A Thread For Clevo/Sager Notebook Recall News and Questions.

Least you guys are almost living up to expectations, unlike my dear spartans...

 

I just read about this just now, so what does this mean for my 8130?

 

Your ODD and eSATA are connected to the affected ports.

 

Did you already receive it? If so, you have little to worry about, in the short term. Just treat it like nothing is wrong, as you'll eventually get a replacement before any signs of trouble appear.

If it hasn't shipped, well... you have a long wait ahead of you.

 

Got it Thursday

 

Am I right that the HD port is okay but the Optical and external sata ports could go bad?

There is an external adapter that connects eSata drives to a USB 3 port. NewerTech adapter turns eSATA into USB 3.0, makes legacy external HDDs feel young again -- Engadget Get one of those and an external caddy for the optical drive. If the faulty sata ports quit may be you still have a place to connect an optical or external HD.

When the new mother boards start shipping repair departments may be swamped. If your machine goes for repair a bit later in the game may be the technicians will be more practiced at swaping the boards and turn around will be faster.

 

Thanks for posting the link to the eSATA to USB 3 adaptor - my new laptop is in transit and I have been trying to determine a workaround for downloading images from memory cards (many thousands a week). USB 3.0 card readers are not available yet (maybe March) and with no express card slot I figured I was going to be rolling dice with the faulty SATA 3 controller as I had just picked up an Addonics eSATA card reader that is almost as fast as the ExpressCard Reader that I am leaving behind. Addonics also has an eSATA to USB 3.0 adaptor so hopefully download speeds will not be too much worse going through their adaptor and I will not have to risk failure of the SATA 3.0 controller. It will cost me hours of sleep a week if I have to go back to a USB 2.0 card reader.

 

I read about the recall and the problem today on the forum. I called the technical support of the reseller here in Greece, my lappy is a Turbo X Iron 727 (Clevo P150HM), and they said to call them again by the end of March. They knew about the problem, which is really surprising considering that news of that kind usually don't reach Greece that fast and they told that they are gonna replace all the affected motherboards. So i guess, no need to worry then.

 

Official word from Sager:

1. Sager and Clevo have consulted together and have decided that both Sager and Clevo will halt all pending shipments of Intel 6 series chipset systems. Models include Sager NP5160, NP5170, NP8130, NP8150, NP8170. (Clevo: W150HNQ, W170HN, P150HM, P151HM1, P170HM).

2. The current schedule is that starting in the middle of Feb 2011, Intel will start supplying qualification samples of the new revision of Intel 6 series chipset to Clevo. Clevo RD and QC will make it their first priority to test and qualify this new chip revision and prepare for mass production.

3. Currently the mass production version of the revised 6 series is scheduled to begin delivery from Intel to Clevo in limited quantities at the end of Feb 2011. We estimate that we will resume limited quantity shipment of Sager models NP8130, NP8150, and NP8170 in the middle of March 2011 and limited quantity of NP5160, NP5170 models at the end of March to the beginning of April 2011. Stabilization of shipment for all models should occur by the end of April 2011.

Q&A:

Q: What if I have already received my system or a system is on the way?

A: The chip flaw at issue should not happen immediately. Please continue to use your system as is. Once the stabilization of shipment occurs, Sager will start a recall program for all affected models that have already been shipped.

We will offer 3 day air both ways shipping to replace the affected systems with a brand new motherboard as well as resetting your warranty period to restart from the date the recall service is completed.

We estimate to start the recalling process between May-June’11.

Q: Should I cancel my pre-order?

A: As the 2nd generation Core processors have shown potential in performance gain in many areas, supply was already on a very tight inventory control. This recall will further restrict supply through the first half of 2011. Our suggestion is that if you do not have any urgent need of a new system, you should keep your pre-order as your credit card will not be charged until we have a unit ready for your order and your consent to go forward. We believe that it would be best to keep your pre-order open as you will not have to restart at the end of the pre-order list.

 

Sounds good I'll just keep my laptop as is then until the recall process occurs.

