Thinking of Building an MSI 1013 - Comments?

So I've been looking for an Ultraportable laptop, something small and light that I can carry around without breaking my back. I have an old Toshiba Satellite 1805-S177, but the battery is shot, DVD drive is dying and it weighs 7.7lbs.. Time for something new.

I've been thinking about getting the following:
MSI 1013 12.1" WXGA - $662

And the following from Newegg to finish the build:
AMD Turion 64 MT-37 - $255
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB 7200RPM - $153
Corsair ValueSelect 1GB DDR400 SODIMM - $132

Total - $1202

About $200-300 less then a similarly configured 1013 from a reputable online reseller. There are some more sketchy places that might come within $100 of the price, but dealing with them might be more trouble then it's worth.

The other thing I thought about getting was an Asus Z33ae, which would run maybe $1500-1900 from a good dealer, but is limited to 1GB of RAM max, has the soon-to-be-replaced Sonoma chipset, and has a lower resolution XGA screen. It also uses weird nano-SODIMMs that make building one myself difficult at best.

I rarely break electronics, so I'm not too concerned about lack of a warrenty/accidental damage protection. Feel free to comment otherwise though.

Anyone know about battery life on the 1013?

 

I'd assume it would get about 2-3, maybe 3.5 hours on battery, considering that it uses the MT-Turion.

If you want to build it yourself, sure, it will be cheaper, but you have the lack of warranty, etc...I know that would be a concern for me.

Have you checked out the Compaq V2000Z? That is very similar to the MSI-1013 in specifications. You can get ~5 hours on that with the 12-cell battery. It will be about the same price as the MSI when similarly configured.

 

Wellll I'll admit I'm a bit biased against Compaq/HP. I'd prefer to avoid them... Also thats a 14" and I've pretty much decided on the 12" screen size.

CPU, RAM, and HD all have manufacturer warrenties, as does the whitebook. I built my own desktop so I already have a good system for keeping track of all my original reciepts, UPCs, etc, in case a componant goes. As for accidental damage, none of the resellers I was looking at covers it anyway, and I wasn't planning on getting a Thinkpad or a Dell with their expensive accidental damage plans.

The Z33ae does get 6-7 hours on its 9-cell battery ($115 extra) and maybe 4 on the internal batter (but 1.4lb or so lighter).

However, I really prefer to do my own builds if at all possible. MSI's install guide is online and it seemed quite reasonable.

 

In fact, it is not obvious that building it yourself will be cheaper, or significantly cheaper to compensate for the lack of warranty. It depends on how cheap you can get the components and if you are just a usual customer with no ascess to special internal offers, I think it's unlikely you will be able to beat the price of the ready laptop.

 

I checked all of the resellers listed on MSIs web site, and a few others selling rebadged units. I couldn't find a better price then building it myself anwhere. All those prices are straight off public places that I could order from right now.

The one place that I found with a somewhat comperable price is CyberPower, which I have bought from in the past, but in recent months their resellerratings rating has dropped significantly and I don't think I would be comfortable buying a laptop from them. I'd rather deal with the componant manufacturers directly if something is defective. If I break something, well that's my fault anyway.

 

Well, if you are comfortable building it yourself and don't mind the lack of warranty/support, then it sounds pretty good. Just be sure you know you want to do this - laptops can be difficult.

Saving $200-$300 is pretty nice though.

 

the hardest part is popping off the plastic cover over the hinge..you essentially need to push 3 plastic tabs out of the way, at once..then pull up from the edges, which would ideally require about 5 hands. plus a 6th to stabilize the unit. im sure youll figure it out though. the second hardest thing was plugging in the wifi antennas, i guess youre supposed to have tiny fingers (you should throw in the intel 2200, its wort the $25 to add wifi!).

i ordered from digitalhotbuy too (when it was $700). but they shipped fast and had good customer service, i only mention this beacuse my 1013 is still sitting here disassembled after 2 weeks since ComputerHQ lied about shipping a Turion (website said shipped, but they clearly didnt) and also lies about having it in stock..its worth the extra few bucks to get it from newegg!

 

I ordered an MSI 1013 from Cyberpower recently. The total came out to $1,121.

It hasnt arrived yet. The expected ship date is November 14th. (I ordered on November 1st).

Hopefully all will go well.

The reason I bought from Cyberpower even with the not so stellar reselleratings is because 1) They dont include their name or logo on the MSI 1013. It just says MSI like the factory one. 2) Price was reasonable 3) If you look at other huge resellers like Compaq, Dell, HP, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.......they all have ratings of around 5 or lower. Cyberpower is around a 7.4, so it isnt TOO bad.

