Newbie getting a 9262

Hi all,

Was thinking about posting in the "What Notebook should I buy?" section as haven't 100% decided whether I'm going for a 9262 (a Comanche from Kobalt - am in the UK) or a Toshiba Qosmio X300-11W. However, am posting in here on the assumption I go for the Comanche.

Being not as computer-literate as you guys, is there any advice you can give me for if and when I get this. I am thinking of the following spec:
Kobalt Comanche
17" 1920x1200
Q9550 2.83 GHz
9800M GT
4gb DDR2 800MHz RAM
3 x 320Gb 7,200Rpm HDDs in RAID5
32bit Vista Home Premium
DVD-RW
Integrated sound card
30 day zero dead pixel guarantee
£2,181 incl VAT/Del

The reason for the 9800M GT is that is quite powerful already and I can always SLI it or replace with 1 or 2 GTXs at a later date.

Also, does anyone know if I can power this from my car and if so, where would I get the kit to do so?

Is there anything particular about the 9262 I need to be aware of. I know little about it apart from its great ability to keep temperatures down, its customisability and its blandish look. Would I need to do any tweaks if/when I received it? Hopefully being from a reseller such as Kobalt there would be very little bloatware.

Any tips would be much appreciated.

 

Hi Alex
great choice with (almost) going for a Comanche from Kobalt.
just a bit of advice concerning the 9800M GT cards. these are being discontinued by Nvidia and replaced with the 9800 GTS so if you defanately want them cards i would give Kobalt a call tomorrow to find out how much stock they have.
i ordered my nexus 2 weeks ago and was told by Andrew at kobalt about this.

you could always join the Kobalt forum (link below) as Andrew & Neil were both on line about 5 minutes ago.

 

Hey There,

Well, overall... I think your set up is good. As of the GT vs teh GTX... if your not up for spending the $$$ for the sli GTX... then thats cool... but if you have the extra $$$ to dish out... i'd go for them already. Granted we haven't seen any benchmarks for the GTX sli... going from a GT sli to a single GTX... might not be much of an upgrade. Then the question would be (answer is still unknown I think) how much % increase will a GTX SLI upgrade be from a GT SLI.

I personally would pick up the 2 GTX's and not have to worry about an upgrade later I currently own only 1 (didnt really have the extra $$$ to spend for the 2nd and the games I vividly play won't benefit much from SLI), so now I'm debating if a 2nd one will be worth it.

As of it powering from the car... I know from www.sagernotebook.com they have car kits... so I'm guessing Kobalt can get their hands on it too.. if not... ebay?

The 9262 is a beastly notebook... it does keep the temperatures very cool... but a notebook cooler wouldn't hurt either. Once you get it... some tweaks you can do is upgrading the vid card drivers. Finding the right driver will definitely change the performance of your laptop.

I was happy to see no bloatware on my laptop whatsoever. Just came with Nero 7 Essentials (needed to burn discs I guess) and a 60 day trial of windows (which I am thinking about uninstalling) Other than that... the machine is beast! I love it and you'll enjoy it too!

 

And the price difference between those two cards is going to be what?

 

at the moment from Kobalt the GT is £53 more than the GTS

 

I'm not sure if I'm correct about this, but you may want to get a 64 bit Vista edition instead of 32, 64 will let you use all 4GB of ram.

 

Er, I think a lot. Like $250+, or whatever that equates to. I'd go with a single 9800GT as planned (if not a GTS, if that's available) and you can upgrade later. No, $1200 or so for 2x9800GTX is not a good deal.

 

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the tips, very much appreciated. The Qosmio X300-11W is a very good machine and does look nice but the power of the 9262 is tempting.

A GTX is £210 more than a GT and SLI'd GTXs is another £420 on top of that. At this time I'm not too keen to spend too much more which is why I was thinking of going for the GT for now as I can always upgrade later.

I know what you mean about Vista 64bit for 4gb of RAM but I don't want to have to worry about the potential for incompatible drivers and I'm only going to lose out on about 1/2 a gb at least until Windows 7.

 

I thought for sure Windows 7 was being created in both 32 and 64 bit editions. Didn't Microsoft say though this would be the last OS to be built in both?
Am I missing something?

 

yeah nice setup.. go for vista32 for the easy life..

 

the x300 is possibly upgradable, many people think it is as it can be removed, same with the cpu.

so we already know the cpu CAN be changed, and the graphics card MAY be able to be changed, possibly to the 9800M GTX. i picked up an x300 in canada and love it, its very powerful for me with a 9700M GTS, but am going to upgrade the cpu and maybe the gpu in a year or 2

 

Yeah, I'm still a little torn about which one to go for. Hope to make a decision in next few days.