Summary
Sager NP8660 ordered from XoticPC
15.4" WUXGA
P9500
2GB RAM
No OS
320GB 7200RPM Seagate HDD
3 year XoticPC CompleteCare Warranty
Likes
Lighter than M37EW
Prettier
Dislikes
Fan and CD drive loud
Introduction and background
Been looking for an upgrade. Current laptop is a Clevo so when I saw Clevo touting a new powerhouse beast I knew I had to jump in. Much of this review will be written as a comparison between the NP8660 and my current laptop, a Hypersonic PC branded Clevo M37EW, perhaps better known to some as the Sager NP3790. The reason I think this is a valid comparison is simple; at the time of purchase (Sep 2004), my M37EW was by far the most powerful 15.4" laptop on the market. Even top-end 17" desktop replacements were only offering the ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, which is what my laptop came with. I like to think of the M860TU as a 4-year evolution of the M37EW even though there have been comparable systems in between.
Pre-purchase
Choosing a seller
I originally went with Hypersonic PC for my M37EW because I had read about them in MobilePC Magazine (now defunct) and they had the highest Reseller Ratings of all the laptop vendors I knew of at the time. It took about 6 months after my purchase to realize the exact same thing could be bought for much less from Sager or one of its resellers. The choice between XoticPC and Powernotebooks was fairly arbitrary; Xotic's website is slightly easier to navigate (it feels cleaner and neater), and Xotic has less resellerratings reviews so I figured they could do with some extra business.
Choosing components
I had originally ordered the ATi Mobility HD3870 partially to keep the price down but also because, down at heart, I'm an ATi fanboy, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got upgraded to the nV 9800M GT. I decided on the P9500 CPU because it was the fastest 25W processor and I wanted to do everything possible to keep the temperatures down and battery up. I also wanted to save money, but wanted the 6mb cache because I convert a lot of videos to put on my iPhone. I went with 2GB ram (1 SODIMM) because I don't plan on going either Vista or 64-bit but having that extra SODIMM means I could, if I wanted, buy a 1GB stick and run 3GB in XP, or upgrade to the full 4GB if there were ever a need to go 64-bit. I chose the 320GB harddrive because it was the largest, and a 7200rpm model because of said encoding tasks, and because I'm just used to it. Call me adverse to change if you want. Oh, and I wanted WUXGA because that's what I have on my M37EW and I've gotten used to the font size and expansive screen real estate. It's great as far as spreadsheets and web browsing is concerned, a little annoying for gaming because I always have to play everything at 1024x768. Nothing else fits. Maybe this screen will be different.
(Pre-)Purchase Experience
I don't actually have any pre-purchase experience with Xotic, because I went ahead and ordered the thing as soon as it was available for pre-sale. I think I had one conversation with Brad M. on Live Chat that was quite informative. What I did find unusual was that after I had made my order and asked a question via email, Brad M. replied telling me to select his name from the list when I made my order (which I already had) so he could personally check up on it and follow it through. This is strange, in my eyes, because I then received the impression that Xotic seemed to care more about customers who make an order through a specific person. I'm sure this is not the case though.
My experience with XoticPC as a company on the whole has been generally positive; everyone was very helpful and friendly and courteous and I found the company far more informative and responsive (availability through email and this forum) compared to Hypersonic. I would highly recommend them to anyone in the market for a high-end laptop, but I think for my next purchase I might go with PNB just to see the difference. Unless Xotic gave me a very good reason not to.
Initial impressions
Packaging
The laptop came in a very simple, white Sager box. It was actually not as heavy as I had anticipated. The UPS tracking details said the box weighed 16lbs but it didn't feel like it, possibly because the box was so large so it didn't seem very dense.
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Inside the box was another box, surrounded by packing peanuts and the free laptop bag, which as others have observed, is of remarkably decent quality. Then again, the one I got from Hypersonic was full leather.
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Inside the second box was a small box with the PSU (I know it's strictly speaking not, but I'm feeling lazy), a larger box with my $25 gas card, DVI to VGA adapter, owner's manual, driver CD, CyberLink DVD suite CD and a modem cable. Don't know what the point of that was. The laptop itself was held solidly in place by two foam pads and encased in a protective plastic screen to prevent scratches.
PSU box
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Solidly packed
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Well protected from scratches etc.
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Frankly rather thinly packed accessories box. But look, I was right about the included DVI-VGA adapter
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$25 free gas! w00t!
