To Sager owners, How is your Sager holding up?

Please state model, how long you've had it, and what, if any.. issues have popped up over the course of wear and tear

 

I purchased my Sager NP-5320 in the middle of October. Working flawlessly, I am glad to report that there are no problems at all.

I am a heavy typer, and after about two and a half months of that, the keyboard is a bit shiny (just in the center of the keys mainly), but this is normal, I've seen it happen on every other notebook I have had. The keyboard shows no other signs of wear. The plastic (or aluminum on the lid) show no signs of wearing down, fading, etc. Not even around the corners.

The notebook is as sturdy as when I first bought it - it hasn't changed, warped, etc. Also, I have no dead pixels.

All the best,

 

I have the 5720-V. I have had it since Nov 11. Only problem I have with it is that I can not let it go. I do not want to put it away back in my PC bag. I want to use it every single second ! It is so AWESOME !

 

I've had mine for two months now. The only issue I've had is the tip on the catch for the right side latch breaking. I've seen this on other laptops though, it's still a pet peeve of mine. Those things should be made of metal.

 

I've had my 5720-V since last tuesday, so a week and a half? No big issues so far, although sometimes the dvd drives makes a rattling noise when its loading a cd, happened twice out of maybe 10-20 cd's at least. It also happened on my dell desktop, i guess its just cd drives in general.

Also, the center, more to the right portion of the screen is a little darker when i boot it up, but it seems to go away after it is warmed up.

 

I've had a Sager for the last 2 years. I purchased a NP 4780 V 2 years ago and it's working fine with 1 dead pixel. I've had a 5710 for about 3 months with 0 dead pixels and everything working fine.

 

My 5720 has performed flawlessly during the 2+ months I've had it.

 

I just received my 9750V on Tuesday.
So far so good. 0 dead pixels.
Was working and gaming on it last night for about 7 hours. It got pretty warm as would be expected but ran flawlessly.

The wuxga is very nice but I have to work on getting the settings where I want them.

Incidently, I bought it from PCtorque due to the recommendation of several people and they were awesome.

 

hmmh, 9750 since 01/09. Zero dead pixels on my WUXGA and plays BF2 *AWESOME*.

So far nothing bad to report, boring really.

Oh maybe a *wee* minor thing with the belkin 7 port usb2.0 hub causing BSOD 1 in every 5 or 6 warm re-boot but cannot nail this to either the usb stuff hanging off the hub or the usb2.0 port - regardless, unplugging the hub solved the issue, hub works great and so the rest of the usb2.0 ports on the 9750...

 

I have a dead NP 8880, 2 1/2 yrs old....it just cycles through the boot-up screen and nothing will happen. The local repair shop tried to get Sager to sell them the part on the motherboard that was bad and they wouldn't do it. I had an issue with the motherboard within the first 6 months and now a second one. I will wait till I get to the mainland and send it to Sager to repair. Other then it crashing alot and getting very hot it was good when it worked.

 

NP 3790 I'm the second owner, it was originally purchased in October of 2004. I had the HDD die a grinding death a month or so ago. Other than that no issues at all. some discoloration of the plastic where my hand rests when gaming/typing, and the tops of the keys are pretty shiny from typing.

I bought it from an Apple user who didn't like pc's afterall, and reported having no issues while he owned it (4 months).

 

Had to RMA my optical back to Sager. Other than that, its pretty AWESOME...gotta BF2 at max res and settings. Smoooth !

 

NP9860-S purchased in April 05.

So far, it is not holding up well -- heat problems.

In terms of the physical characteristics, its superb: while I've broken the little plastic latches (lift lid without flipping catches to the side, smacks head -- but that hardly matters) the surface shows no scratches, all the external moulding is in excellent shape, and other than a "shiny" spot just to the right of the mousepad where my wrist rests, and worn areas on the left and right mouse buttons where my fingernails have worn through the surface plastic, the box could be new.

In terms of thermals... the box gets hot. Often. I'd hit the "critical thermal level causes shutdown" quite a bit -- got one of those external laptop cooling fan pads (first one broke quickly, the Targus one I have now is more durable, although the power cable sucks) helps a lot, surprisingly. I think its as much about providing better airflow as it is the actual fans themselves -- a ridged tray would probably work. Whatever.

But I seem to have yet another problem -- the AC adapter was getting *really* hot, to the point that it refused to deliver power. Sent back to Sager, they replaced the brick and did something to the motherboard (and replaced the plastic catches, nice, thanks) but it hasn't helped. I got a multimeter with a thermocouple, and can measure 80C at the transformer, ouch! The system has become unstable -- tuner has failed, fans were intermittent, and now it just goes blue screen.

