Comments on a HGL30

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place for this post, but I recently bought an HGL30 and thought I should post my comments about it. I'd write a real review, but it seems like you need a digital camera to do that.

I purchased my laptop from PowerNotebooks based on the suggestion of people in this forum and the many positive reviews I had seen. The buying experience was great, and it only took a few weeks for me to receive the laptop, much less time than HP and other companies quoted.

The laptop was configured as follows:
14.1" WXGA (1280 x 800) "Glossy" LCD w/PCI-e nVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 w/256MB
Intel® Core™2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz Processor w/4M L2 On-die cache - 667MHz FSB
2,048MB (2 SODIMMS) DDR2/667 Dual Channel Memory
80GB SATA/150 Hard Drive at 5,400 RPM
Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW Drive w/Softwares
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g
Built-in Bluetooth

The final price was just under $1700, which seemed like a pretty good price for what I was getting.

Although I'm happy for the most part with this laptop (the weight is great after my last laptop, it's a perfect size, it's powerful, and it's not a Dell), I have a few comments that prospective buyers may want to consider.

All reviews of this laptop mention keyboard flex. Honestly, I would never have noticed it if it hadn't been mentioned. Flex is only noticeable if you're looking for it, and is not a problem at all.

However, the placement the "function" key where the left control key usually is is very annoying. So many keyboard shortcuts involve the control key that it will take a while for me to get used to this keyboard. If you're thinking about buying this computer, consider the placement of the control key, not the keyboard flex, as far as the keyboard goes.

The placement of the control key is nothing compared to the laptop's fan. Contrary to what I had read in reviews, the fan is very noticeable. It very frequently switches between on and off. I understand that this is a powerful laptop, that the processor and graphics card have to dissipate a huge amount of heat. However, I see no reason why the fan doesn't go through intermediate speeds. The responses to complaints about the fan are more often than not something along the lines of "Changing when the fan turns on will make the laptop overheat." I'm asking for the fan to go through slower, quieter speeds before going full speed; if that meant it would be on all the time on a low speed, I would be perfectly happy.

Another issue is heat. I feel there is very little point to a laptop if it can't be placed on your lap. Fortunately, the bottom of the laptop is not a problem at all, it barely warms up and can easily be placed on your lap. However the left palm rest and touchpad get rather warm during normal usage. It's generally not much of a problem until you close the lid. If you leave the laptop running with the lid closed (a rather common scenario), the left palm rest and touchpad (and screen where it touches those parts) gets very hot. I was unable to use the touchpad upon opening the laptop, and had to wait several minutes for it to cool.

I'm also disappointed with the "media" buttons. The play/pause, and next/preview track buttons above the keyboard aren't mapped to the usual "media keys" key codes. As such, they aren't recognized by all programs and cause issues if used as global hotkeys. There are function keys (Fn + some key) that map to the usual key codes, but they can't be easily and quickly pressed with one hand.

Other than those issues, I'm happy with this laptop. Any concerns about the color of it are ridiculous, the screen looks great, wireless works fine, and it runs everything I need it to.

 

Just to touch on a few things you mentioned. I'm not sure about the HEL30, but I know the HEL80's have more then on/off for fan speeds. I noticed a difference in the notebooks temperature as well as the fan control when going from bios 107 t0 114 or whatever the new one is that supported battery life reporting.

As for the heat issue.. you really should look at using hardware scaling for your processor to reduce/elimate that. Lot's of people on here use either NHC or RMclock (my preference) to setup "performance on demand" modes that will extend your battery time some as well as lower heat.

 

You don't have to personally own one, but could borrow one. The more reviews the better for the next person who comes along considering a HGL30.

 

Thanks for your input.

There have been reports about newer BIOS versions that have minimized some of the fan issue. You can also underclock some power settings to cut the fan activity as well.

As far as the HGL being hot...I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this is your first notebook. For its power, the Compal systems run rather cool and quiet. I had an integrated graphics notebook that was both hotter and louder than my HEL80...and other systems (not even gaming-level at that) can be quite hot as well. Compal did a good job of cooling the HEL80--perhaps the HGL30 is a bit warmer due to having less internal cooling room.

Again, you can underclock and maybe update your BIOS for lower temperatures. The reason it gets hotter when the lid is closed is that the notebook releases some heat through the keyboard. That heat is trapped when you close it and let the system run.

 

I've had a laptop before, a Dell Inspiron 8600, so I'm mostly comparing the heat and fan noise to that.

I updated the bios to the most recent one for the HGL30, but it didn't seem to change anything.

With the Dell, I used NHC and loved it, but with this laptop, NHC didn't seem to work. When I would set it to maximum performance, the processor cores would still scale their clock speed down, and when I would set it to stay at the lowest clock speed, it would still scale up. Also, NHC and the few other programs I tried couldn't read the CPU temperature for some reason.

