Sager as alternative to W700 or HP8730w

I'm looking at the Sager NP5793 as the lower cost alternative to a Lenovo W700 or HP 8730w. I had both of those two specced out with the best possible screens. Is anyone able to offer a comparison on the Sager screen? The one I'm looking at it the 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1920x1200). Also, how reflective is the glossy screen? Enough to be distracting? This is a work laptop first (app development and graphic design) and a gaming laptop second or third.

The higher end graphic card won't be the FX 3700, but the GeForce 9800M GTX. I assume that can handle large Photoshop files and such about as well?

Anyone using this Sager as a desktop replacement for Visual Studio / SQL work and Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator work?

 

Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, etc... are 2D apps that do not need any high-end graphics card.... they depend more on the CPU and amount of memory.

As for glossy VS matte screens, its personal preference.

I have been using my glossy WUXGA for over 2 years now, I think I cant go to matte after this since the color is very sharp on glossy screens as compared to matte. I do not notice much reflectiveness since I do not use it with the sun directly behind me.

 

Like Gophn said, those 2D apps are more CPU/RAM load than GPU. However, a 9800M GTX will be able to take on 3D Studio Max in DirectX mode without any real problems.

A better "desktop replacement" (well more true to the term) is a Sager NP9262, which is much more ready for high-end applications.

 

Are the quad cores worth it now in notebooks? In the desktop world I've seen instances where running a 64bit OS actually decreased performance.

How does the battery life between the two compare?

I would like something I could configure pretty well for $2500 or under, or else I'm creeping back into the W700 range.

Thanks

 

Quad-cores are definitely worth it. (although, they are more expensive in notebooks than desktops.... except for the Clevo D901C... aka. Sager 9262)

All OS'es are optimized now to utilize multi-cores.

As long as the software you are using are up-to-date, they should also be multi-threaded to take advantage of as many cores as you have.

 

I suppose when I said "desktop replacement" I should have said "mobile desktop replacement". I do carry my laptop with me everywhere. I would rather have a little less weight and more battery life if something like a P9500 2.5Ghz is good enough to handle Photoshop, Visual Studio, and local instances of SQL Server and Analysis Server for the next 4 years.

 

a notebook with a 2.4GHz or higher dual core would be able to do the work fine.

 

Steve, did you mean 5796, where you said 5793? Just checking.

The FX2700M is no slouch either, though it does lack the 64 additional shaders of the GTX and 3700M. I guess it depends on what kind of work you do, but the 2700M will be sufficient for many.

 

Oops, yes the 5796. Too much turkey has fogged my brain. I want a powerful enough graphics card to play some good games too, and hopefully something that will still be useful in 3 or 4 years. My work is somewhat across the board, including development in Visual Studio, Management Studio (relational and dimensional databases) and Adobe Flash/Flex as a developer, and on the graphics side I work in Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter and occasionally Blender. I've been fooling around with Expression Blend for XAML lately too. I tend to have a lot of apps open, so I guess I should be more concerned with RAM and a good CPU. I plan on putting 4GB of RAM, and I'm one of those people that isn't fully convinced 64bit is ready for prime time, so I'll probably be on 32bit Vista to start with.

Right now I'm working on an old Inspiron 8600 with 1GB ram and a 2Ghz Pentium M processor when I'm not at the office, so anything should be a big upgrade. I do have to hand it to Dell though, this thing must be close to 5 years old now, and it runs CS3, Visual Studio 2008, Management Studio... ect. It just occasionally decides to blue screen instead of sleeping, and it's sloooooooooow.

 

What you could do with the glossy screen is put a matte screen protector over it. It will not degrade the visual quality much.

A 17" laptop is rather large to be carrying around. Consider the Sager NP8660 instead:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4590
Something like the MSI-1651 is also worth considering, though before I go off on a tangent, it is to your advantage to complete the FAQ in the What Should I Buy forum.

 

I think I've actually filled in the FAQ three times now, as my ideas on what I should buy change/evolve. I'm starting to feel guilty I've been carrying around the inspiron 8600 for years, typically with a couple of books and sometimes a Wacom tablet along for the ride. I don't mind the weight, although I do worry that a 17" laptop might get stressed more while traveling in a messenger style bag. I do a LOT of work on my laptop, so I'm somewhat caught between wanting the most screen real estate and power that I can get, and still having a laptop that has some degree of portability and battery life. My 15.4" inspiron runs at 1680 x 1050 and I feel like that's barely enough. Maybe I'm just having "envy" for my wife's 17" Macbook Pro

Thanks for all of the input so far. As I'm sure it is with most people on this forum, this is a big decisions and I want to get it as close to "right" as I can.