Compal HGL-30 Owners Lounge

I figured hey, the HEL-80 gets an owners lounge, and although there will be less of a fan base, im sure excited about getting my new computer (on the 26th) so why not start a thread to discuss, brag, and find questions on this great computer!

 

I'm really excited about this system too...its currently one of my top choices with the Hel80 but I would love the portability. But since there are no reviews out yet I'm hesitant. Therefore, I'm counting on you

 

I should be getting mine soon too. I ordered last Wednesday with pretty much the same config as you except I just got the 80 gig. Hopefully it will ship sometime this week.

 

Yes please please please do a review soon! I am deciding between the hgl30/hel80/s96j and I need to order soon so i'll be eagerly awaiting your reviews

 

please do write us a little review!

 

by tommorow night i will post some first thoughts and by the end of the week try to get out a formal review... ill also post some teaser pics

 

great! although no rush.

I'm most most interest in is heat.. followed by battery life, keyboard flex.. and a far 3rd.. 3dmark scores.

 

murawski is gonna beat me

I'm purchasing my PowerPro 8:14 tomorrow, and I won't be able to give my opinion until next week.

I'll confirm him though.

Either way, I'll be happy

 

haha it seems my comment about heat in the w3j pushed it to your first priority..im interested in seeing if the hgl30 can push 5hrs when brightness is at lowest visible and doing light tasks like webbrowsing

 

all this talk is getting me more excited by the minute i am counting the hours until i get this laptop... cant wait and i dope to please everyone!!

 

ok here it is my initial findings on the computer...

First i must say that i am currently installing windows, drivers, and program and do not have wifi hooked up yet.

1. The battery life seems on par with the 3-3.5 hour range. Installing software and constantly having the harddrive/optical drive running put me in the high 2 hour range, like around 245 and then i had to hook up the plug. I would expect at least 330 with normal computing because the harddrive would not be spinning as much as i have had it going right now.

2. With the harddrive and optical drive going full power trying to put on all of this software i noticed very little heat problem, i would say probably one of the most efficient machines this small. There is luke warm air coming out of the vent, not discomforting at all, and a small amount of heat coming from under the left palm rest. Neither of these should be considered hot, they are warm at best and i havent found it to be a problem or a pain at all.

3. Break the keyboard into 3 zone, left middle and right. Now the right third of the keyboard has absolutly no flex at all. The middle has very little flex nothing that you would notice typeing, just as i pushed on it i got a little flex. The right third has some flex. Pushing on the enter key it depresses a small amount when typeing, but i dont think that it will cause much discomfort at all and is a descent, if not higher end keyboard.

4. I know a lot of people are worried about the color. Well dont be. Considering myself a pretty hearty male i find nothing feminine(?) about this keyboard and i actully think that i like the color a lot. Its quite a bit darker and a little more blue then the one on powernotebooks website. I actully find it to be very attractive shade and i was VERY worried about the color when i purchased.

5. Overall i really like the computer I hope that i have addressed the issues for you and hope to have a formal review out by the weekend. There are subtle touches like blue backlighting for the power button that make this computer a winner. Initially i am happy with it 100% and i hope to tell you more about it soon with a full blown review, but i hope this helps clarify some things for everyone.

 

still looks clunky and thick ;/ pictures

 

Glad you're enjoying it so far! Can I ask how you're finding the noise levels to be as you're installing all that stuff? My final quirk before I order one of these myself...

 

hmm i don't think it looks clunky at all?

in any case take your time! I look forward to your re-assessments after everything is installed and functional

 

The noise levels arnt that bad, maybe the level of a fan on low when the optical drive is spinning. It definatly is a sound for the optical drive, but the fans running are near silent and i cannot see either of them being a problem.

 

I just ordered my HGL30 from Powernotebooks today, I have to wait until next week for it, but I'm still counting the hours!

I have never owned a notebook before and I was concerned about the weight. But I held my boss's brand new XPS at 4.5 with a 9 cell and it was pretty light, so I feel a ton better

Now it's time for me to go to NewEgg and accessorize

 

looking forward to more assessments guys. i am 90% sure i will be ordering the hgl30 now. just waiting for a mini review or something. and how about some pics!!! glamour shots anyone? hehe

 

Hey murawski, congratulations on your new HGL30!

From what I read, it sounds like the CD drive isn't as loud as the HEL80's--which I think is only loud when installing large files.

Also, how's the keyboard flex/bounce?

 

that battery life is for the 6cell right? it seems pretty low for a 9cell

 

He got his from powernotebooks, so the 9 cell is standard

 

hmm thats a strangely low battery life for its rating of 7200maH...

murawski-what brightness level did you have it set at?

 

And, is that with your wireless card on or off?

 

ok wireless on, connected and surfing the net, installing some programs with the brightness set to its lowest i got a max time of about 320. The lower times in the beginning was probably from the massive amounts of data that had to be written to the harddrive and the constant spinning of the optical drive. I have my windows batter meter reading 99% and it is telling me i have 313 left, but i dont find that all that accurate and found that i am getting a little more then that.

Keep in mind that i am constan downloading things and transfering files from a usb harddrive at the same time that i am surfing and typing so i think that the 330 to 350 range should be what to expect without wireless on and just typing or light browsing.

 

^now that you got windows and everything running.. how's the heat?

