Okay, i have never heard of Sager laptops, but the Dell guys insist i get one....

gotcha, thanks for the clarification. do you recommend straight from sager? or would Xoticpc be a better idea?

 

I recommend to get it from a reseller like XoticPC or Powernotebooks.

You get a slightly better price and legendary service/support when you need it... and they will give you a free extra 2 year labor warranty.

Only when the reseller support feels like its a hardware problem, then they will hand you over to Sager support.

So in essence, they are a great middle-man.

 

wow, awesome. so when you configure it from xoticpc, they order it directly from sager and then send it to you?

 

yup. thats pretty much it.

 

ok, one more question, do sagers come with the drop detecting hard drive? or no such option available?

 

Although these smaller companies buy and sell Sagers, they may have slight differences in the available upgrades they offer. Xoticpc might offer more hdd's than Sager offers. Or Sager might offer more cpu choices. The most inportant differences that effect end-users like you and me would be the different warranties and customer support policies that these smaller companies carry. Like I said, shop around. You can research upgrades from 3 different companies, then the following week, 2 of these companies have changed their upgrade lists to reflect newly available equipment. Or, in the case of sager, drop a component all together. For a short time, sager sold the 8800 AND the 9800, only to drop the 8800 shortly after my order went through. Now that you are thoroughly confused, good luck!

...never heard of the drop-detecting hard drive.

 

thanks for clearing it up. ill check often before i finally pull the trigger. drop detecting hard drives are when theres movement detected, the hard drive pauses so it doesnt get damaged on impact when theres a fall

 

All drives offered by Sager have zero-g sensors.

 

wonderful, i assumed it wasn't available since dell makes it an extra $ option

 

dell. lol.

kinda made the alienware name go down...

staying on topic: you made the right choice to go with a sager bro!

 

The parts (other than things like hdds) are made by a company called Clevo which, as discussed in great detail in Gophn's Clevo Guide (sticky at the top of the forum), is one of the ODMs that actually makes most of the computers that get labelled with the so-called "recognized" brand names.

 

You can also look at PCtorque. I bought mine through them and received great service and free shipping. They also offer the extra 2 year labot warranty for free.

 

There's another good reason for going with a reseller, provided that reseller doesn't have its offices located in the same state as you, namely, if you buy from an out-of-state reseller such as Xoticpc, Powernotebooks, PCTorque, and the like, you will generally not be charged sales tax on the purchase (this is all legit, in fact, it's mandated under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution), which fact could save you several hundred dollars on your purchase.

 

another question, how long does the battery last on full charge without playing games? is there different low power modes for when the laptop is not plugged in?

 

it runs about 1.5-2 hours... if you turn on Silent Mode, it will last another hour.

 

I just tested this on my 5797. I put it in the default power saver mode, turned off the wireless card, and popped in Lord of the Rings. It made it right at 2 hours before it shut down at 3 percent battery life. I'm running a Duo Core P9500 and WUXGA screen, Vista Ultimate 64, 4GB ram. I didn't bother putting it in silent mode. I would imagine there would be a little more battery life cruising the net and answering email, although I haven't tested the impact that the wireless card has on the battery since I turned it off for my test.

With XP or Vista you can custom set your power settings for both AC and battery modes. Vista seems to have more powerful features for adjusting your power settings.

Hope that helps!

 

Another hour? It seems like my 5797 runs the fans more in silent mode, although it doesn't kick them on high. I'll have to try that. What model did you test it on?

 

A person with a M860TU near me let me test out their notebook. It seemed to get to 2.5 hours on Silent Mode... could have gone higher if I brought down the brightness of the LCD and such.

 

You can setup the power options under power options in the control panel. There you can customize the settings not only for the battery but also specify the settings for other hardware such as the monitor, hard drive, and so forth.

Just FYI, all notebooks that have the PM965 chipset like the Sager 5793 that I have, can take up to 8GB of ram memory. I recently upgraded from 4GB to 8GB as I use a lot of software that is memory intensive and despite what Sager says, the PM965 chipset can handle 8GB of memory. I am very happy with the 5793 and instead of getting a new notebook, I plan to upgrade to an X9000 CPU and this notebook will be good to go for at least 2-3 more years.

 

im afraid of one thing that happens VERY OFTEN on my Lenovo, random BSOD's like crazy, it happens even more often on people who run Vista.... how many BSOD's have you guys gotten?

 

I may get a system hang every now and then but I have only received less than ten BSOD's in over 18 months of running Vista 64 with all the latest updates including SP1.

I do not game but I do use Photoshop and other Adobe software that is part of their CS3 Master Collection Suite so they are very memory intensive programs. I have found Vista to be fairly stable for me but then I make sure the drivers I use are mature and that cuts out a lot of problems right there. I started working with computers back in 1974 with mid-range systems and have seen enough OS, software, and hardware problems to know the importance of good system diagnosis and management.

 

im glad to know that. one thing i like about sager is their lack of bloatware. Lenovo has more bloatware than any other company right now, its amazing how much

 

Sager/clevo is a great notebook seller. Their notebook built quality are the best and although low-profile look and design, but nevertheless the quality is superb and the best bang for the buck. I know because i own one of their best gaming laptop and are fully satisfy.

