New 5760 arrived :D

5760/M570U Ordered from RJTech :

1920x1200 screen
7950GXT
DL DVD
Wireless
2 year warranty

$1834

Ordered from newegg :

Merom T5600
Hitachi 100Gb 7200 HDD
Muskin 2x1Gb DDR2 667 RAM

$592

Total cost : $2426

Already had Arctic Silver and Cleaner.

First impressions before installing the OS :

If you're building it yourself with AS5, be prepared to have some arctic cleaner or similar product to hand. The tape on the heatsink comes off rather cleanly, and probably doesn't affect the area the AS5 would be on, but it's nice to have some to hand.

Build quality, as emphasized by everyone else here, is superb. The only other laptop I ever opened up was a Compaq .... ok probably not the fairest comparison, but if this is your first laptop build then you'll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is. In fact if it's the first computer you've put pieces in yourself you'll be surprised just how easy it is. You've only got so many places to put things. Nice rectangular spot about the size of a hard drive. Two little slots to put memory where the indent is so far to the side it's really hard to get it wrong, you follow my drift. Yesterday I took apart and put back together our desktop machine. Shuttles are known to be easy machines to deal with, but you could put this laptop together blindfolded.

Mouse pad is nice and big, the middle button seems to be a little odd to push, but not everyone uses them. Drawback to the sizeable mouse area is the palm easily hits it during typing. Keyboard seems solid compared to my (well, wifes now) Toshiba P105. Keys a little harder to push, but that's probably a good thing. Nice tactile feel to the mousepad and laptop itself.

Will be back with performance later

Edit :

Can't really comment on screen until the computer has actually booted. Right now it looks just like any flatscreen that's stretched as far as resolution goes. But I like that it turns off before the laptop is actually closed, as opposed to waiting for a mechanical switch like most other laptops I've seen.

 

Congrats on the new system, I did the same thing like you... getting my barebones first then getting the other parts separately.

for your touch pad issue, you can toggle it off (thats what I do when I am using a USB mouse or gaming):

Functions for M570U:

Fn + F1 - Touchpad Toggle
Fn + F2 - Fan Speed Toggle
Fn + F3 - Mute Toggle
Fn + F4 - Sleep Toggle
Fn + F5 - Decrease Volume
Fn + F6 - Increase Volume
Fn + F7 - Display Toggle
Fn + F8 - Decrease LCD Brightness
Fn + F9 - Increase LCD Brightness
Fn + F10 - PC Camera Toggle
Fn + F11 - Wireless Module Toggle
Fn + F12 - Bluetooth Module Toggle

 

Thanks man

It just needs time getting used to, compared to this Toshiba (which has been a great machine for what it is, but it's not quite a desktop replacement).

I like the shortcut for fan speed. Can tell what this thing is made for

 

FYI - See my post here about what drivers I installed on my 5760.

One thing to note: I see many places say the touchpad is an Elantech, but when I used the driver CD via the menu, it installs the Synaptic drivers which seem to be the correct ones. I was unable to configure anything with the Elantech drivers - everything was greyed out, but the options are all available for the Synaptic. I mention this because you can adjust the pressure sensitivity to try to minimize/avoid the touchpad picking up your palm when you type. I have mine set up with this on and seems to work great for me. (Or like Gophn suggests, disable it with the hotkeys.)

I've also found that the hot key utility enables the volume buttons in the DJ area for within Windows, as well as the "user defined" hot key at the top. Without the hot key utility, the e-mail and web hot keys at the top still work, but not the user defined, nor the volume in Windows.

 

Synaptic most certainly helped after it was installed. I was missing using the bottom left of the pad as a middle button. I may need to tweak it a bit more in time so it's like I'd set it up on the Toshiba, but it's a lovely pad.

After about 12 hours of messing around with it and installing it's still rocking.

Game performance :

What else is there to be said that other people haven't already said? Half Life 2, Far Cry, WoW, all running in full screen 1920x1200 with only the rare skip to mention. Lovely stuff. Loading times are quite short, comparatively speaking. It stutter loads/hiccups less than my single core desktop, and loads faster than the T2300E, 5.4k RPM Toshiba.

Application performance :

So far so good. The 2Gb/T2300E Toshiba was a workhorse, and this machine is no different. Currently there are two SQL Server databases, a MySQL database as well as two Linux VMWare Player sessions open (along with the traditional Firefox/Thunderbird, couple of explorer windows etc) and the machine isn't even breaking a sweat. It's all too easy to overlook how much a clean installation (compared to an OEM installation) improves performance. It's no a small difference between your machine coming with an OS/preloaded application set taking 300/500Mb of memory, and a fresh OS taking up 70Mb of memory.

Drivers + Bundled Programs :

Aaah, 1 cd, containing all you need and none of the fluff. Ever build your own desktop with a, for examples sake, Gigabyte or MCI motherboard? Noticed how those always come with a CD with 1000 variants of sound card drivers of which only 1 applies to you and unless you have the manual you have to guess or trust Windows will select the right one? Not here. At most you'll find 2 or 3 drivers, and it's pretty easy to tell which ones apply to you. For example, VGA drivers, NVidia or ATI? Hmmmm ...

Sound driver suite is concise and complete. You get what you need to set it up and add a new effects and EQ effects. It's not the can of tricks you'll get with an Audigy, but then again it shouldn't be.

Only slight disappointment was the DVD player application, but I don't think this is the fault of anyone but the DVD player creator trying to milk everyone for what they're worth. For most people, it reads DVDs, and that's all you really need. I just don't like being reminded of "by the way, you can upgrade to ..." ... yah yah I'm being fussy. On the other hand Nero seems to be the full suite of applications with no restrictions, which is rather excellent.

After 1 day I'm not sure yet, but it'd have been nice to have the possibility of turning on the clock when the computer is off, like the CD player can be turned on. It may be possible to do it, but I haven't checked yet.

1 day conclusion :

For most people this will become a "no hassle" machine. The internals are very easy to maintain, and what you can't take care of falls under a warranty.

It comes with most of what you need to get started, and without anything that makes you think "I'll never need that".

 

I use mainly PowerDVD or Media Player Classic for DVD playback.

 

PowerDVD is what comes bundled with it. VLC is usually my weapon of choice for reading videos, but some DVDs need something like PowerDVD.