I know the tech support at cyberpower sucks, but I usually fix things myself, and I'm pretty sure I could get MSI to fix my machine with the international warranty if the screen or something on the actually chassis or mobo goes bad.

Here are the specs:

BATTERY: Li-Ion 8-Cell PACK, 14.4V x4400 mAh
CPU: Mobile AMD Turion™64 MT-37 CPU @ 2.0GHz 1MB Cache Ultra Low Voltage 25Watt w/ HyperTransport Technology [+1185]
CD: 8X DVD REWRITABLE DRIVE
FREEGAME1: Free "Half-Life 2 Bronze" Download Coupon
FLASHMEDIA: Built-In 3in1 Media Reader
HDD: 60GB 7200RPM ULTRA ATA 100 HARD DRIVE [+76]
MOTHERBOARD: ATI RX 480M + ATI SB 400 Chipset Mainboard
MEMORY: 256 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR MEMORY [-20]
NOTEBOOK: MSI MS-1013 Notebook 12.1" Glare WXGA 1280x800 Pixel w/ ATI Radeon Xpress 200M Video, Turion™64, & 802.11b/g Wireless NOTEBOOK_COVER: MSI MS-1013 Notebook Cover (PEARL WHITE Color)

Total: $1,121.

The only thing I need to really upgrade is the ram. I'm going to throw in another 512mb stick when the laptop arrives.

 

why does no one listen to my advice and not order from cyberpower? I REPEAT DO NOT ORDER FROM CYBERPOWER

i had my experience with them and returned it to them to buy from another company. and cyberpower ratings are very low and have recieved many complaints filed thru the better business beraeu

cyberpower techsupport isnt too bad but customer service is one of the worst i have dealt with when you are ordering and talking to them the way they are talking is like trying to get you not to buy from them.

Laptoplogic.com join the forums and look for a man his user name is fords8 his real name is anthony.. he offers pretty decent prices on msi notebooks.. not as good as cyberpower but he ships his notebooks with seagate momentus while cyberpower ships their notebooks with 2mb cache western digital notebooks..

so its your choice have a 8mb cache harddrive from seagate or an old harddrive from western digital.

and i have been told by couple of people cyberpower use old parts in their systems. so i would back off if i was you.

 

Well orijin, some people have good experiences, some have bad. CyberPower does have very good prices, so I can understand why many people order from them. Rash purchased a great laptop for the money.

It is good to post your comments, but please refrain from yelling...we're all just doing our best to help out here.

 

To be fair, my family has purchased three desktops from Cyberpower. Two of them are still running, my stepsister had the third so I'm not sure of its status, but I'm sure it is still running as well. I had to RMA a stick of memory through them about a year after I bought one of the units, and after making it clear that it had tested bad with both Memtest and another testing utility, and that I had worked tech support at an ISP before, they promptly shipped me a replacement stick (no cross shipping though). The hard drive in one of the PCs is failing now, but it's been on basically 24/7 for four years and it's one of the Hitachi Desktars from the series that tended to fail. 30GB drive, no big deal to replace nowadays to keep the machine running. If you don't mind diagnosing and possibly fixing a problem yourself if something goes wrong... They should be okay.

The thing is that with the Cyberpower desktops, if anything went wrong, it was two screws to open it up and start diagnosing the problem. I didn't depend on their support. With a laptop, I'd probably have to send it back to them or take apart something I didn't assemble. I'd rather put it together myself and be my own support, knowing what I have to do to take it apart if something goes wrong from having assembled it to begin with.

I'll also be honest - I'd like to try building a laptop. I built my own desktop this summer and although there were a couple of frustrating moments during the build, it's running like a champ and I couldn't be happier. I know the handling history of every single part in there from the moment it came out of the Newegg box. I put sweat and blood (literally) into the build, and I take a lot of pride in that.

I've taken apart laptops before and re-assembled them and had them work, so it shouldn't be a big deal. The guides are all online, and I found a guys site with all of his disassembly pictures.

The big question I have is still battery life. What are those of you with 1013s seeing? 4 hours? 5?

 

Yes, batterylife is my question for that laptop, please give us a review of that MSI from cyberpower once u get it, it sounds good and is cheap.

 

Other then a German review which gave a suspiciously low time (I think they must have turned every power management feature off) no one has been able to comment from experience on the battery life of the 1013..

