Sager & 9261

Well I will be going to college sometime next year and my dad has told me to start looking at some notebooks that will get me though four years or more. I think that the 9261 is a great desktop replacement which is what I rather have because at first I was thinking of buying some cheap laptop and later on building my own desktop.

Anyway I know that the 9261 is heavy on the power and what but how power conservative is it? Also is there any option to tone down the settings to maybe make battery life go at least for two hours. Another thing is how well does it work with photoshop and corel and is it possible to upgrade the GPU?

Finally I need to know has anyone had any experience buying directly from sager themselves. I'm very hesitant to buy from another online store and my dad refuses to give me credit card numbers for anything other than an official computer site due to past credit fraud.

 

I ordered mine Thursday from Xoticpc.com. They are great. I did a lot of research on these forums and saw that ordering directly from Sager wasn't that great of an idea. I guess you have no choice though

 

tell your dad to read the Clevo Guide.

Its shows reseller ratings and BBB (Better Business Bureau) ratings

 

I am on my second sager the 9890 (3.8 GHz w/ two hard drives in raid 0) my first was a 9860 (3.6 GHz w/ 2 drives in raid 0) bought it through PC torqe . I bought the second directly from sager after the 9860's mother board went out. I decided, then that I better have a backup computer because it takes 3 days when and if anything goes wrong and I use the computer for my work. I use the 9890 of course every day now for about a year and the one I had repaired just kind of sits there giving me peace of mind. They are awsome machines. I did a bench mark test that an australian architecture firm pushed about 3 years ago and when they finally posted the results my 9860 was the fastest out of about 25 listed, all of which were desktopsystems. you can see it here http://www.aaarchitect.com/archicad_benchmarks.htm under archicad version 9
Battery life is a real problem with these machines. about 45 minutes. I think of them as simply a emergency power back up in case the power goes out giving me time to maybe work a little longer and giving me time to close all my applications and shut down. When I go to see clients I always bring my second A/C power supply and plug in. Hope this was helpfull.

JP

 

@Nero45 They have some nice deals I think I may go with them
@Gophn Thanks I'll go over some of them with my dad later on Xotic PC looks really promising
@Jonathanpele yeah I saw the benchmark tests from some nice gaming pc sites the 9261 is a monster. Also how long did it take for the 9860 to die as I'm going to be a Computer info systems major/graphics design and I really don't want to have it die while I'm in school as that would blow hard. and yeah I think I'm going to be getting an extra battery.

 

I think it was just out of warranty, just over a year. It was a major upset and cost me 500 + the gas and my time to drive it in there. Welcome to the machine! I think with any computer somthing can always go wrong with it. This is why I bought the second machine, and why I back up my work to an external hard drive so if somthing goes wrong I can still work while its being fixed.

 

def man xotic rocks. i will only buy from them from now on unless im getting a actual brand name like hp or toshiba etc... for sager/compal/asus xotic is the way to go..

 

Just remember that if you're getting the extra battery to extend the run time of the 9261, the battery is held in place by screws. So bring along a screwdriver.

 

the screws can be easily removed with a coin or even a strong fingernail.

 

I would definitely buy a warranty when you buy this laptop for at least two years. I mean I'd be pissed if I spend $3000-$4000 on this laptop and the motherboard or something died in it a little after the stock year warranty was out.
Hawk375, Wow I didn't know that the battery was held in by screws. Does anybody know why they screw in the battery?

 

ViktorAlkious when you say sometime next year, do you mean fall or spring? And just a thought, if you know what school you are going to go to, check to see if they sell operating systems (typically you can get one way below the retail price, I bought XP for $10, when it first came out) and then install the OS and drivers yourself which is quite easy to do. This can save you almost $200 or you can just use the extra money towards something else.

 

With my setup, on max powersaving while browsing NBR on wifi, I get 1:15 to 1:20. With powermizer off and max brightness, I get a little under an hour, though games still chop like hell due to the CPU auto-downclocking.

I love the power of this thing, but I wish that for the same money I would've gotten a very nice ultraportable and a kickarse custom desktop. So buyer beware... 12lbs isnt so bad, but the extra batteries and AC adapter making it closer to a total of $20 is. Plus textbooks.

 

I understand your point about the money and how it should be ultraportable because of the exspense, but you must realise that it's a desktop replacement and the money you paid was for the powerhouse not for portability. Hehe I'm still waiting for mine to get here

 

You have to undo three screws to remove the battery in the 9260, not a big deal to me but something to remember. You might want to look at some of the APC universal battery backups as you could use those to power your Ipod or something else on long trips.