The heat issue with the laptop closed isn't with the keyboard, it's the left palm rest and touchpad that get hot. I agree that the closed lid traps the heat, but I still feel that a design that allows the touchpad to get that hot isn't the best.

I'll have access to a digital camera in a week or two, and will attempt to write a review then.

 

I'd suggest a quick read-through of the cooling guide. Perhaps cleaning your fan is in order.

Core Temp will give you CPU temperatures. So will RM Clock.

 

The bios upgrade fixes the fan, the ctrl key placements is easy to get used to (i actually prefer the fn key to be at the end), and the notebook will get warm for me after playing Oblivion for a awhile, but its pleasant and keeps me warm and cozy at night. Never seen the thing get hot, even after my pushing it to the limit overclocks and gaming for hours on end. But be happy, the screen is easily the best of any other 14" notebook.

 

@chrisyano: I haven't tried Core Temp or RMClock, so I'll give those both a try.

@SSJ3Goku: I haven't noticed any difference from upgrading to the 111A bios, but I could be wrong. The heat isn't that much of a problem except when I have the laptop doing something like downloading a torrent or playing video through the s-video output with the screen closed for a while. I'm starting to get used to the ctrl key placement, but it will take a while. And I do love the screen, it's an amazing improvement from my old laptop.

 

I'm assuming you have the "patching" finished for the dual core and whatnot? There isn't any inherent flaw with NHC when in comes to core or core 2 duo, but I think if you can't get NHC to work right, you're not going to get RMclock to work right either. Might need to look into something else like the OS.

 

@pyro2919: I was using the most recent NHC with the Core 2 patch. Core Temp read the temperatures correctly but didn't read the clock speeds correctly. RMClock seems to read everything correctly, but it's far more complicated than NHC. I just tried NHC again and it still shows "..." for CPU Temp.

 

RMclock isn't complicated.... its feature rich!

Check over in the noise thread for my link to a setup guide, as well as my personally complete settings show up a few times.

 

NHC doesn't cooperate with the CPU--not sure if its dual-core-based or Compal-based. There was a thread or two about that and even the NHC dual-core patch and Windows Dual-core fix don't work. That's when I got Core Temp.

 

Ok, so I was wrong, there is a problem

Then... I told you all to use RMclock from the beginning! Hah!

 

I prefer NHC...I like the design of the solution, because it puts everything into one, easily accessible power management application.

Allow me to ask: Did YOU install your dotnetfix today? I intend to not give up easily getting it to work. RMClock doesn't do what I want my power management app to do.

 

me? I don't use NHC, I've never seen more then a few screenshots of it... and I don't like the overhead that a dot net application requires (even as a service/interface driven application like NHC, either way something must stay open to keep the settings going). I also don't want a program managing my system to be based on a layer of abstraction with no real hardware interfacing (dot-net) running from a virtual machine (dot-net) when it's function is real time management. Now don't get me wrong, if this program does what you want how you want it, then its perfect! My intend isn't to trash or downtalk the utility... It's just not for me..

What is it you want RMclock to do that it doesn't? What do you mean it puts all your power management into one easily accessible application? RMclock is a tab and menu driven application, one executable. It's function is to let you manage your voltages, extended cpu power modes, and speed settings. It does all of that very well. Now it doesn't wake up in the morning and make you breakfast, or argue with your electric company that it's purpose is to conserve power so you should get billed less for trying. From what I've seen of NHC from screens, there website and some posts, it's a much more turnkey solution then RMclock because its lacking all the features, or hiding them from the users choice. If that makes a program meant for technically knowing people bad, then stop driving the SUV when you don't want to pay the gas prices

 

Well, I like the battery gauge it uses (reminicent of the IBM/Thinkpad battery meter). NHC not only controls CPU scaling, but GPU scaling and power levels as well if it's an available feature (like it is on the newer GPUs) plus it offers the same manual definition of voltage/multiplier levels that RMClock does.

Oh, and I don't drive an SUV, I drive a Mazda3.

 

Ah, ok.. well the battery meter isn't bad, its this one... http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/notebook-batteryinfo/Notebook-BatteryInfo.html
(open standard since IBM sold their thinkpad branch to lenovo) which means it is free to install either way I like the battery guage that RMclock has because its tiny and unobtrusive.. Then again, I have my shortcut menu's all catagories and subcategoried, and I dont have any icons on the desktop, and the desktop items aren't displayed... hehe

As for the GPU scaling, meh... By default if you enable the overclock features you can control the 2D clocks, as well as the 3D clocks.

I am interested to know if you can enable and disable all the extra power states (C1E etc), control the CPU and chipset thermal modes, as well as the other chipset features and whatnot like you can with RMclock.

 

Well, I'll have to do some experimenting when the HGL30 shows up.

 

GPU scaling is part of the nvidia control panel, not part of RMclock, sorry that wasn't clear. I was going to edit the other post but I wasn't sure you would check back up.