 

I just talked to a Malibal Agent and they said:
Max Stein: Will you be shipping P150HM1's by mid February?
MALIBAL Agent: Hello, how can I help you today?
Max Stein: Hi
MALIBAL Agent: Hi, it doesn't look like it.
MALIBAL Agent: We just got an update today, looks like mid March now.
Max Stein: Alright
Max Stein: Makes sense since there was a recall
MALIBAL Agent: yes
Max Stein: So you think that actual shipped units will be going out by Mid March
MALIBAL Agent: right
Max Stein: Okay thanks

 

Glad they are handling it this way. free 3 day shipping both ways, and holding the current affected boards and not continuing to sell them. Best way they could've handled the situation imo.

 

Note that Toshiba is requesting 100% return of all SB notebooks:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/545042-toshibas-new-sandy-bridge-qosmios-10.html#post7116970

I hope they're just being extra cautious or used ports 2-5 internally.

 

I'm happy with that. Seems like the best they can do with a crappy situation.
Happy with Sagers solution that is...glad I don't have to send my laptop back since the problem really won't effect me much anyway.

 

OP updated.

May/June recall is nice, as that keeps those of us who are still in the process of ordering and receiving machines from getting pushed way down in the queue.

Hopefully this means I can have even a small chance at receiving one by the end of March.

Is there a tentative date for when orders will be reopened to the public?

 

Pre-orders are still open to the public, and will be filled in the order in which they are received...it will just be a little later than sooner.

The idea of getting into the queue is still the same.

 

Oh I thought orders were ceased as well. My mistake.

 

Even with full knowledge of this Intel situation and how long it may be to ship these new systems, orders are still coming in on a daily basis. So yes it is good to get in line and stay in line if you want one of these new systems...

 

Some companies have pulled all units that use the Sandy Bridge chipset. Try and find anything on Alienware, it's off their site.
I guess it's a smart move, hate the fact that Intel screwed up as I really needed a new laptop but I'd hate sending it back to be repaired.

 

I wouldn't be afraid to own one of the defective machines. If I understand the flaw there's a work around that would keep me happy until the board can be replaced. I'm not worried about the repair. The machine I'm on at the moment had a mother board replaced last year. But it's not going to be a choice because it looks like the problem machines aren't going to be shipped to anyone.

If there are spare ports that aren't defective wouldn't it be a quicker fix to rewire the existing design to bypass the bad ports? Then there wouldn't be a new chip to test. There must be more too it than that.

 

I did read on the AW forums here that if you call you can still order and they will ship it with the understanding it requires a replacement mobo.

It's wired through the PCB. It's not like there's a physical wire. It's wired in the board to the chip. Besides only ports 0&1 are unaffected, 2-5 are affected. So you're limited to the two ports anyhow and those are both used in the 8170 for the internal drives, and only port 0 in the 8130 and 8150 for the internal, everything else is ports 2-5 for optical and external.

Some laptops with a single internal drive and an optical with no external eSATA if they wired it to ports 0 & 1 would be unaffected as the other ports are completely unused.

 

Yeah, I guess if I was a lot younger I'd take the risk but I can't afford to have corrupted data. I have to do some of my work on my PC and I can't afford the remote possibility that it will die and obviously some have died otherwise they wouldn't be aware of this problem.
I'll still buy a Sager, but I will wait until the problem is fixed and hope my current laptop stays functioning.

 

I'm not sure what difference it makes to be younger or not. I'm probably older than most here on the boards (38).

They found the issue from OEM's and resellers doing their own testing, not users. Nothing failed or "died" as you stated, they just had diminished performance. But they will fail eventually, just no data corruption. Primary ports 0&1 are unaffected, period.

For the ports at risk, think of it as a wireless connection as you move further and further away from the access point. Eventually performance will slow primarily because it will error out and keep resending to the point where it can no longer make contact. Data won't be corrupt, just won't transfer any more.

There's nothing wrong with waiting, and you have to wait, because they won't ship until this is corrected. But mine will be in my hands in a couple days, and not sendig it back to be put in the back of the queue with a new order.

 

Does that mean I am a grandpa or something?
you can add 8 years to be my age.

Anyway....

This whole recall issue is a bummer for me. I was looking at getting an 5160 and if it was in my hands by the end of the month at the latest we would manage, but to wait till sometime in April is a real stretch now. I have been looking at alternatives to Sager and don't find anything I like from the big 3 (HP, Dell, Acer). There is a few from Asus that are ok, but long term that is not what I would want. It's so hard to look at first gen "i" products when you know second gen is almost here.