 

The fan cycles on and off almost silently with the battery running, and on always when the power cord is hooked up, but i didnt notice any heat difference with the fan on all the time. That being said the left palm rest does get warm, but not enough to be uncomfortable although with prolonged use it does heat up enough to make u slightly sweat, and the right gets barely warm. Sitting on my lap (i know your not supposed to) the bottom too is warm but nothing uncomfortable at all and it wouldnt bother me to have it on my lap or use the keyboard with my wrists on the rest.

 

tell us more!! i think i'll be ordering this monday.

 

Hey, would anyone like to post some pics of their machine. I'd love to see some real life pics of the HGL30. (Curious about the lid)

Thanks!

 

sometime tonite or tommorow i will post a few pictures to check out... I've been swamped playing in Gus Macker if you know what that is and havent had time to work on a full out review but i will be trying to get that out too within the next few days

 

I just ordered my z96 from powernotebooks yesterday but now I'm having second thoughts about it. The more I read the less it sounds like this is the best solution for a midrange gaming lappy. The s96 and the HEL80 and even HGL30 seem like better ideas for me. Any other input from you guys that might either make me feel more confident with my purchase or point me in the right direction would be great!

Asus Z96J 15.4 Inch WSXGA w/ ATi x1600 256MB
Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
Corsair 1GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (1X1024)
Artic Silver 5
Hatachi 60GB 5400rpm S-ATA
Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945
3 Years Warranty
8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi

 

It would help if you could be specific about why you think the Z96J would not be as good as the HEL80, HGL30 or S96J.

Each has its strong and weak points, and which would be best for you is determined by your uses. Are you suggesting you want to go down to the WXGA resolution for example? What else?

Probably the best thing to do is call your Sales Advisor on Monday to discuss the options, and then they (who knows...maybe it is me ) can help you decide which one will work best for you.

 

I don't think you can go wrong with either of those 4 machines Like Donald said, it would be helpful to know what you were looking to use it for though. For instance, for myself I crossed off the z96j because I don't want/need the higher res, so it was the s96j, hel80 or hgl30. But the 15.4 vs 14.1 decision...

 

i have a w3j and if i could have waited 2 more months i'd have gone with the z96j for the glossy and wsxga+ screen...the z96j is also the only 15.4 lappy than can hit 5hrs with the 9cell...there that make u feel better?

 

ok there are some pictures... It is really hard to capture the true color of this laptop, i think the best interpretation of it is the picture with the flash on near the spot where the flash illuminates the computer the most. again i dont think that the true color has come through in the pictures but to me it is a very nice color

 

Very nice pics, thank you! Yes, it does seem very hard to capture the right color. It's sexier than the usual grey/black anyway (though that's highly personal and very much subject to opinion).

Is that an awesome horizontal viewing angle I see, or what? *drools*

C.

 

aaaah! gorgeous! great pics! looking forward to the mini review murawski!

 

Has anyone run 3DMark yet on the HGL30?

 

If someone does, please do both 3DMark05 as well as 3DMark06... both are very important.

Thank you in advance, I'll make dinner for whomever does it first! Italian home-cooked dinner, too!

C.

 

Great looking system! I love the color-shifting aspect of it. Everything else looks awesome too! You guys will love the HGL30.

 

Thanks for the pictures.

 

Nice pics. I was worried about how green the lid would be, but after seeing those I really like it.

 

Just ordered mine! Donald @ PN was very helpful! I can't wait till it gets here next week.

 

Hello.

On this particular machine can an owner please look at system manager display and tell me the model number of the screen used thank you.

 

so i have a problem already... I installed RM Clock and when i did whenever i rebooted the computer would flash a blue screen (not of death) before windows would load displaying some message of which i could only see for less then a second and then restart the computer in an endless cycle. Safe mode, last known good connection and regular would not do the trick. I reinstalled windows and got the computer back to normal again. Would it be a good idea to try to install again and pass that off as a fluke or does RM clock make changes that would affect my booting of windows?

 

What is RM Clock? Do you have a link?

If it did as you describe I would definately not install it again until you have better information about it. Did you write their tech support about the issue?

 

Ok, I Googled it to get the link.

I would not touch this utility if it gave you the results you describe. I know it is a nice "tinker" utility, but totally unnecessary to the operation of your computer. These types of utilities can very often be very destructive as you have now experienced.

 

rmclock crashes if you have reset to default on exit checked..though i haven't BSODed ever with it..the new version is much easier to use and more stable...otherwise you can wait for the official release of NHC 2.0

 

they're not destructive if used properly..but can help a great deal as far as heat goes..if you're planning on gaming for more than 10-15mins..i noted a 5-6C drop at full load which is considerable

 

if you could drop a link for the version that you are using that would be very helpful!

 

http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_21_bin_fix.exe

the first thing u'll need to do is to go to profiles and set the voltages in the master performance states table..after that you can select the various multipliers and their respective voltages in performance on demand..keep in mind that power saving and max performance only allow you to choose one multiplier..lots of questions are answered on their forum or you could ask me here

 

ok thanks a bunch. im not very understanding of these multipliers and from the forums i could only get at what people think is the best to use, so my question to you is what would you set for max performance and for battery powered states.


p.s. i found out that the windows error was not from cpu rightmark but it was from the updated (6.5.722) version of zone alarm security suite. I uninstalled and installed the pervious version with no problems