About to buy NP-8690--anything to keep in mind?

Hey guys! Thanks to this great forum, I've pretty much decided upon the NP-8690. There are a few things on my mind, though, and I'd love to hear what you guys think.

When ordering, what customizations would you guys make? For me, I am going with the 4GB memory, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, the 1080p screen, and Windows 7 (kind of necessary). Is this money well spent, or would I be better served dropping some/all and getting, say, the faster processor? (I know the screen and HDD are kind of preference issues. Maybe all of them are.)

Some say getting the best version of Windows is worth it. What do you guys think? Seems like a lot of extra money.

And finally, I'm worried about the fan noise issues. Some people say their system is super quiet, others say it's loud even at idle and screams at full load. I understand it could be due to perception, but I'm wondering if some units might not be shipping with defectively noisy fans. I'd be sad if I had to send mine back because of noisy fans.

That about covers it, at least until I actually make the order.

Any thoughts? Thanks, guys.

 

Mine just came today, I'm still at work so I can't comment on how it is, can't wait to get home though.

I went ahead and got everything maxed out, top notch on everything.

Came out to like $3200 give or take, but I figure I'm going to sell my other two older laptops so I'll up up spending about 2300 of my own money, plus I can afford it.

I'll throw a mini-review up once I get home.

Mark

 

Looking forward to it!

 

Sorry I didn't post back sooner.

Anyways, first off there is a benchmark testing of this laptop posted in the review section I believe. So, I won't go too much into that.

First off I like the way the laptop looks and the size, considering I have a P-7805u which is way too big to carry around, and my work laptop is a 13" sony vaio which is nice but doing excel sheets on it kind of sucks, plus it's slow.

I'm self employed and like to game but I couldn't imagine sitting at my office desk with a alienware laptop trying to look serious, so this fit my needs perfect aesthetically.

My laptop came with one bigass stuck pixel and a couple of scratches on the inside lcd bezel (not the actual lcd) but I used a pixel flasher and it went away. For what I spent I wasn't too happy with that, but it's no big deal about the small scratches. The 1080p screen looks insane, very nice. It's pretty quite but I haven't put it under any real loads as I'm still loading software/games on it. The CD/DVD RW sounds horrible though, not sure what to think about that. I'm also using the 500gb 7200 rpm drive as ss is just too small for my taste. That's my weakest link as my laptop will only rate 5.9 with that.

As far as windows 7 goes, are you a college student? Or, do you know someone who is a college student who will let you use their edu address, you can get windows 7 for like 30 bucks if so.

http://windows7.digitalriver.com/st...=6wR93woBAiMAAC39XIYAAAAM&rests=1260344915337

I'm still not used to Win7 so I can't comment on if it's worth it or not, seems faster but I'm still used to Vista. Only been on Win7 for about 2 weeks so. Windows 7 honestly feels like a tuned/re-skinned Vista. I've always been a Vista fan, never had any problems with it at all. So the transition is not bad for me.

Pretty happy with this laptop so far though, once I really get to see how well it runs I'll be able to judge it better. Mine starts up extremely fast, there was no bloatware really except office 2007 trial. I did a format anyways. The laptop itself is a little thick, think I'll have to buy a new laptop backpack which kind of sucks.

Anyways, feel free to ask me questions. As far as processor speed and stuff it's up to you and what you'll be doing. I wanted to splurge a little so I went all out on mine (minus the ss hardrive).

 

I just got mine yesterday and am in love. I don't really have anything to complain about but there is one thing. Such as bluetooth being shutoff every time you turn it on. But it's takes a second to turn it on and connects really fast to my mouse compared to my last computers. Fan noise I really don't know what the fuss is about, yes you can hear it, but it's not annoying or high pitch. Surfing the internet I have almost no fan noise and you can only hear it if you are looking for it. About the Disk Drive. Compared to my Macbook, it's way quieter and less annoying in my case.

On my computer I haven't found a single dead pixel or scratches etc. I recommend the system completely. The spec of my system is in my sig.

 

Thanks, you guys. It's always good to read stuff like that.

I wish I would've given getting Windows for $30 a try before ordering! I actually graduated in May, though, and my university was also not on the list, so maybe I would've been out of luck anyway. $30 is what Windows should cost anyway... Either that or just give everyone the best edition for $90. I know Microsoft needs to make money, but I just can't understand the huge prices they charge for their software, simply because they have a monopoly on non-Macs. Oh well.

Stevenson, I've got the same specs as you. Except I just went with the home premium version of Windows. I hope this wasn't a mistake, but I suppose it's easy enough to do their anytime upgrade thing if I want to drop another $90 sometime and think it's worth it.

For the record, I actually never had any problems with Vista. It should never have been on my current computer as configured (512MB RAM is not enough to run Vista!), but after I upgraded (4GB instead), all was well. So Windows 7 can really only be an improvement for me. I'm actually kind of excited about it.

I agree that solid-state is just too expensive and small. In a few years I bet that will no longer be the case, however. I wonder how difficult it would be at that point to swap the 500GB for an SSD?

Are pixel flashers free programs? In case I get stuck pixels too...!

I wonder if some folks' fans might be louder than others (defective?). Anyway, as long as my drives and fans all function normally and correctly, I can't see myself having any issues with their noise volume.

Great review, Mark. It was fun to read.

Thanks for the posts, guys. Mine should be here in a few weeks (ordered from Malibal), and I'm really looking forward to it!

 

Home Premium will work for almost all users. I got a good deal on a Windows Ultimate so that is why I went with it. The Sager is meant to be upgraded/worked on so changing hard drives is simple. Once the prices come down I will go to SSD. On my desktop I have a 80GB SDD with the OS on it and a 500GB for pictures etc and love the setup.

 

Hey Garcia do you have a link to the pixel flasher you used? I tried a couple of them but they didn't do anything. Aside from this one red stuck pixel the laptop is perfect.

 

I just used the ones on youtube, keyword 'pixel fixer'.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pixel+fixer&search_type=&aq=f

Probably have to do it multiple times.

 

It's amazing that that works.

I just had a seizure watching it, tho. Twitch.

 

OH YEA
it worked
rubbed that baby right out
i now have the perfect laptop, lol

 

Yay! I'll know what to do if I have that problem.

 

Ha! Grats, good stuff.