"Best" reseller of Clevo D901C

So I've decided to pick up a D901C... now the question is from where? I'm familiar with Sager, but I was fairly ignorant of the other re-branders until doing some reading on this forum. Main selling point for me is the dual 8800s... this will be my desktop replacement so I'm pretty much going to tick the best options for memory, processor and video card(s). Obviously some places sell better best options than others!

So would any of you guys recommend another reseller than Sager? Or is Sager the way to go for the product I'm seeking.

 

xoticPC and powernotebooks

 

Xotic or Powernotebooks as they have a rep in the forums IMHO.PCMW seems to be good too.

 

Agreed with XPC and PNB

 

Those two are the best. I love power, many forum goers like xoticpc. Just pick which one you wish.

 

Read the last part of the Clevo Guide... it goes over this.

.... especially the part about contacting your potential vendor to see if they fit your needs.

 

doesn't xoticpc and powernotebooks just resell sagers (as their D901c offering) or am I missing something?

 

yea they are both sager's resellers, with $100+ lower prices.

 

Yeah I thought that was an awesome guide. The purpose of this thread was to narrow down the field a bit from the 31 Clevo vendors to see if someone could point me in the right direction in terms of which one to go with. I suppose I could start a spreadsheet on the different options & extras everyone offers... but for example I'm not really savvy enough at this time to know off the top of my head what the best (fastest) possible configuration is out there, only what the fastest each vendor offers.

 

Oh hot, PCMW is offering "8192MB High Speed DDR2 Extreme Performance Memory" and solid state storage on its D901C... $6k laptop tho... decisions, decisions. Any thoughts if I'd actually be able to notice either of those?

 

what?! you need 8GB of ram?!

 

Probably not.. I just said it was "hot" and was curious if people thought I would even notice that. Although maybe, if I'm running Age of Conan in windowed mode while a couple of docs are open in openoffice, and maybe some browsers are going. Although maybe 4GB is plenty. Just trying to inform myself before I make a purchase... I've never had more than 2GB and I've hit a ceiling there were I needed more.

 

You'll prolly notice the SSD's as your boot times and vista and watever else thats on it will go ALOT faster as far as access times...

 

The reason that not many (if any at all) sell 8GB RAM/CPU over Q9550 is because both Sager and Clevo have not authorized the use of them and they cold potentially have unwanted side effects. I assume that PCMW took the chance anyway. So I personally did not choose to go with them. Plus, I am constantly reassured that I made the correct decision in going with Xotic.

Just my opinion though.

Good luck.

 

Thanks everyone for the help! It is greatly appreciated.

I have one last question (I might be lying here )... what screen generally looks better: 17" HD WUXGA+ 1920x1200 Ultra Resolution Matte Non-Gloss Wide Screen Cinema Display (PCMW) or 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1920x1200) (XOTIC). These are the best options for both retailers.

 

They are probably the same exact LCD panel.... LG LP171WU1

LOL... thats marketing for ya... same thing, different names

 

LOL! I guess I was fooled by the "Matte Non-Gloss" v "Ultra Bright Glossy"

 

Actually, the Matte screen would be a different panel.

The 17" WUXGA glossy panels are usually the same LG ones.

 

Any idea which looks better?

Edit: I suppose I typically prefer the vibrant colors of a glossy, but that's a pretty expensive matte... so I wonder if it's the best of both worlds (no glare, vibrant colors)

 

Nah, I think it's only expensive because it does not come standard.

 

Hey I noticed the machine in your sig is pretty much what I'm shopping for (except I'm going to pick up the Q9550)... how do you like everything? any complaints at all? did you get it from xotic?

Oh, and what's the system bottleneck in terms of performance? Figure you'd be the person to ask

 

I had just ordered it like a couple weeks before the Q9550 was "allowed". Unfortunately, I messed it up and it's with Sager right now. Even though it broke, I have to say I'm very happy with it. Everyone I dealt with was extremely helpful and friendly. The bottleneck would probably have to be the single HD. Thinking about grabbing a SSD if Sager and Xotic are ok with me putting it in and using that as the primary. Otherwise I really could not ask for anything better man.

EDIT:
If you want to see the problems I was having you can read through my thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=259708

Everything was my fault just fyi.

 

Go to a store and look at a matte screen and a glossy one.... its personal preference.

 

While I cannot narrow the field of choice with any great particularity, I would suggest that you not consider buying directly from Sager unless they truly offer exactly the deal you want.

The reason I say this is that, if you price out comparable systems directly from Sager or from a Sager reseller (see note below on "reseller"), you will generally find (at least I found) that Sager's prices are usually somewhat higher - not substantially, but, shall we say, statistically relevant, or material - than the prices offered by most of the Sager resellers.

My speculation for this (that's all it is since it's never been confirmed with Sager - the horse's mouth, so to speak) is that Sager understands the concept of specialization, and understands on which side its bread is buttered (the side that comes with an extra helping of reseller ), and consequently chooses not to compete with its resellers on pricing. Mind you, I'm not presupposing price-fixing or any other anticompetitive behaviour, just a unilateral decision by one party to offer prices with a premium.

This actually makes sense if you realize that, by having a fleet of resellers, Sager actually manages to offload a significant amount of functions as well as just marketing/selling, including basic support and basic repair.

So, unless you really want to pay a premium just for the right to say you bought directly from Sager - a point which would be silly considering that most of us came to Clevo/Sagers because we were tired of paying premiums for brand names like _Sony and _Dell - or unless you get exactly the right deal from Sager itself, I would strongly suggest that you purchase from one of the estimable resellers around. If you live in the States, I would also suggest that you pick one that is not located in your home state, otherwise the reseller will have to withhold sales tax.

Note on "reseller": Sager is not, conceptually speaking, a "reseller" but rather an OEM - original equipment manufacturer - on the same level as _Sony, _HP, _Dell, etc. Clevo is the ODM - original design manufacturer - a characterization that, at first, sounds a little misleading, but ultimately derives from the fact that most of Clevo's money is earned doing so-called contract manufacturing for companies such as _Sony (that's right campers, other than a small number of items that get sold into the Japanese home market, _Sony does not make most of the stuff it sells as being a _Sony product - even though they try very hard to disguise this fact). Essentially, what Clevo does is to design and manufacture the basic barebones system - typically on the basis of a set of design criteria specified by the OEM - e.g., _Sony - that will be buying the resulting products, adding a few frills on, and then selling them as so-called _Sony products.

The OEMs are the ones who do final assembly, usu. in terms of the customization options available, such as hard drives, optical drive/blu-ray, total amount of RAM, and pre-installed OS. This is largely what _Sony and _HP do, and it is what Sager does, so it should obvious (tho' it's not, I'll admit) that Sager is on par with _Sony and _HP.

That leaves the actual "resellers" - businesses like xoticpc, powernotebooks, and the others listed on Gophn's redoubtable page. These folks, since they typically offer for sale systems completed by Sager with little or no additional customization, and since they are the first line of defense for handling support questions, are conceptually identical to places like Best_Buy and Circuit_City - except that their level of service and attention to customer satisfaction is light-years beyond what BB and CC (I wonder, what happened to AA? Perhaps that's been reserved for American Airlines - are they still flying - or has been retired in memory of Arthur Anderson, one of the many victims of the drive-by prosecutorial response to Enron).