IFL90 (semi)mini-review

here are my impressions of the ifl90 after using it for a few days:

my specs:
WXGA glossy screen
T7500 Core 2 Duo processor
2 gig ram
512mb 8600m gt video card
7200rpm 160gb hard drive
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11 a/g/n
DVDRW/CDRW combo drive


Build and Design

The computer actually looks very nice. The lid is very shiny, and kind of glittery. Depending on your preferences i guess that could be good or bad. It is pretty heavy. I'll be using this computer at college, and i don't really look forward to carrying it around campus, but it's definitely manageable.

When buying a bag for it, i would suggest getting a bag for a 17" notebook. My backpack is made for 17", and the IFL90 is actually a somewhat tight fit.

Although there's no latch or anything holding the lid down, it feels very strong and I don't think the lid would move at all from normal use or holding it upside down.

Keyboard
The keyboard does not have very much flex. If i push down in the upper right corner of it pretty hard there is noticeable flex, but you have to push much harder than normal use and even then it is only on the edge of the keyboard. One problem is that whenever i use a f# key such as F6 with the Fn button held down to do something like turn the volume up or down, it also performs the default action for firefox/internet explorer, which is annoying. If i push F8 to do an in-game function, this happens then too. I'm sure there's a way to fix it, but i don't know how.

Screen
The screen is pretty good, but not great. There are only reflections on the screen when it is black, so during normal use there are basically none. However, when playing dark games you can sometimes notice them. The viewing angles are very good but obviously it does get lighter or darker when viewed from the side. There is very little to no flex in the screen.

Speakers
The speakers are pretty good for built-in speakers, but of course aren't great. Most decent headphones/speakers should provide better quality than the built-in speakers. For someone like me, who generally uses headphones and only uses speakers rarely, they are definitely adequate.

Touchpad
I guess the touchpad is decent, but i basically hate all touchpads so i'm not a very good judge. If you run your finger down the side of the touchpad, it scrolls the page, which is convenient. I'm not sure if it's possible to adjust the sensitivity of the touchpad, but if it is then i would definitely want to turn it way up. I would recommend using a normal mouse.

Battery
I accidentally received 2 6-cell batteries instead of one 6-cell and one 9-cell like i wanted, but the 9-cell is on it's way. With the brightness pretty high up, wireless on, and a couple different programs running (couple tabs in firefox, i think i installed stuff during this time), the 6-cell lasted me a little over an hour and a half.

Heat and Noise
There is some heat under where your left hand rests, but it never gets too hot to bear and if you're focused on doing something, you probably won't notice it. The laptop is generally very quiet, to the point where you can be in the same room and not notice it is even on. However, my dvd-drive is much louder than the rest of the system. Because of the high difference between the drive and the rest of the computer, the drive seems very loud. However, it is probably about the same or less than the noise from my desktop computer.

Performance
Performance is good. I'm using 162.18 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com. These are the results from fear stress test:




I didn't know how to use a custom resolution in fear so that i could use the native resolution of 1280x800. Those settings were playable for me, although i didn't play very much while testing.

I attempted to overclock the video card, but could not figure out how to using either atitool or nvtune. I think it is because the drivers do not allow it, so if you're going to overclock you'll have to use older drivers.

ihere are my 3dmark06 results, but keep in mind they are with a 1280x800 resolution.

3DMark Score 3595 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 1475 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1278 Marks
CPU Score 1925 Marks

 

nice review man. appreciate it =)
seems like 3dmark06 scores with stock 8600gt is higher than i expected ( compared to dell's 1520 and results of earlier ifl90s) nice nice =)

 

eh not really i'm guessing that if i did the test at 1280x1024 resolution (the default for 3dmark06) it would be a max of like 3100 or around there