Malibal P151HM1 first impressions

Hi all! I received my laptop on Friday (ordered it Monday night) and I thought I would post my initial impressions of it, as well as ask about an issue I'm having.

Specs:
SKU P151HM1
PRODUCT Lotus P151HM1
Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit 95% $95.00
NTSC Color Gamut Matte Display
Processor: Intel® CoreT i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache,
2.0-2.9GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 2
SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB
GDDR5
Hard Drive: 750GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300 $45.00
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM
Dual-Layer Drive
Wireless: Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N $25.00
LAN and Bluetooth Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU $40.00
Warranty: 3 Year Ltd. Labor and 1 Year Parts
Warranty with 24/7 USA-Based Support


Appearance: looks great! I love the material used for the case, and the MALIBAL logo looks very stylish. In short I would describe the look of the laptop as "refined".

Feel: Looks reasonable sturdy, with the laptop showing some flex in places (and a lot of flex by the optical drive). The keyboard feels great, with good key spacing and excellent feedback (coming from a mechanical keyboard user). I never feel like I pressed a key when I didn't. My only complaint is with the lack of dedicated home/end/pageup/pagedown keys. As for the touchpad: I can't really judge it, since I dislike using touchpads in general. I do wish the two mouse buttons were next to each other, rather than separated by the fingerprint reader.

Also worth noting: closing the laptop does not involve any type of conventional slider lock mechanism. Some may find this convenient, as it makes it easier to open, while others may find it unsafe.

As far as weight goes, it's certainly reasonable. Not the lightest of laptops, but I don't think anyone getting this would expect it to be. I'll be taking it to work every day so I'll update my impressions when I start lugging it around.

Screen: it's on par with my HP LP2475w, an IPS screen. So yeah, really really good. I have a couple of stuck pixels (blue and purple), located at the far left of the screen. They're only noticeable when looking at them directly on a black screen, and even then barely so. I'll try running software to free the poor little pixels, but it's by no means a problem if they stay. Does anyone know how long I should run those nauseating color-switching programs for?

Software: Fingerprint reader works well for me. It doesn't read correctly if I swipe it too fast, but it never takes more than two swipes (one if I'm being careful). The Macrium Reflect backup CD did not boot on this laptop, but Paragon worked perfectly.

Overall: I'm very happy with my purchase, and don't think there's a better laptop for the money. I'll keep posting any additional thoughts as I continue to use it


I am having an issue, however, with the wireless adapater. I've installed the Intel 6230 driver, and the adapter can find wireless networks. I can't actually connect to any networks, however. I've tried joining my home network with other devices, such as a smartphone, and those connect just fine. If any of you guys know about any possible fixes, or what usually causes this, please let me know! I've tried using the MAC address listed under the 6230, as well as that of the "Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter" (the same address but off by one digit), to no avail.

 

Is your router configured to only permit wifi connections from MAC addresses it recognizes? Might need to manually add the MAC address.

Also, which drivers did you use, the ones off Malibal's drivers CD or drivers downloaded from Intel's website? Whichever one you used, uninstall it and try the other one... if that made any sense

 

Yeah I've added the two MAC addresses I mentioned above (the 6230 one and the Virtual Wifi one, both gotten through ipconfig /all).

I first tried the Malibal CD driver, and then uninstalled it and tried the Intel website one. At some point I also try choosing the "repair" option for the Malibal driver, which interestingly enough caused the My Wifi utility (the one that lets you connect to Wifi devices) to stop being able to detect the adapter.

 

Hmm... you have covered your bases well.

If your router is restricting access to MAC addresses it recognizes, maybe temporarily allow all devices to connect to it (provided they have the correct password ). Also, for future reference, the Virtual Wifi one allows your laptop to act as an access point for other devices (at least, mine does).

As a last-ditch effort, you could look for a firmware update from your router manufacturer's site. I know with mine (D-Link DIR-825), it would not allow VoIP connections through to my VoIP modem until I updated the firmware!

 

You can always try assigning an IP address to your laptop. See if it shows up on your router's client table.

Are your other devices listed in the permitted clients under MAC address filtering?

 

Well, as usual the issue was ridiculously simple: the MAC address had been mistyped when my Dad added it to the router whitelist. I'm just happy it's working now.

Thanks for your input Confucius and Xerloq

 

Ah, typos. They're the worst. Not as bad as this, though: YouTube - IT Crowd

 

sharphawk maybe you can post some pics of the laptop showing off the gamut matte screen (outdoor/indoor etc)

 

Hi, thanks for sharing - I'm glad you are enjoying your notebook so far!

 

I have another question, if anyone knows:

I'm trying to set up my audio so that the built-in speakers and my headphones can be set to different volumes.

I'm using the Realtek HD Audio Manager, which is also present on my desktop PC. The desktop version (6.0.1.6013, codec ALC888) has an option to "Disable front panel jack detection." This causes it to display all output devices simultaneously in different tabs and therefore assign each one its own volume. There is no such option on my laptop's Realtek version (6.0.1.6410, codec ALC892). Is the difference in functionality due to different drivers, or a difference in hardware (the desktop has more audio I/Os)?


I'll try to get pics of the screen up soon

EDIT: Mhm so it looks like like the problem is that headphones never show up as their own sound device. Both the built-in speakers and the headphones are displayed as a single "Speakers - Realtek High Definition Audio" device.

 

Question...what made you choose a 15.6" instead of 17". I'm kind of debating which size I should get.

 

For me, it was the size and weight. I downsized from a 17 to a 15 and have not looked back. It's much easier to tote a 15 when I travel.

Now if you're not going to take yours anywhere, don't hesitate to get the 17. If you plan on taking it with you with any frequency, you'll grow to hate how bulky machines of those size can be.

 

Like Saturnotaku said, I chose the 15.6" because of the greater mobility it offered, and the fact that the two were identical otherwise (for my customization options). When screen size is really an issue, I'd rather plug the laptop up to a 24" monitor.

 

In my Realtek HD Audio Manager, there is a "Device advanced settings" on the top right corner. From there under Input Devices, there are two options: "Tie up same input jacks,..." and "Separate all input jacks...". Hopefully yours has this setting, and if so, select "Separate all input jacks...". After that, you should be able to manually set the volume of both the speakers and headphone.

 

Yeah, I've tried that but it hasn't worked

 

And under Playback devices (Speaker icon in taskbar -> Right click), you only see one set of speakers?

EDIT: One really weird thing about Realtek drivers is, sometimes getting the newest set of drivers does NOT mean better performance or added features. Case in point, I decided to update my audio drivers for my ASUS laptop to the latest that Realtek provided. Much to my dismay, my Stereo Mix stopped working... so I went with really ancient drivers on ASUS' website

Try using the Malibal Driver CD's audio drivers and hopefully it works out.

 

Well, I see two, but the other one is the Digital Output.

Yeah I've tried both the CD one and the one on Realtek's website.