About to bite a Sager!

So after 2-3 months of browsing these forums, i think i have come to terms that the Sager NP8130 will be my best bet for a laptop.

As it is looking right now, I am going to buy it from Malibal because they gave me free shipping and a ram discount. Before i buy it though, i just wanted to come here and make sure that this is the right laptop for me. $1200 is alot of money for me.

These are the specs i currently have on it.

Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Matte Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
Wireless: Internal 802.11B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Cooling: Stock OEM Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Warranty: 3 Year Ltd. Labor and 1 Year Parts Warranty with 24/7 USA-Based Support

I did not upgrade anything, because these stock settings seem fine to me, but are there any key upgrades that I am missing?

I am going to be using this laptop for College which I am starting next month. So i probably will be carrying it around with me. The specs say that it weighs 7 lbs, which seems doable to me, although i don't really know because this is the first laptop I'm buying.

Sorry about my ranting on like this, but Im just posting this to get any last minute opinions before I buy it, thanks!

 

The stock settings give you a very nice laptop that should serve you well, depending on what exactly you expect to do with it. Obviously upgrades are limited by budget. If you had a larger budget, I would recommend upgrading the screen, although I have heard that the stock screen on the 8130 is very good. I also always advocate upgrading the warranty, but that's because I have a tendency to get parts breaking down and so I am overly cautious. Maybe a larger hard drive, if you think you'll need it, or an upgraded wireless card, if you think you'll need it.
Don't worry about "missing" anything buying this laptop. Even without upgrades it is a terrific machine, as I'm sure you have read.

I have biked around town with my 8150 (which is of similar weight) in my backpack, with power brick, mouse, and cooling pad, and the weight was not an issue at all. It is very doable.
Hope that helps.

 

Hypnotize, I'm in the same boat as you.. the NBR shipping & RAM discounts makes Malibal a good choice for me as well. I'm planning on ordering the same config you mentioned. the only changes I thinking of (and still weighing on) are this:

- getting the Optical hard drive caddy instead of the standard dvd/cd burner/reader. This is for my future purchase of an SSD to use as my OS boot drive. i'll use the SSD on the internal SATA3 port and move the 500gb Sata2 on the optical bay. One of the best upgrades someone can make is to install windows on a SSD and enjoy the nearly instant app startup and quick boot times.. and if I have enough room to install a game or two on the SSD, that's just icing on the cake. no more wait times for maps to load, etc.. it will make you "feel" as if you have a beast of a machine compared to a traditional disk based drive.
Is it worth giving up a built-in dvd/cd drive? For me personally, yes. As I rarely use the drive on my current laptop. I dont use it for playing cd or dvd as most of my media content are downloads. I will however get a external USB burner/reader for those times when I absolutely need one, but it will be few and far between.

- upgrading wireless NIC to the Intel 6230. this is because the 6230 has a 5ghz radio and can actually make use of my dual-band N router. it also has max throughput of 300mbs while the Internal wifi card only operates on 2.4ghz and throughput of 150mbs.

just my 2 cents

 

Thanks alot for the input guys! Making me feel alot better about this purchase, probably gonna do it tonight or tomorrow!

@naz4viper - I might upgrade the wireless, actually totally forgot about that.

@StoneColdCrazy - Makes me feel good that you can bike around with the laptop and all those accessories, I'm sure i will have no problems carrying it around campus then!