Convince me

Hello, i am generally new to these boards and will be purchasing my first laptop soon. I am looking to get something i can take to school and play with at home. I recently looked at the alienware m15x but it seemed there were some issues with it, although i liked the prospect of 4 hours batter life with smart bay. Anyway to the core of my post:

I stumbled across xoticpc and noticed that all of their computers are more up to date and cost significantly less, so that alone has me very interested. I found the NP8662 and loved the way i customized it for around my $2300 budget. I was wondering what kind of battery life it will yield and if there is any way to increase that battery life? i need a computer that can be unplugged for at least close to 3 hours. I also enjoyed what i saw in the NP5797 and would love even more to get that if i could somehow get the battery life around 2-2.5 hours.

A lot of the sager community speaks very highly of their laptops and stand by their purchases so, please help convince me to get these instead of the alienware.

 

You can get 2 hours out of the N5797 on power saving mode and with a P-type processor. That's as much as I can tell because I own one.

 

Good dedicated gpu and god battery life do not go together my friend. Try the dell xps and put a nine cell battery in it. I will become heavier but you will gete a decent amount of battery life with it. Windows is not that good at power management. But a 9 cell battery will surely save you.

 

Ultimately, you need to convince yourself-

If battery life is that important, the Alienware might be a better fit for you-

Although IMO, Alienware is like BMW- Great, but screams conformity.

 

Don't worry about battery life, just buy an extra battery and go with a powerful Sager and don't look back. I would steer well clear of the Alienware.

 

If I were you, I'd buy a Solid State Drive on a Sager NP8662 and an extra battery so you can turn it off and switch out the battery really quickly instead of essentially wasting your money on the m15x because it has smart bay. The technology in the M15x is severely outdated when compared to the NP8662, so you really shouldn't consider them in the same class right now.

The Sager NP8662 and NP5797 have essentially similar battery life at about a bit under 2.5 hours of battery life while doing light browsing online.

Another good option for you to consider is spending 1800 USD on the NP8662 and buying a netbook to go with it, so you can spend your time browsing on the netbook until you get near a power outlet.

Ultimately it's up to you, but until Alienware upgrades their 15" laptop lineup, I'd consider it inferior and just be happy with the 2 hours you get on the NP8662.

 

Just yesterday I was on battery, got 2 hours battery life before 5% critical. 100% brightness "high performance" and with sager's silent mode on. Wifi was on, I was just on the net getting business done. Granted, that was the first time I ever used the whole battery, it's at its peak..

 

thank you for all the great suggestions. I will only be taking it to classes so as long as i can get 2 hours out of the laptop i think it should be enough. i will probably only use it for light browsing and text files when im not gaming on this thing. thank you all for the responses. one more question, for gaming would it be better to go with the smaller notebook with the 260m and a 2.93 ghz processor or the larger with the 280m but only a 2.53 ghz processor. I would think the better gpu would be more important but i am not sure. Thanks

 

the 17" with the 280 and the 2.53 will outperform the 260 and 2.93. The graphics card is the bottleneck for most machines right now. so it's better to sacrifice a little cpu for a bigger gpu.

 

Since you want battery life, get the P9600 for either. Choosing from the 15.4 or 17 is up to you. I would take a good hard look at the dimensions and perhaps take a stop at a local electronics store to get a feel for the size. Personally I love a 17", but I only lug it to my car every other day or so to "work"

 

IMO for gaming the 5797 would do better, but since your priority is portability, I would say go for the 8662. Besides the 260M in the 8662 is a great card and should do you well.

Duane

 

Remember as well there are threads around here that can help you get even more battery life out of your laptop by undervolting and underclocking your hardware while on battery life, giving great results on battery, and as soon as your plugged in, you turn on high-performance mode and everything goes back to the normal *awesomeness*

It's all up to you about which one to get. They're both great laptops, but of course the 17" will be less portable.

 

For gaming the video card does most of the work, so if the 17" size will work for you I would start there, and then get the best CPU, up to the P9600, that will still fit your budget.

Going for the T9800 is what we affectionately call falling into the Intel® Testosterone Trap™. You just don't get enough bang for the extra bucks to make it a sensible processor purchase.

However if you DO want more portability, and longer batter life, then get the NP8662 because the GTX 260M is no slouch...3DMark06 in the 10,000+ range...but still don't go past the P9600 processor.

What Operating System are you going to use?

 

The m15x has a serious design flaw with its hinges. Many, many NBR users has had their hinges crack and break. If you type hinge into the Alienware forum search, you'll find all of these topics on the matter. This topic in particular is a collection of the users of these forums who've encountered the issue. As of December of '08, thirty-two NBR members had their hinges break, and there's been many more reported since then. Given this data, I strongly recommend that you look elsewhere.

If you get the NP8662, I suggest that you go with the Q9000. For $5 more than the P9600, you get a quad-core processor which will run circle around any dual-core. Four cores at 2Ghz vs two cores at 2.66Ghz; the math is simple. The Q9000 has much more longevity as more games are developed with quad cores in mind.

 

The Intel .TT! Now I understand what the "TT" stood for in the Audi .TT I used to have!:laugh:

 

Have the hard drive problems been fixed in the new revision of the np8662?

 

With my system I got close to 3 hours of battery life... although it was with serious testing and undervolting. Modding the voltages in the VBIOS, and using RMClock for the CPU>

 

thanks guys i think i will be going with the 17" but just one more question. I thought about the quad core option but i wasnt sure if all games were optimized for quad core. I am a tf2 junkie and i know they have a thing where you can optimize it for dual core, but do you all think the quad would be worth it?

 

A few games are Quad optimized, and more will be as time goes on. However the Core2 Duo will give you more clock speed for less money, and the video card will be doing most of the work anyway.

 

i used to play tf2 with very nice settings on my HP dv8000t. It was a 2.0GHz Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) and I played it fine.

There is no way you'll have any issues with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Quad. That's like 8 times what the Core Duo had. Double the bits and four time the cores.

Core 2 Quad FTW!

 

Hey, come talk ta me; I'll give youze an offer ya can't refuse.

 

I think I'm gonna go watch all 3 parts tonight. Thanks a lot Shyster! I hope you get forced into watching a great movie series because somebody quoted it.

Time for me to get you a pic and a quote from a great series in return:

Know whut I mean!?

 

Ayup, Verne, I know whatcha mean!

 

Miak!

Did ya get that one?

 

I have to admit that I did not until I googled, and the first hit was from urbandictionary and included the following definition:

As an aside, reading that definition, I'm a little confused - did the writer think that Miak was possibly fictional, or that Bulgaria was possibly fictional?

 

Definitely Bulgaria. It's like Nottingham and Middle Earth.

 

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What's up with you and your team of yellow midgets?
You're not supposed to pull them out at such trivial times. You gotta save their midget power for when times REALLY get LOLish.

 

Fair enough; it's been one of those days!

 

Lets get a couple of things straight.

-AW is not like a BMW. At all. AW is more like a Ford GT. And Sager is more like a SSC ultimate Aero. Or a 9ff GT9-R.
-I get 3hrs with an 8800m GTX and an X7900 in balanced in my m570ru.

 

Ok so i would like to know, how difficult would it be for me to OC each of these processors. Ive never Oced before but i know all of the people here can help me with that. And what could i reasonably expect to OC them to?