Questions about the Sager NP8660..

I'll keep this short. I'm getting ready to go to college in the Fall of 09 and I need to buy a laptop between now and then. I was considering the Asus G50 series, but its looks and lights are a bit much for me (I don't want to attract unnecessary attention in class). I've been looking into the Sager NP8660 and I wanted to know if any of its users could help me out.

First off, in case I end up having to sit through two consecutive one-hour lectures without a power cord, would the Sager have enough power for me to type notes during all of them?

Secondly, how much noise does the fan make when doing simple tasks? Once again, I don't want people staring at me in class wondering why I sound like I'm putting my laptop into overdrive.

Thirdly, I don't plan to put the laptop through the wringer with Crysis, but I would be playing games like Battlefield 2142, maybe CoD4, Fallout 3, Supreme Commander, and Guild Wars. Is the GPU on the Sager fine for the job? (Ok, I'll admit this is the dumb question..I just want to be 100% sure)

Finally, the reason I'm asking about this laptop now instead of next summer is that I'm taking some college courses next semester, so having a laptop would be very convenient. But given Windows 7 possibly coming out next summer, and most likely a better 15.4 Sager between now and then, in your opinion would it be worthwhile for me to just wait?

Any insights would be appreciated.

 

1. Power Saver mode + Silent Mode + lowered brightness should get you two hours of battery life. Undervolting the CPU will add more time.

2. Fan is very quiet outside of games. Enabling Silent Mode is dead... silent.

3. No problem here.

4. There's always something better around the corner. Or buy a cheap $400 non-gamer's laptop now, then see what gamer gear comes out next year.

I can confirm that there's a new set of the Montevina mobile processors coming out in December and then a couple more next Spring, but AFAIK, Windows 7 isn't coming any earlier than Q3/Q4 2009.

 

Well, I'm a student too and I've been using this laptop in class for around 2 months now (but not every class). If you have this in your backpack all day long, you might want to reconsider something else as I don't really classify this laptop as "portable" or light although its more convinent than a 17''.

In class, I'm able to achieve around 2 hours non-stop in power saver mode and silent mode. The brightness is at +1 (out of 7). I was playing "Purple Place" (in the bundled games with Vista) during my french class . In silent mode, you'll be definitly stealth although keyboard noise is to reconsider: its louder than a Macbook but a desktop keyboard, like IBM style, is way more louder. I can say people will hear you typing.

For power and performance, there will always be something better coming out ( my N82 is outdated 5 months after I bought it ). I know Intel will be releasing new CPUs in Q1 2009. If you look at the Alienware .m15x, its still able to keep up with recent laptops for around a year although there hasn't been much improvements: NVIDIA 9 series is pretty much equivalent to the 8 series and Intel Montevina platform is still DualCore. So maybe I guess its time for improvements this year

Just some expreriences as a student: if you get this laptop, you won't be able to use it outside except during the night. The brightness is not strong enough. I can see the dust accumulating on the screen but I can't see display during a cloudy day. The viewing angles are not the best so its hard to "show" your screen to others. Battery life is a pain: I can only expect the laptop to last one 2-hours class (max). Generally, I will only turn off or put in sleep the laptop twice, after that, my battery level is critical.

 

I have this laptop, and I'm gonna go ahead and say that my only complaint with it is that the power brick is like twice as thick as the laptop and is kind of a pain to haul around. I undervolted and I get about 2hrs 10 minutes at low brightness, which isn't bad at all considering the graphics card. Weight... I dunno about livesoft but I find this perfectly fine weight wise. I have no problems taking it around everywhere, even to classes that I know I won't use it =P. But yeah, if you wait till after christmas or so, you might find something better comes out.

 

I was going to say pretty much everything word for word what he said and saw no point retyping. But I'll add that if you don't need it till Fall 09 I'd wait and see what the next big thing is.

 

i have my low level gpu state undervolted and on powersaver i get 2hrs 25min plenty of time for notetaking...the gpu handles anything you throw at it, I OC'ed it to 600/1450/stock on the highest level and it runs both crysis (all high 1680x1050) like a dream, as well as a maxed out farcry 2. so no, the gpu will give you no problems, it's hella fast. And never gets above 80C even with the overclock for me. yeah and the thing is light imo, it's only too heavy to carry around campus if you're a *#%&ing weenie. Hit the gym once in a while. 6-7lbs is nothing.

 

I am sorta a nerd, but that shouldn't be too much for me...I think

Thanks for all the advice...I appreciate everyone who posted here. I'll probably wait till December to make a decision, but for now the NP8660 is on the top of my list.