The real frustration comes from the Sager 6150 not really being affected by the defect, as I am sure the port 0 and 1 are for the HD and the ODD.

 

Well if they used a common design across the board, they probably used ports 2-5 for odd and eSATA.

 

I feel your pain.

Q1 is full of games I want, and I was counting on having an awesome machine that could run them at full tilt, 1080p and 60fps. I'm lucky to get 30fps @ 1680x1050 right now.

Last night, I loaded up the new DoW2 beta, set it to max, ran the benchmark.... 29fps average, 10fps minimum. Turned it off.

I'm genuinely pretty downtrodden over this.

 

I'm mostly annoyed that by the time I get the machine now I will have to be in full study mode and can't play the games I preordered...

 

I looked at all those brands too, before deciding on a Sager. Initially, I had the impression that Sager/Clevo was a little out of my budget, but I realized that was a couple years go. Also, none of the mainstream brands really did anything for me this time around.

This doesn't really bother me, as I don't really buy many games at or close to release. I just don't believe in forking out $49.99-59.99 for a game anymore. Last game I bought close to release was SC2, and the next ones for me are GW2 and D3 (both pre-ordered), which don't even have hard release dates yet.

 

For those of you not really paying attention:

What: The SATA II (3MB/s) ports on the chipset for Sandy Bridge processors has a flaw. Over the course of 36 months of use 5% to 15% of laptops will begin to see increasing errors over SATA to the optical drive and eSATA port. The primary and secondary HD channels are unaffected.

How Bad: If your machine is effected it is unlikely to cause any corruption, but performance will degrade and eventually drives will not mount. Intel says basically not to sweat it in the mean time and that it will not be noticeable to most users before they have a fix available.

When will it be fixed? Already is, but will take some time for Intel to get new chips out of the fabs and to MB manufacturers.

What about my Sager/Clevo? If you don't have it and it hasn't shipped, don't hold your breath. They have halted all shipments. It probably won't ship until March/April. If you do have it once they have a new motherboard for you they will pay for 3-day shipping to get your laptop from and to you so probably looking at a week without it.

--

 

good summary. Also note that exisiting laptops won't have the recall fix until at least May or June 2011.

 

I have a stupid question for you guys. When I send my laptop in to Sager during their May/June time frame for them to swap out my motherboard, do they wipe the hard drives or anything? I mean will I get the laptop back with all the programs and files etc. still on there? I know it's a dumb question but I just wanted to be sure...

 

I'm not sure.. they might wipe them. And besides, for data safety reasons, you should never send a data-filled drive for warranty purposes as they would want to check that your machine works.

Also, in addition to that, even if the drives are fully working, a MB swap sometimes requires a new install.. That happened for me, I just changed the MB and it wouldn't boot to my previous installation of windows, so I had to reinstall it.

 

Keep your HDDs. Chances are high that they'll be wiped along with the motherboard swap.

 

ahh ok thanks. I guess I'll just image and then wipe it when that times comes.

 

So, in my case since I'm already providing my own hdd and memory, assume I yank those out before sending it back. Guess they'd have to use their own hdd and memory to test.

 

I would like to be 38 again!
Sadly, this month I hit the big Five Oh.
i guess it makes a difference if you cann't afford to lose your data. if you game with it you probably don't los much. If I lose data I lose work that I would NOT want to make up and videos that I cannot reshoot.

Since you are getting yours soon that's good, I'll be interested to read your review.

I can wait a month or so to be sure it's working correctly. The downtime to send it back would screw me up if I was in the middle of a project.

 

Well I'm older than you and I am a Grandpa I have 3 kids and 6 grandkids!

This issue bites for me too, Sager is by far in the lead for me. If only the resellers had better discounts other than cash.
Also in the same boat as you as I waited for SB to get here.
It's frustrating for everyone.

 

I was told they might start shipping them as early as Mid Feb, so who really knows.

 

No, Intel won't start shipping their chips out until end of February, which means OEMs have to receive shipments, build, and test, which could be another couple weeks, so Sager announced mid March laptops would start to trickle out. If you have a pre-order then you're first in line. Probably won't be until late April until they're into full production, hence the delay on the recall machines.

