Your instincts are sound, for reasons that you might not believe. And further, the NTEP studies are flawed, for reasons that you might not believe.....and really, I have to re-phrase that. The NTEP studies are not flawed. Our perceptions of the NTEP studies are flawed. What did NTEP promise us? Darn little. These people spend a controlled amount of time, on a controlled budget, to determine a few, but not a lot, of things: 1. What grass cultivars do well. (Ranked in order, best to worst...) 2. What grass cultivars do poorly. (Read the bottom of the list....) 3. Shade is not the issue: All the candidates get the same amount of shade. 4. Moisture is not the issue: All the candidates get the same amount of water, at the same time. 5. Mowing height is not the issue: Yep, you guessed it, everybody gets mowed at the same time. 6. (I know this is getting repetitive.....) Same amount of fertilizer, at the same time. 7. Leaf damage: (I'm stretching here, I really am....) All the leaves get taken off of those lawn plots, at the same time. But what do those rankings MEAN? They mean that some cultivars do "better" than others. And we'll put them in order, best to worst, for you to take a look at. First place is good, thirty ninth place is not remotely as good, is it? But the difference, between 7th place and 8th place? Insignificant. Those lawns, in those test plots of ground, have built in a 'normal' amount of care. Those test plots also have built in a 'normal' amount of neglect: "Just leave 'em alone, let 'em grow". If you can catch a break, on price, and take 11th place on the list, as opposed to 9th place which is expensive? You are going to have a very similar grass. With very similar characteristics. Your choice of 9th place, or of 11th place, on that list, does not guarantee success or failure of your lawn. You get to do that, all by yourself. Fertilize. Don't fertilize. Mow. Don't mow. Water. Don't water. But your choice saved you a bunch of money? MOST excellent. You've still got that money that you did not yet spend, eh?

Sorry Virginia and West Virginia for that matter. It was just a little tom foolery not meant to offend anyone. That goes as well for our friends to the west in Taiwan as well. It's just that I own a pressure washer with a 5hp Honda engine, and I just have to say that it is the nicest little running engine that I have ever owned. And I think that the farmed out Taiwan engines might lack a little on the quality compared to the Japanese ones. I did however have to add a thicker gasket to the plastic manifold in between the carb and the engine due to heat distortion. That one took me a while to diagnose.

I have a newer Stihl BG85 blower with less than 10 hours of use and have had similar problems as the original poster. Cold starts are fine; use throttle lock, prime a couple of times, choke, and it starts right up. Hot restarts are usually ok, but at times you have to baby the throttle to keep it running. The real problems are warm restarts, say after resting for 15 minutes to an hour. I try to treat these as hot restarts with no choke and no priming, but it is a chore to keep it running if it restarts. Once you can get it running it's idle only for probably 30-60 seconds or it will die right out. These warm restarts typically take 5-10 pulls to get it idling, and then 4 to 5 repeated sequences before it will stay running. Very frustrating. I've tried treating it as a cold start, with the choke on but that seems to make matters worse. Any thoughts? FWIW, I also own a Shindaiwa 488 chainsaw - it's the model of perfection for 2 stroke starting. For cold starts it's 3 pulls without fail; the first pull I always fail to remember how much compression the saw has and I never get a full pull (grin), the second pull it sputters to life, shut off the choke and the third pull gets it running. Warm or hot restarts are accomplished with one pull like clockwork. I wish I had purchased a Shindaiwa leaf blower as well. Thanks, David

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...