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AC adapter
The first place I started was the power supply, since the hottest (pun unintended) theory concerning warm harddrives is a correlation with PSU design. I immediately noticed that it has no vents and no fans that others have been speaking of. I might be blind but I can't see where it says how much power the brick supplies, can anyone tell me? Or do I have to work it out myself and do the P=IV thing?
PSU label
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No vents
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None on this side either
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Rather ominous warning label
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I understand that the M860TU is a much more powerful machine than my M37EW, but does the power brick need to be this much bigger? On the plus side, it doesn't get quite as hot as the M37EW brick. At least not yet, anyway.
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Dimensions and appearance
Then came the laptop itself. The first thing I did with it was to compare it physically with my current M37EW. The M860TU is in almost every respect larger than the M37EW, but not really by much. I'm sure it wouldn't make a difference to the bags I currently have and I would definitely not notice the difference. There were two redeeming factors of the M860TU; firstly it was thinner than the thickest point of my M37EW with its extended 9-cell battery, which both protrudes horizontally out the back of the laptop and down vertically. It's ugly, but it served two very useful purposes: firstly as a stand to improve airflow beneath the laptop, and secondly as a carrying handle. It was a feature of the M37EW that I'm sorely going to miss on the M860TU, but at least now it should be easier to put in a bag. The second, and more important, redeeming factor of the M860TU is that it is surprisingly, perhaps even shockingly, lighter than my M37EW with the 9-cell. Not by much, but noticeably lighter. It is also much better looking than the M37EW, ignoring the horrible palm marks. It is much smoother and sleeker, whereas my M37EW looks rather cheap in comparison.
In an act of typical Asian (yes the cat is out of the bag) neuroticism, I insist on not letting bare skin touch even the protective film, let alone the laptop itself
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Top down comparison between M860TU and M37EW
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Sideways comparison without 9-cell (Look how beat up my Audigy 2 ZS NB is)
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Front comparison
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Rear comparison (That dead stick of RAM is the reason I got this baby)
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Sideways comparison with M37EW extended 9-cell battery
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No it's not all grey, that's the protective film. And no it's not glossy, that's a protective film too. But I wasn't kidding about the skin contact.
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Usability, noise and heat
And here we go...
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I haven't noticed the right palmrest getting unnoticably hot during the format process, which I imagine is a fairly intense operation for the harddrive. I have noticed however, that at full speed the fan is louder on the M860TU than M37EW. But that's completely expected and fine, the M860TU is a much more powerful machine.
On my first boot into Windows I loaded up HWMonitor while I was installing 3DMark and HDD temp hovered around 56'C. As far as harddrives go I'm sure it could be cooler but compared to everyone else, I'd say I'm reasonably happy. Am installing drivers now, trying to increase the HDD load to see if I can increase temperature.
The M860TU is in my opinion a very loud machine. The fan is very loud and so is the CD drive, every time it starts seeking I actually jump in my chair a little because the noise is so sudden and so loud.
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Nice... hows the WUXGA on such a small system ?
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wth? Why are there so many different versions of the powerbrick?
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who did you get your laptop from again?
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You win if you're the first without an egg-frying HDD.
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You can get something else if we get to see some temps and first impressions -
Hey can we get a pic of how the regular font looks like on the screen? Hard to read?
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Hopefully ill be the second WUXGA M860TU then, mine hopefully arrives tommorow for the long weekend! i already got a zalman ZM-NC2000, wall powered USB hub and a VX revolution mouse, all still in the packaging for when it gets here
MUAHAHAH
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I've never seen Finnish text on a power brick!
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I picked up my WUXGA m860tu yesterday(wed) at around noon EST, so if you beat that, then you can claim first prize
My HDD is a bit hot though, hitting 55 celcius after a few hours of use, haven't used i under heavy loads yet.
To answer Gophn's queston: The text was so small on the 1900x1200 that I eventually gave in and set the display to 1600x1024.. I tried to play with other settings to keep the big resolution but I just couldn't seem to make all the text big enough to be comfortably readable. -
*Sob sob sob*
I guess I'll have to take second place then.
Gosh haven't even started loading the OS. Major plumbing incident at home.
Aaand my slipstreamed unattended XP installation is an epic failure.
This is going to take a while. -
If it didn't work on one computer, why would it work on a another one. The normal process is the opposite: if it worked before, it won't work now.
The temps seems OK compared to some 60s but there's also some 45 going on.
Do I win the first WUXGA M860TU owner prize?
Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by gavinh, Aug 28, 2008.