray features and carries both an Ethernet jack and 1GB of internal memory to support BD-Live. It can still play Blu-ray movies at 24p without pull-down conversion and carries an HDMI 1.3 output with support for 36-bit color on matching TV sets and receivers. Non-disc formats are still an option and range from simple audio and photos to video formats like AVCHD (H.264), whether it’s stored on a disc or on an attached USB drive.

Oppo is already taking orders for the BDP-80 and puts it at a comparatively low $289 versus a much higher $499 for the older BDP-83.

Just to be extra safe, many IT professionals prefer to wait until at least the first Service Pack for a Windows version before implementing it into their departments. The reason is that the first massive wave of users will already have hit the OS to clear out any possible bugs and compatibility issues.

Now that Windows 7 has settled in inside consumer homes after the considerable marketing push from retail, attention is turning to Microsoft’s next step in development. ZDNet blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes claims to have reports that Windows 7 SP1 is already undergoing testing and has seen several lists of post-RTM build numbers.

There haven’t been any word on what major changes, if any, to expect other than the inclusion of all patches and fixes released to date and the likely inclusion of USB 3.0 support.

At this point, it seems that the work on the first Service Pack is more of a green light for business and enterprise users to consider Windows 7 rather than a true major boost to the OS.

As for when we can see this first Service Pack roll out, IT Chuiko claims to have sources at Microsoft that point to a June 2010 release for testers, with the final version slated for September 2010

It’s just business, says U.S. Government.

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U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, said that the U.S. government will be staying out of any negotiations that Google may have with China following the hacking incident.

Huntsman did acknowledge that Americans are likely to feel very strongly in the Google/China incident due to the differences between American and Chinese policies on free speech.

“This is an issue that impinges upon probably one of the most important of all the issues that we stand for as a country and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech and Internet freedom,” he said, according to Voice of America news.

Since this is a business matter, however, the U.S. government will keep away from Google’s dealings in China.

“This is an issue that will play out for some time between Google and Google’s partners here in China and the Chinese government, and they will make whatever decisions Google feels is appropriate.  That won’t be influenced by the United States government,” Huntsman said.

While Google’s decision to pull out of China due to censorship pressures is one that must be made by the internet firm, the U.S. government is concerned about computer hackers based in China who are attacking U.S. computers.

“It has been ongoing for a long time.  It is deeply disturbing.  It is being discussed in appropriate channels,” he said。

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