That is the one thing I have noticed since scouring the net and asking everyone and anyone in the know their opinions on who makes the most well put together laptop. It seems that many folks are extreemely loyal to one particular product or brandname, but one brandname doesn't seem to be conclusive over the other. The Imac sure has its very loyal following, as well as Dell and Toshiba and, another brand rapidly picking up steem is HP, especially their DV6000 and DV9000 lines. I am beginning to conclude that at this point, figure out exactly how much of a laptop you need and can afford, paying particular attention to Size of Hard Drive, How much Memory (RAM), and third, how much graphics card, and lastly and most important, the CPU. I have concluded that the duel core processor is important, as it is essentially two processors stapped together, and the OS uses one for certain functions and the other for certain functions, and most importantly, only one is being used and powered when both are not needed, saving battery power and overall electric consumption. Another rule of thumb, to save money, get the base core duo (1.60GHz, I believe), and skip the upgrade on the CPU and get 2G's of RAM, as your CPU runs out of cache space for storage, it will draw from Ram, and adding RAM is much cheaper than adding a high end CPU. Bottom line, I'm waiting for some hot sales. Another thing to think about is size, and yeah, folks, size does matter... Most of the 17" models that I've tried out in the stores just seem too damn big and heavy, especially if your going to use the thing as a LAP top... it's just too damn big for my lap, and I have a big lap at that... the 12" is just too small, especialy for viewing movies, etc. That's the one thing that turned me off from the DELL XPS 1200... hot looking little machine... just too small. 14-15" seems just right for my taste. It seems to me that all these machines (Toshiba, Dell, HP and many others) are all beginning to become clones of one another. Seems they are are made in China nowadays, and no one has yet to convince me overwhelmingly that one is better than the other...

To add to davidandkasies excellent post, for best results the preamp should be as close to the antenna as possible. For a 4-way splitter, you will want something with at least 8 db of gain. Also look for a low noise figure (3 db or less), and doesn't easily overload (100k microvolts or more.) Considering your splitter, coax, and connector losses and such, a Winegard HDP 269, at 12 db of gain might be ideal. More typical is something like a Winegard AP-8700 - which has about 17-19 db of gain. It would also work, but might require a bit of attenuation to avoid overloading your TV sets. A preamp designed to be mounted outdoors on a mast has a separate power supply. The power supply is remotely mounted somewhere out of the weather and sends DC up the coax to power the preamp. You could use something like this. But as davidandkasie says, the power supply will probably want to be on the antenna side of the splitter - since many splitters won't pass the DC through. OTOH, since your antenna is in the attic, there should be a junction box around somewhere were you can install an outlet for an indoor preamp. As far as coax goes, use RG-6 everywhere you can. The new compression connectors are really neat - much better than crimps. But they require an investment in tools. (About $75.) Don't even bother with those stupid 'twist on' connectors.

Thanks for your TVFool.com report: it tells me that you are about 65 miles from the Des Moines transmitters, and that you have a moderately strong signal available to you from those transmitters. A properly designed antenna and distribution system should give you reliable reception of all of those stations. Whoever installed this antenna system needed to pay particular attention to your distribution system: when distributing signal to 5 TV sets, it is imperative that there is enough antenna mounted on the roof, and that there is sufficient amplification in the system to me insure that each TV set is provided with enough signal to operate reliably. If you don't know what kind of antenna that you have on the roof, snap a picture of it and post it on here: I should be able to identify it. After June 12, 2009, many stations reverted from UHF to VHF digital transmission, and Des Moines now has 4 VHF digital stations: A wrong antenna choice will adversely affect your reception, as will a poorly designed distribution system.

I too have OTA (Over The Air) channels. I have a roof antenna. Although, it is sitting in my living room at the moment. I really need to find someone to install it on the roof. Anyhow, in Houston, there are almost 90 OTA channels. My antenna that sits in the living room picks up around 75 of them. Half are foreign & religious channels though. What many people don't realize is that with a TV antenna, we can actually pick up true high definition picture. Whereas, cables & satellite services often compress the pictures and what you see on your TV is only what you get from these services. Regardless that you have an HDTV (high definition TV). Anytime someone comes over my home, they're surprise of how crispy clear my TV is. All it is is simply true high definition signal via OTA. Between AntennaTV, MeTV and ION channels, they keep me entertain 24/7. I'm not a big sport fan; thus, paying to watch TV just doesn't make sense to me. I had Infinity and Uverse young salesmen tried to sell me their services. They insisted that their service beat the price of all the others. I repeatedly tell them: No thanks. Then, they asked me: "What do you do for TV?". I simply point my finger up in the air and tell them I watch OTA channels. They had this puzzled look. LOL, these kids had no idea what OTA channels and a roof antenna were. After getting some lengthy explanation, they admitted that they can't beat the price of OTA channels. LOL... these kids...