You dont even need all the richest in the world to own one of the greatest gaming notebook ever made nor do you even need to get frustrated when dealing with their customer service because their Customer service are professional and very dependable.

Go with clevo and you will never look back and regret...




UNLESS a newer model come out when you just bought yours and you suddenly thought "!?" like for example the sudden appearance of NP5797... which came out very recently after i purchase mine NP5796.... lolz

though i prefer alienware design, nahh just kidding

 

how does the 9800M GTS fare with Fallout 3? can it handle playing it on high settings?

 

honestly, the 5797 is very expensive for me right now, $2200 is the lowest price you can spend on it. and the 9800M GTX is barely faster than the 9800M GTS.

i've studied both the 5792 and 5797. i realized you're paying $700 more for DDR3 instead of DDR2 ram and the GTX over the GTS card.

 

None so far, but I've only had the laptop for 3 weeks. It seems very stable on Vista Ultimate 64.

 

It should be able to handle Fallout 3 on high settings just fine.

 

If cost is an issue then you really should consider the deals being offered on the 5793. It has a DVI connector so with an adapter you can get HDMI and you should be able to get an external eSATA hard drive setup just fine. AFAIK, that and the fact that the 5797 is based on the Montevina chipset so it can use CPU's that the 5793 cannot.

But then again, you have a budget to meet, so those CPU's might be out of your price range any way. If you do get money later, do what I am doing. Upgrade the CPU to an X9000 and if you want, you can always increase the memory to 8GB. My 8800GTX is a bit faster than the 9800 equivalent.

From reading the posts of those who do a lot of gaming, they have nothing but good to say about the 5793 and I think you should give it serious consideration as it is on sale, upgradeable so it will stay current for quite some time, and has a good return on investment ratio.

Besides, it is just one hell of a great notebook to use and have fun with. Any notebook that I can take apart and upgrade with the reseller's permission is my kind of notebook!

 

In regards to bluescreens:

I've only had my laptop (NP8660/M860TU) for about three days. I got it clean from Xotic and installed Vista Business x64 on it myself. Yesterday I was getting constant stop errors. After having a small coronary and spending about six hours running memtest and prime95 (both ran fine), I used the minidumps to track the problem down to an issue with sptd.sys (driver used by quite a few cd emulation programs). I fixed the issue and the system has been rock solid since.

I will say this: BSODs are not okay and shouldn't ever happen in the course of normal computing. My desktop computer hasn't had a stop error in years outside of initial overclock testing. If your Lenovo is getting bluescreens you should really look into why, as there's either some faulty hardware or some sort of driver issue/conflict. Windbg and the minidumps Vista ****s out are useful tools to find out what's up.

The days of Windows simply being unreliable without some sort of external problem died sometime around XP SP1.

EDIT: And on an unrelated note, I'm in love with this laptop. The build quality is miles ahead of what I was expecting and seems much, much better than the majority of crappy consumer laptops. I'd say it's about as good as my old Thinkpad.

 

wait, so you're saying Sager doesn't void your warranty even though you tool around with it? how much upgrading headroom does the 5793 have?

 

BSOD's are a rampant problem with Lenovo T61 and other models like the plague.... many people say its the turbo memory, others say its the massive amount of bloatware included in the factory install.... which we cannot modify because the windows reinstall is basically a partition in the hard drive already included with bloatware... it all installs automatically...

 

That kind of sucks, but you might want to at least try taking a look at the minidump files. If it is a piece of pre-installed software causing it (certainly possible) you might be able to track it down and figure out a way to deal with it. I really couldn't imagine dealing with constant stops like that - if it was happening on this Sager and I couldn't pin-point the problem I'd be sending it back for warranty service.

Edit- Hell, I'll even take a look at the files for you if you want, assuming you can zip up a bunch and upload them somewhere.

 

its just the nature of Lenovos from how common it is, im not gonna risk sending it to them to get it fixed and they damage something in the process. im not a trusting person, hehe.

 

I love my Sager.

Just wanted to throw that out there for people LOL.

I'm now going to be buying Sager laptops whenever I need a new one.

 

The 5793 can be user upgraded in the following areas: CPU up to the X9000 which is a 2.8Ghz unit that can be BIOS OC'd to 3.2Ghz, VIDEO to 9800GTX but if you have the 8800GTX I'd stick with the 8800, DVD to Blu-Ray, and if you have a 64 bit OS then you can upgrade the memory to 8GB of DDRII RAM.

All of this will not void the warranty as long as you do the work properly such as observing static precautions and so forth. I got my 5793 from Sager and they did not care about me upgrading the CPU as I asked them and the manual on the CD that comes with the notebook describes how to the user should perform the other upgrades.

 

i see theres not a lot of room for improvement, but honestly, there really isn't any need to upgrade any further for years to come IMO. a laptop that can run games as smooth as my desktop 8800GTS is really amazing to me. i have never seen a laptop that fast before, even at school where 100's of people pull out their laptops and play games