So, watch out for ambient temps. The box is a monster, but if you are working that GPU hard, it can really overheat...

 

Hey, thanks for posting your experience Woody.

Yeah, those Clevo D900-based machines are problematic, especially with the heat . . it is quite understandable, considering how many high-powered components there are in there. The Pentium 4 never was a good idea for notebooks. . hope you find a solution to the overheating.

At any rate, welcome to the forums.

 

You do know and should have available the Fn+F2 keys which kicks your fans on full blast. Use this when you're gaming.

 

Still going strong after several months. I upgraded my CPU from the 750 1.86 to the 780 2.26. Definite improvement in performance with multpile apps. 3DMark05 increased from 6661 to 6975.

Be advised... Sager does not consider replacing the CPU to be an upgrade. It violates the warranty, so proceed at your own risk.

 

I have a 5690. I have experienced one major problem: the backing of the lcd has a lot of stress cracks. There are two solutions: 1 is to replace the back panel of the screen, and somehow loosen the tension on the hinge, the other is to replace the crappy hinges with steel and likewise reinforce the screen so that future cracking does not occur. From what I can see, it doesn't effect the actual LCD at all, but I may be wrong.

Speaking of the screen. At the time, it was simply the best screen I had ever seen. I still get people commenting on how nice the screen is. It's kind of ironic that Sager (or Clevo I guess) went with an absolute top of the line LCD, and then housed it in a piece of crap with a retarded overtensioned hinge.

My other concern is the power supply. In my opinion, it is a poorly designed piece of ****. It is way too small, has absolutely no ventilation, and the connectors are fragile. I am afraid it may simply explode some day. As it is, I am very careful to let the battery charge to 100% before I do anything intensive for fear of overloading the AC adaptor.

Battery life sucks at this point, but that's about what I would expect from a P4 laptop. I knew going in that it would degrade to basically a UPS after a couple of years.

If I had to do it all over, I'd have built a small form factor PC with an LCD monitor, and gotten an averatec 1050 from costco for portable use... although 2 years ago that would have been a lot more expensive (And I don't think the 1050 even existed).

Overall, it's a great computer that I paid a lot for (although it WAS a great deal from PCTorque). It will be my primary desktop for several more years, hopefully.

 

Anyone have anything bad to say about their Sager 5720? I'm thinking of purchasing one with 2GB 533MHz RAM, GeForce 7800GTX, Pentium M 2.0GHz (beats the 3.0 P4 on my Averatec 6130HS-20 I believe) and a 17" screen.

I'm going with the M class processor to get away from heat and battery issues. The Averatec 6130HS models are famous for SSDS (sudden shut-down syndrome) and sucky battery life, but I guess thats common in any P4 laptop.

 

Hey, I'm making exactly the same transition, from the 6130-HS to a 5720 with the same specs as yours. I actually think the 6130 is a good computer, and apart from the problem I had (HD would slow transfer speeds to 3.0MB/s every 2 months, only way to fix it was factory restore), I quite enjoyed it. Mine never shut down, even while gaming (played COD really smoothly) but then I use a Targus Chillmat. I did have case crack issues however.

Mind you, the Averatecs are quite cheap and flimsy and their support is TERRIBLE. I'm hoping for better with my Sager! The **** thing was meant to be delivered Monday but it's been delayed with the snowstorm. I get it tommorow.

Was doing some research on the Pentium M and apparantly they perform very well in gaming, nearly as good as the Athalon 64's (definitely much better than Pentium 4's). Although I hear they're not quite as good at multitasking as the P4's. That's not an issue with me, I don't have tons of things going at once, maybe Dreamweaver and Fireworks, that's about it.

I'm DEFINITELY excited about having something that runs cooler than a P4. My Averatec gets hot just surfing the web! Never critically hot though......

 

Well, one downside of the NP-5720 and NP-5320 is the headphone jack - a lot of static, and it is overamplified. It should be able to be fixed with a simple BIOS update, but Sager hasn't put one out.

The Sager 5720 is the best gaming machine out there in my opinion. Looks beautiful.

 

When I'm buying a $2300 machine, I guess everything should be perfect! So I hope Sager address the issue, a BIOS update would be nice.

HOWEVER. This isn't an issue for me as I use an Audigy ZS PCMCIA soundcard, which gives SUPERB sound quality - no hiss anywhere.

Who's buying the 5720? GAMERS! And I reckon most serious notebook gamers are aware of the gaming performance boost an external soundcard gives. On board notebook sound for games is NOT a brilliant idea! This laptop should come with an Audigy bundled.....

