Parts availability

I'm strongly considering buying an NP9150, but before I started researching for buying a new laptop, I don't know that I'd ever heard of Sager/Clevo, so even after finding that the vast majority of what people have to say is positive, I'm still a bit leery of venturing into waters I didn't know existed.

I have a small shop in a small town, and do computer repairs as well as website work & media editing. I'm happy to see that the design is well thought out in regard to repair/maintenance - in particular that fan cleaning doesn't require dismantling the entire laptop like it does in most consumer models.

I found this thread that answered most of my questions, but one remained - what is parts availability like for these laptops? If the motherboard craps out in 4yrs, is it reasonable to expect to be able to find a new one? Since these are lower volume products, should I expect the cost to be prohibitive to repair?

My current laptop is an XPS M1530 that I've had for 4 years, and I'd like my next laptop to last a similar amount of time. If I can feel confident that I could find the parts a few years down the road, it would do wonders for my confidence in buying a Sager.

(I'll also note quickly that I've already seen the petition thing, so don't worry about pointing that out to me. It's not a dealbreaker - if I get the Seger, I'll be getting the 7970m graphics, which I expect to keep me happy enough until it's time for a new lappy.)

BTW, my 2nd runner up laptop is the MSI GT60.

 

I'll bite..

Bit of an odd question really..

Not sure what will happen in 4 years time but I doubt the motherboard will crap out. And even then there will probably be newer models out.

I do believe though the quality and design is A1 and you won't have any problems. The only really maintenance is cleaning the fans once a month more if living in dusty areas. The fans/cooling solution is very very good on these notebooks...

 

hi and welcome to nbr

ive certainly had my fair share of laptops over the years and tbh the clevo has been the best of the best.
my m860tu is 4 years old now and still going strong. the graphics card died last year and was replaced under warranty as i always take out the extended warranty. stupid not to really when i spent £2000/$3500 on a lappy an extra £70 is nothing compared to £200 for the replaced graphics card i saved.

im in the uk but i believe newegg sells lots of components in the states.

if i were you i would look at one of the resellers sites on here instead of going direct to sager. ie: xoticpc,malibal,powernotebooks and quite a few more i cant remember of the top of my head.

 

The petition is for Pushing Clevo to keep their old models up-to-date with BIOS updates (for MXM video card upgrades and others..).

 

If you buy from a Sager reseller, they will for the most part will sell you parts and help you find parts at a discount price. Most don't advertise it as Mythlogic, who advertise their Phoenix upgrade plan, but they all do it. It's not unique to Mythlogic.

And if that doesn't work for you, you can usually find parts being sold on Ebay or here by users as they upgrade, and sell their previous parts or you can check out sites like RJTech who specialize in laptop parts and barebone systems.

As for reliability, majority of laptop parts and workstation, DTR, gaming rigs are built and tested to last 3 years without user abuse. That's about all you can ask for. And Dell actually ranks pretty low compared to their competitors on 3 year reliability surveys. Asus is at the top, though I"m not thrilled by their designs, shenanigans and lack of support for the needs of notebook enthusiasts. No doubt this G73JH I have now will last 4-5 years, it's in it's 3rd year now.

 

Parts availability is a huge issue in cost of ownership and the ownership experience for someone looking to keep anything somewhat long-term. My 4yr old laptop is still very usable for most stuff, so it still holds value as a backup machine, or to sell used for a couple hundred bucks. I have no doubt that Dell is average at best in overall reliability, but it's like owning a Chevy - repair parts are cheap and plentiful, so if you know how to fix it, something breaking really isn't that big of a deal. Heck, I've replaced screens on Dells & HPs for customers, and was able to find an excellent used part for $50-60.

If parts quickly become scarce for an item, then you start running into issues of delays and even inability to do a repair. If some board craps out on my laptop in 3yr, warranty or not, I want it to be fixable. If parts aren't available, that's often when warranty disputes become more difficult, as the business that has to enforce the warranty faces a decision to either take a loss on the warranty though whole laptop replacement or some other expensive measure, or try to find a loophole to get out of honoring the warranty. I have no experience with Sager or any of the resellers offering their products, so this is in no way an accusation, but simply a consideration when looking at buying a low volume product from a small retailer.

What is a Sager laptop that has been out of production for at least 2.5-3 years? I can look to see what parts availability is on that model, and that should give me some idea. I have no issue believing the quality up front is excellent, but things do break (if not by flaw then by accident), and I don't want a laptop that will be a paperweight in a few years, warranty or not.

 

m860tu ceased 1-2 years ago, D99F ceased 2-3 years ago. have fun searching.

 

I guess I'm not sure why no one seems to share my concern. Do you all just send your laptops to Clevo if there's a problem? Seems odd that folks that are so into continually upgrading graphics chips, hard drives, etc wouldn't also want to have direct control over DIY repairs.

 

Parts for the Sager/Clevo are generally kept around for about 3 years (otherwise they couldn't offer 3 year warranty). So you can expect at least that from Sager/Clevo.

After that, it's anyone's guess if there will be any parts available beyond that point.
We have had customers ask us for parts on a 5 year old machine and once in a while some will come up, but it isn't often.

 

Thanks, that's some good info.

The more I think about it, the more I come back to the automotive brand analogy. The major brands provide so-so performance, but even if parts aren't available longer, there are so many used parts that it's easy to find. The Sager/Clevo seems to be more like shopping for a Jaguar - better performance & quality, but there's an aspect of rarity that has some downsides. Question is whether I want to potentially have to deal with that down the road, plus pay the extra up front, for what seems to be notably better options & performance.

 

With any laptop, or electronics in general, these are a different beast from a car.

With a car, you can cut, weld and modify them heavily and transplant anything into almost anything. You can also get better than stock parts in the aftermarket for most domestic and some import vehicles.

With electronics, when you overclock or modify something, people run a high risk of bricking it or causing parts to fail prematurely. Unfortunately, you can't just go out and buy better card or heatsink and just slap it in there without knowing all of the rules. Heck, you still have to know how to mod a BIOS on some systems to get it all to work if you modify the GPU and it is still not guaranteed to work.

Even with desktop computers, things will age and wear out and you will be hard pressed to find certain replacements. Look at memory or CPU for a desktop. the LGA775 is phased out more or less and DDR2 is being phased out for DDR3 and in 2014, it is speculated they will have DDR4.

Granted, some items on desktops take longer to phase out than others but in the mobile world, what you get today you shouldn't expect to upgrade 4-5 years from now or even a year from now at least as far as CPU and GPU are concerned.

 

Right, good luck in finding parts for these laptops. I've already been down this road and it's extremely difficult to order parts yourself. You will have to go through resellers where some might try to rip you off by offering the part for 2-3X its market price while some will be honest and sell the part to you for a reasonable price.

If one could order parts like a PC then I would've built the laptop myself .

 

Shame, if the parts were more readily available, I'd seriously consider the extended warranty since everyone says the quality is so high, and I have no issues doing my own repairs. I'm going to guess, though, that even if the parts were more available, their lower production levels would still mean higher parts prices, and the warranty would be worth the risk.

I've pretty much decided to go for it. I haven't found any other 15-16" laptops that offer the 7970 graphics, which seem to be worth the extra money to be sure the laptop is very usable for a long time.