MSI SteelSeries Keyboard in P170EM

Also, could someone please do a side by side screenshot of the laptop with and without the MSI keyboard? The extra $90 wouldn't seem so much if the keyboard seems worthwhile..

 

Here is a picture of the Sager Stock one on top and the Steelseries below it

 

Hmmm... Turns out I actually prefer the stock one... Sager DOES get it right, as said in your video review!

 

Her you have it! A Steele Series keyboard in an NP9170!

 

^^Wow, now THAT certainly looks more impressive!

 

So Mythlogic was right.. damn things looks exactly the same besides the possible touch and key layout

Beautiful, the original Steelseries seems to have a rather more spread out lighting, overall it's nice to have that option good job implementing it, now EVERY reseller will do so haha

 

If I were to swap keyboards myself, would it be any different than just taking out the original keyboard and just putting it back in? Depending on the cost, I may just buy both keyboards and decide which one I prefer. Then I could even have a backup in case one breaks.

 

I personal think there is a difference between the two keyboard layouts in fact that was the deal breaker for me (surprisingly not the 7970m). Having a keyboard that feels great is just as important compared to all the other parts of the notebook.

Also you can't really judge the two keyboards based on the image alone, how it feels to type on either and the quality of them may be completely different.

 

Yes, it was a simple direct swap of the keyboards, no modifications necessary to get the MSI SteelSeries into the Sager NP9170.

You can get the MSI SteelSeries backlit keyboard, but I don't believe Sager will be offering their backlit keyboard.

There is a bit of a difference in key design and board design. The Sager keyboard is a bit heavier than the MSI SteelSeries and the Sager keys don't have much of a gap between them.

The Sager keyboard has more of a mechanical key feel to it from what I have observed.

Both are really nice keyboards overall and it would be up to the individual to decide which one they prefer.

 

A little bit of dis assembly but not terribly bad. Just plug in the power cable for the backlighting and the keyboard ribbon and secure it all back together and up are up and going. Just memorize what your FN hotkeys are as the icons on the SS will not gel with the mappings on the Clevo

I agree with you, the SS keyboard has been very popular for MSI. Has that mechanical feel to it, which is very nice.

 

Well, I would like to see both of them for myself. I guess I'll get the stock keyboard and buy a steelseries one at a later date and maybe hot-swap them to find out which one I like better, then keep the other one as a backup. Any idea how much the steelseries keyboard would cost by itself?

 

i see them for $90 + shipping on ebay.

Those backlit keyboards are expensive!

 

Well, I wonder why there's no discount for not buying the stock Sager keyboard when you upgrade. It should be $50 or something, and then the resellers can use the spare sager keyboards for warranty repairs or sell them seperately or even stock them as MSI upgrades.

 

Wow.... that is the greatest most smartest idea I've heard all year. Haha. You should be hired by a reseller.

Really smart.

 

Believe it or not, I've actually thought about that. I'd need to finish school first, though, and I currently find that my innovative ideas fit much better in the land of video game design. For one, I found a way to infinitely juggle a finite amount of zelda-style items while keeping all in equal favor and without seeming contrived...
But let's not get off topic.

 

It's probably like the screen upgrade. I know when I paid for a screen upgrade in the 8150, I was essentially paying for a new screen, on top of the cost of the stock. So I had them ship me my stock screen (paid ~$7 shipping) and sold it here for like $90.

Now, the screen upgrades are cheaper, so they may not tack on the entire cost of the upgraded screen do they can keep the stock..?

 

Okay, any ETA on offering the DYNAUDIO speakers as an upgrade too?
That'd be great.

 

Those are the ones MSI uses, right? Because that would be cool. Although, I already have a very good pair of headphones. And I assume that if it was possible someone would have done it for the P150HM because it needed better speakers way more.
Hold on, I don't think the MSI speakers would fit, they're in totally different locations...

 

At least the DYNAUDIO subwoofer would fit! Make it happen, Myth!
Or better, get on your butts, Clevo, and get something good inside those things! Hell, to keep it cheap, get BEHRINGER speakers inside!
I know Behringer makes ALL of its speakers from scratch and they sound damn good for the price. They also make headphones with mixed reviews, but for the price, they cant be beat either. So making laptop speakers would be a breeze for them.

Damn, the soundsystem of the P150HM sucks in a surprisingly bad way. Its awful, lacks power, let alone bass and clarity.

I was coming from the bottom of ugly laptop sound, that was the Acer 5742g. It had ONLY 1 speaker inside, it was more pathetic-sounding than my Mobile Phone's listening speaker (the one that you get your ear into), all my headphones were more powerful when plugged into Acer's pathetic stereo sound card than its built in speaker.

But even so, the Clevo didnt meet my expectations. First thing when I was buying it, I was thinking: "WOW! A 2.1 sound system built-in my laptop! A subwoofer! THX effects! CANT WAIT TO USE IT ON A LAN PARTY!!"
Then after installing my OS and drivers....I was like W.T.F? Where is the sound?? Where is the subwoofer?? Whaaaaa...? Thats it?!?!!?

So, to keep it nice and clean - Clevo needs to start working with Behringer in my opinion. That would keep the price low, the speakers will be custom-made for 100% and the sound will be definetely something to behold.

 

^^ That scares me alot.

 

Well, the speakers aren't phenomenal unfortunately.. Supposedly the EM's are a bit of an improvement though with the Onkyo stuff, but idk. The LBJ speakers on my gf's Dell studio (same used on the XPS line) are still the best laptop speakers I've ever hear.