Just for the record though, I don't only use mine for gaming. I get the power so that I can game, but I have a lot of critical data (well, critical to me at least) that I use on it, but it's backed up daily, with six months of history. In either case, I'm confident with the internal drives based on everything I've read.

 

Talk to the repair person. Last year my Dell Latitude went in for hardware failure (the motherboard was replaced). I did NOT send the hard drive. I was told it wasn't needed. What's the point of sending them a wiped drive? For testing they'll remove that and put in a bench drive anyway. I put the drive in a caddy and confirmed it was fine and used it as a data drive on my backup machine until the repair was finished.

 

Clearly . Your secrets safe with us.

 

Let's all keep the BIG PICTURE in mind here. Intel is a business, and like any business, it is in their best interest to keep down-time to a minimum. Intel already exclaimed to having a FIX the very day they announced the recall. They likely had notice of the issue 1-2 weeks prior and then worked on it until they solved it before announcing their findings - again, minimum down-time.

These dates Intel has disseminated to CLEVO, e.g., are nothing more than worse-case scenario dates that they can live up to even if some other unforeseen issue crops up. They were likely already manufacturing the new chipsets this week, and will be shipping them out to vendors in the next 1-2 weeks, whereby those vendors - also wanting less downtime - will only have to spend a few days at most integrating the new product for shipments to resellers. This puts new shipments to places like Sager at about the last week of February at the lastest.

Resellers should be sending new shipments no later than the first week of March in my opinion because Intel/Clevo/Resellers will lose tons of potential revenue for every day they're not filling new orders. Also, keep in mind that Intel will not want this hiccup to hurt the SB reputation and therefore will venture to flood the market as fast as they can with the redesigned chipsets.

I wouldn't be surprised if new order shipments go out the last week of February.

 

Yes, they understand the FIX, but that's only on paper.

Intel is not giving out qualification samples until mid to late February. This is a solid date, set in stone.

 

Yep, and take into account shipping, QA, and assembly of the chip to the board, and final assembly of the product. You can bet your 401k that any OEM will adamantly test these products too. I would, to prevent another failure reaching the masses.

 

For one thing, this has to be cleared at all at once..

If any other aspect turns out to be bad to the SB, Intel might as well hand over the white flag to AMD's upcoming platforms...

Not just in tech, but in reputation as well for hastiness in releasing a product, and failure to cover up the cover-up.

 

Exactly.

Late Feb, then Clevo is going to assemble and run the samples hard for at least a few weeks. Now we're into March, and Intel is just hitting mass production.

Mid-March Clevo will have enough, that they'll ship them to their resellers, giving them the green light to resume shipping. So those who ordered in mid to late January are now slowly receiving their orders, in late March. Numbers being siphoned to Sager, Eurocom, Pro-Star, and everyone else, are going to be really tight. Supply constrained will be an understatement.

Sadly I won't be surprised if I don't get my hands on a P170HM until May. The day I open that box will feel like the heavens have cracked open, and called me their favored son.

Too bad AMD never took their mobile platform seriously. This would have been the biggest shot they ever had, to take a chunk out of Intel's monopoly on the mobile market. It won't come again, not for a long time.

 

The part of the economics equation I can't wrap my head around is how the resellers (or the OEMs, for that matter) can afford to not record any sales for as long as it will take before shipments resume. Sure they have the last generation models, but I would think most people are just going to hold off ordering until the dust settles.

So, how do all these companies keep cash-flow up, to pay ongoing salaries, utility bills, plant costs, all the overhead in their financial life?

 

A large portions of that $1B USD is going towards reparations, and I'd imagine companies are going to make further claims throughout the year. Intel isn't spending one billion on new chipsets, it's to handle a portion of the refunds.

There will also be per unit rebates going forward.

Expect NDAs on the whole process.

 

I mean, honestly, AMD has the potential.

Utilizing their powerful gfx cards w/ a special gfx switching platform with their own AMD cpus would give them an edge over optimus, as Intel-nVidia seems to leave out such power-saving features for high-end users.

With the upcoming 6970m, they could have dealt a serious blow to Intel, by even just allowing a switchable gfx platform for extended battery life.

AMD has to really step up to compete with Intel and nVidia, but they just seem to be intent on "catching up" to nVidia specs and techs, not on utilizing functions that the end-user wants but has been left out by Intel.