 

Hi.

I've been reading this forums for some time now and this particular thread caught my attention enough to register.

I'm also considering putting together my computer. Saving money is a factor, but mostly because it's the only way I can get an MS-1029 (poor man's ferrari, as someone here called it).

The thing is I live in Mexico, and unless I go through a lot of red tape I can't import anything over USD$1,000. There is a loophole though, and I can import several things at one time if none of them costs more than the import limit.

Anyway, what I wanted to post is that I'm getting it from another store (that is, if I don't decide to wait for the dual core turions, haven't made my mind up yet). The store is ewiz.com. They have stellar Froogle/reseller ratings. In my specific configuration, the price can't be beat. For the 1013, they are more expensive than the link you provided, however you should check out the rest of the components, I found them to be cheaper than Newegg's.

Hint: I found an odd, nice thing about this reseller, too. If you link to them through froogle, you can sometimes get better prices than the ones listed in the store. Just type "Super Talent ms-1013" in froogle (I'm assuming their distributor is Malabs) and you'll see what I mean.

 

I have friends that have ordered desktops from Cyberpower and they have all worked fine. Personally, I dont know anyone that has bought any laptops from them though.

I have no doubt in my mind that they use refurbished items in some of their systems. That's why all of the testimonials talk about dead hardware.

When I was configuring my MSI 1013 at Cyberpower, I realized that I am taking a gamble, BUT I took some things in to consideration such as the age of the components that are going into it.

First of all, I doubt the CPU is going to be defective or used. It's a Turion MT-37 which just hit the market not too long ago. The ram, I only ordered a 256mb PC3200 stick so that I can upgrade myself.

The hard drive is most likely a hitachi 7k60. This is the only thing I am worried about being refurb, but seeing as these drives are hard to find and I hear nothing but good things about them, then the chances are slim that its gonna be defective.

In the end, this may work out well because if I have a positive experience with Cyperpower, I can suggest the same model to others.

Once I get it, I'm gonna keep you guys up to date as to how it's running, etc... That's a promise. I'll run multiple tests on it etc...

I did ask the rep. at Cyberpower what battery life I should expect, and he said a little over 3.5 hours.

It's funny that so many people say that the customer service sucks. I called after placing my order because I received a call from Cyberpower about my debit card not going through. Once I fixed that, I called back to let them know. Once I left a voicemail because no one picked up at the extension I was routed to. Then, I called back a day later and then when I told the rep. that I had taken the hold off my account, he got all pissy and was like "Yeah, I KNOW. I checked the voicemail. I already told the accountant to recharge. We might have charged you multiple times since you called a couple of times." ...then he said "But if there are any problems I will let you know!"

So yes, I have already experienced it before the laptop has even arrrived!

No worries though, I can handle things pretty well. If it comes down to returning it if I have any problems, I will.

 

I've ordered many desktop AMD CPUs from ewiz.com
Great reseller. As a matter of fact, my most recent order from them was just last week. I got a socket 754 3700+ for $160!!! It's running like a champ OC'[email protected]!
Don't hesitate to buy from them. They keep you up to date on your order status too.

 

You can expect approximately 3 hours battery life from the MS-1013 for relatively light use (surfing and word processing) with some concessions in screen brightness settings. Tweak those settings more and turn off WiFi if you don't need to be surfing and you'll get closer to 3.5 hours.

 

Eck. With the 8-cell?

With a 9-cell the M5n/Z33ae/etc will go for 6-7 hours....

Is it just an AMD chipset thing? Does the 1012 go for a lot longer? Or it is it just a relativly low capacity battery?

 

I believe the models you referenced would turn in those kind of rundown times when both batteries were used, not with a single, albeit extended life battery.

 

Nope, it's 6-7 hours on the extended battery alone, close to 10 total. But it's a 9-cell 6600mah, and the 1013 is a 4400mah

 

that battery life really turns me off.............my I9300 gets around 4 with the 9cell, and its got a 17" screen, and a 6800 go video card.........
but still......this is really small, and stuff like i like....if only it had a better battery life then it would be perfect.

 

I know, I don't understand why it's so low. If the 1013 had the battery life of the Z33a, or even a solid 5 hours, I'd be all over it.

As it stands, I may wait a month or so and get a Z33ae.

 

How much is the Z33a? and where btw.

 

I've been looking at ProPortable and Geared2Play. Around $1600 or so for the configuration I want. A bit more the the MSI, but I'm thinking the battery life may be worth it.