 

I think clevo should go the opposite way and just not put speakers in the laptop at all, save the weight and space. It is not possible for laptop speakers to sound very good, they will never have volume and quality of any significant level because simply put it is not possible to make drivers that small that good, even if you could it would probably not be a decent price.

Everything about sound in a laptop is basically a joke. There is no such thing as a subwoofer that fits in a laptop, but people buy them and claim they have it anyway, so the manufacturers say go. You would get better sound from a laptop if you allocated all the space to have 1 bigger better driver. But no one could sell a laptop that said 1.0 sound, even though 2.1 is nothing more than a marketing ploy.

Personally I would be perfectly happy with a laptop that had no speaker and only used headphones.

 

I don't know if you guys are audiophiles or not but basic speakers are useful... I actually think the Cleo speakers are better then most and that includes dell Alienware apple speakers.

Most people can't tell the difference so selling one without speakers would just be an idiotic move. Obviously having the option to not have one is a different case but even then your not really saving any weight or power

 

Agreed. Even though the quality might not be there, it is still a useful thing to have and not everyone wants to carry around headphones too. My old D900K was 4.1. The subwoofer adds minimal depth, but it's enough that it makes the overall experience more impressive. I remember when I first got that thing, my friends couldn't believe how loud it was.

 

The best laptop speakers I have heard are Toshiba's Harman Kardon. They are absurdly good. The worst was whatever Asus puts inside their gaming laptops.

By the way, reading through this site I get the sense that MSI's barebones laptop quality is higher than Sager's. It's unfortunate that they don't have a model out where 7970M is available.

 

Asus uses Bang Olufsen speakers for theirs if I am not mistaken. On the subject of laptop speakers, the Onkyo speakers aren't bad, but the DynAudio speakers found in the MSI models are some of the best speakers I have heard for a laptop.

I wouldn't say the build quality on the MSI laptops are of a higher quality, but probably equal to the Sager.

MSI may not have the 7970M offered but that certainly hasn't stopped some folks in the MSI forums from trying to modify their laptop to get one installed.

 

Wow, speakers have really weird names. I mean, what is a bang olufsen supposed to be? Makes me think of fat, angry french men at a circus

 

It's actually Bang & Olufsen. It's probably the names of the guys who started the company or something.

Edit: Upon further research, the company was founded by Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen (thanks wikipedia!). It's a Danish company.

 

Eh, I guess some people's names are just more interesting than others. Did you know that one of Mythlogic's founders is named Charlie Brown?

 

Okay, it has long time dream of mine to have a laptop with a backlit keyboard. If I could I would get a backlit keyboard for my Gateway C-140XL.

I'm currently leaning towards Xotic PC to provide me with a computer on my tight budget that I can use to play games, including The Sims 3, and test applications that utilize multi-threading and GPUs to perform computations for scientific research, mostly in quantum mechanics.

I have a question though, and I think this thread might hold the answer but I'm not sure. In the customization options for the Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM, is the Standard Sager/Clevo Non Chiclet Backlit Keyboard a non chiclet keyboard, or a keyboard that isn't backlit at all?

Also, has anyone managed to make Linux drivers for either the Clevo or MSI Steel Series backlit keyboards to control their colors and respond to their functional keys yet?

 

+1. I would like to know this as well. Or if any third party programmer like me could help, given the sources? I'd love to code and build the keyboards lights application on/for linux...

 

The Asus N Series have the nice bang and olufson speakers. Although, I'm pretty sure the G series don't have anything special with regards to speakers.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

 

I'm also interested in discussing the speaker system of the P150EM and comparing it to other laptop speaker systems, but I didn't want to get this thread further off topic, so I attempted to create a separate thread about it with my questions here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/664653-p150em-speaker-sound-card-quality.html

 

It's backlit, but not chiclet style.

 

What is chiclet supposed to be??

EDIT: Never mind. Reading it up on wikipedia...
Also what is the regular Clevo non-chiclet keyboard called?

 

Both non chiclet and chiclet keyboards have backlight, as for the colors I assume you can use the clevo drivers to manage colour change I think I remember a bit back xoticpc mentioning something about that. It's simply the key arrangements you have to get used to. Such as fn+f1 won't do the same thing on steelseries because it was meant for msi's settings. Your going to have to re arrange what key does what.

 

Nevermind-- sorry.

 

Apparently, according to wikipedia, Island style and chiclet keyboard are one and the same..

 

I remember someone mentioning earlier in the thread but I saw the same wiki article and edited.. That original post was up for no longer than 5 seconds!

 

According to Powernotebooks, Fn+1 doesn't work on the EM's anymore

 

Damn, I'm quick!

 

In general or specific to each keyboard?

 

I don't know. They just said "it had been removed."

 

In general. The functionality has been removed altogether.

 

For what possible pleasure?

 

Sorry, I don't understand your question. If you're asking why Clevo removed the functionality, I'm not sure.

 

Yes, it was a rhetorical way of asking the same. Anywho, what did that function do?

 

Trolling.

It forced your fans to run at 100% speed. Good for benchmarking consistency, obsessive temp guys/overclockers, and showing off.

 

Oh, yes. I remember that on my first Sager. No alternate way of using that function now, right? I used to almost always keep that on when on the desk and gaming. Damn... Did they remove it in the latest KB/EC firmware?

 

+1

Is it only with the new EC 04?

Could someone with disabled full fans option please dump their BIOS with this and just let us know if while dumping the fans still spin on full (I don't require the dump ).


afuwin64.rar