Just Purchased... :)

Ok well, this is my first post here and i would just like to say this is an awesome site and thanks to all the info people have posted which have led me to my purchase.

That being said, I just received my NP2096 from sagernotebook.com and am extremely excited about it. I had read some reviews about poor customer service with the sager reps, which I did not experience. So thats a good thing.

I will write up a full review I suppose, when I have had enough experience with the machine to be confident of my opinions.

anyway, just wondering if there were any tips/hints/mods/programs that would utilize my fancy new machine. the last computer i had was a ~1.2 GHz 20GB 256MB RAM dell latitude... so needless to say i dont have any clue what to do with all the extra resources.

full specs;
vista 64-bit
2.53 GHz P9500 Dual Core Processor
nVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512 MB
1680x1050 resolution
4 GB DDR2 ram
320 GB 7200 RPM
4 GB Turbo Memory

thats all the important stuff anyway. i was thinking about the NP5793 cuz of the blu-ray but i need to take it to class and it is fairly light and from what ive seen already it has an amazing battery. so the gigantor wouldnt fit my bill.

SOOO cool programs? good video games? great freeware?

 

Kind of hard to answer...
You mention freeware, try a live cd of Ubuntu linux and learn to love it. There are a huge number of excellent freeware applications available but I can't recommend cause I don't know what you're in to.
Good games... go to gamespot.com and browse the top 10. I recommend Half-Life 2, Oblivion, and Fallout 3, but it depends what you're in to again.

For cool program I'll vote: Blender 3D

That's the best I can do...

 

Congratulations and welcome to the gaming scene. HWMonitor is key for monitoring temps. PC Wizard is similar to Everest (also great but shareware) and will give you extended information. RivaTuner will be integral to overclocking your video card. Laptopvideo2go.com drivers will increase your graphics card's performance. I think you may want to begin you Vista experience by uninstalling bloatware and disabling indexing. Read up on the stickies around the forums for more guides and such. Good luck, and again, congrats!

Edit: For gaming, Steam (Valve) will be one of the larger suppliers you use to purchase and play the newest games.

 

There is a thread for Sager NP2096 owners. so you can read and ask your quetsions there,
check here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278483

 

If you have not, then I highly recommend reading through The best free software for Windows section and the Vista tips and tweaks guide. Lots of good stuff in there. Grats on the new lappy.