pbl21?

I'm considering a pbl21 (force pbl21 from xoticpc). Anyone here own one? Thoughts? Strengths? Issues?

I have been using an HGL30 (from powernotebooks) for five years, so I'm not looking for general compal info... just specifics on the pbl21 which I haven't yet seen discussed here.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

same here. looking to purchase this sometime this year. might have a bit more power than the m11x i suppose. but yeah, my 2 choices right now are m11x(portability and battery life) and pbl21(1080p screen and cpu power)

best laptop to wait for is the lg p330 imo.

so yeah, any info on the matte screen of this model or any issues and concern would be appreciated.

 

Just bought the PBL21 from another manufacturer today. I got it with the full HD screen (1920x1080) and the Intel Core i7 2720QM CPU. Very first impressions are that it's quite nice and worth it if you get a good deal (and Xotic looks to be a great deal).

• I got the 2720QM and it is very, VERY fast. No complaints at all there.
• The 1080p screen is very nice. Great clarity (of course) but also very good color, contrast, and brightness. Good viewing angles too. It actually looks nicer than the screen on my 2010 MacBook Pro! It is a glossy screen which I normally am not fond of but this one is very good. Definitely go for the full HD screen.
• The Nvidia 540M is more than decent and performs quite nicely. Definitely adequate for most games if you use reasonable resolution and detail settings. However if you want to play games at full HD and / or the highest detail it's probably not good enough. In that case you'll want something like the Sager 8130 with the 460M which smokes this 540M.
• Nice keyboard layout, though it's slightly noisy (but definitely still acceptable). Light touch and good tactile feedback. The key surfaces are larger than "normal" so that makes the keyboard feel slightly different. I don't like that the home, end, pageup and pagedown keys are only found on the numeric keypad. No backlight. It's not the best keyboard I've used and not the worst. It's within the "acceptable" range. Overall, I'd rate the keyboard as "OK."
• The touchpad uses the same plastic surface as the rest of the notebook and some people may not like that. It's also pretty small for this day in age. However, it works extremely well including multi-finger support. It works every bit as well as my Macbook's trackpad just without the nice glass surface feel and without all the real estate of the Macbook trackpad. This is in direct contrast to the HP DV6T Quad I returned before buying this machine which had an absolutely horrible touchpad. I'd rate the touchpad as "very good."
• Nicer "feel" than I expected. It's definitely generic, but it's a nice generic. Reasonably light. Reasonably thin. Even though there's certainly quite a bit of flex in the notebook it doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart tomorrow. It's a sort of a strong flexible if that makes sense. Nevertheless the shell has a thin, plasticky feel so it probably can't take too much of a pounding.
• A nice touch is a button which I think is for turning on the power to the USB ports when the computer is off. Very nice.
• Port placement could be a lot better. All of the ports are very close to the front edge of the notebook. This means that since all of the USB ports are near the front if you have anything plugged into them you won't be able to hide the cables and the cables might even interfere with your mouse. Even the HDMI port is right next to the front edge which makes no sense whatsoever. The network port is also very close to the front edge instead of near the back where it belongs.
• Reasonably quiet. The fan is not too annoying or too loud.
• It's hard to quantify but the DVD drive seems very fast (I got the regular DVD burner).
• I don't like that it doesn't support built in Bluetooth (not that I ever actually use it on my computers).

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

 

I was considering this one, but I just went with an Asus N53SV-B1 instead. Price was nice, but I also had an HGL30, and while it performed well, the loud whiny fan really got on my nerves. It had the same general port placement problem also, I'm getting the sense that's a Compal thing, I just find myself a little more skittish about that brand, despite the HGL30 still going strong to this day (screen's too small for it to be my daily user anymore though).

 

The speakers are on the bottom of the notebook so there's a great variance in sound depending on the surface on which the notebook is placed. Also, the speakers are not particularly loud. Doesn't sound bad, though.

 

Does anybody know the battery life on this thing? I just ordered mine.

EDIT: 3.5 Hours