 

I have had a Sager NP8880 for aprox. 5 years or so. However, it has only worked for 6 months of that time frame. My first problem that required me to send it back into Sager was the failure of the power supply. 4 to 6 months after that, while using it, the computer simply stopped working. I tried to re-boot it but that was not an option. I have a light on the power supply, as well as light on the power LED too. That is as far as the booting up of my laptop goes. I have no idea what is wrong, and I would love for someone with a bit more knowledge than I have, please tell me what you think my problem could be. Thanks.

 

My brand new NP9261 runs very smooth and very well and my old (2003) Sager 8890 (specs in signature) is still going strong.

The old beast doesn't have the advanced cooling systems that the new one has, so it runs warmer and its fans make a lot more noise. After one year, one of the memory chips started to produce errors. This was relaced under warranty. One year ago I installed an extra HD, 2 GB of RAM and installed Vista. Has been working very well.

I am a happy owner

 

I have a Sager 5750 (specifications are in my profile), it's over a year old now (bought it last October) and it still runs great. Very satisfied with it.

 

NP2090 for 1 month. works like a charm

 

Same here for the NP2090.

 

D901C - had it since July so about 6 months now. No physical problems to report on. Runs cool and quiet.

Woops, sorry man. Just saw that you were asking about Sager, or were you talking about Clevo units in general?

 

Had my 2090 for about three months, and it randomly bricked on me. Nothing comes on the screen when I turn it on. Needless to say, it's in for repair as we speak.

When it was working, however, it's a damn nice little machine.

 

Had my 5791 from september...hmm, issues,yes, a very common one, my audio jack failed and sager said the mob needs to be replaced because of this 5 $ part laughing stock of the laptop geniuses...
Sager is highly competitive, but I hate that Clevo is no so flexible with parts.Anyhow, I love my Sager. I game, watch movies,listen to music,download and work for school and stuff,check this out, ALL in the same time ( I played UT3,while Mathcad 13 and jetaudio were minimised ,and winamp was playing music, and bitcomet was getting me nfs prostreet`s demo...
Did I say that I love my sager? oh yes, I love my sager

 

2090 here for 7 hrs. Running like a swiss watch right now.

Lovin it

 

NP2090 for four months now, it's still kicking strong! I sorta wish it didn't have the glossy lid, it tends to scratch really easily (only if you hold it to the light in a certain way). Other than that, it's a pretty good machine overall.

 

I've had my 5791 for about 2 hours now... it looks really cool, but is currently ensuring my desk does not defy the laws of gravity.

Having a HELL of a time installing Windows XP on it... I can't seem to find the correct SATA drivers for it. I tried the ones from the Utility CD, but haven't got them to work yet (slipstreaming them into the windows setup disk). Right now I'm in the process of creating a USB setup drive... we'll see how that goes

 

Try disabling AHCI in the BIOS, it'll let you run Windows. I don't notice any performance differences by disabling AHCI, I think it's a Vista feature.

 

It's grey'd out in the BIOS. I was finally able to do it by slipstreaming the drivers from http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DSN728K5 into the windows setup disk and burning a new copy. It took me 4 hours to finally get it all right, but it's installing right now.

 

I have my Sager NP9261 for about 50 days now and I got it from XOTIC PC and its been running smooth as pie. The only thing that I am going to do is to get the new 8800M GTX SLI and a new hard drive to add more hard drive space to my setup. The only thing I am having problem is that driver issue for windows vista and some games does not work under it that is because windows vista sucks but. Well I am going to wait till SP1 comes out then I will format my computer. That is pretty much it with my problems with my sager.

 

Sager NP2090, had it since late August.

Overall, it's a very nice notebook. Feels solid in your hand. The only caveat to this is the cheap feeling interior plastic. But I like the interior because it's simple looking. Plus it doesn't look like the black would wear out from your palms resting on it so thats good.

Exterior wise, the glossy finish smudges, scratche and blemishes easily (as with all glossy finished products). Picking up a notebook sleeve soon.

Screen is very nice, some backlight bleeding noticeable when screen is black but no dead or stuck pixels. No other issues though.

Microphone is pretty bad, picks up echo's very easily. Need some to do some tweaks to stabilize it.

Most problems I've had has to do with the operating system, namely Windows Vista Ultimate. But everythings working fine right now, awesome machine!

 

Iv had my NP9261 since beginning of november had no problems everything is working great.....the only thing that bugs me is my "s" button squeaks lol.......so they sent me a new cap im just waiting to change that hopefully it works.....other then that everyhting is terrific!!!

 

hello forum,,,I have had a N8880 now since new (about 6 years). The 8880 worked fine until about 3 months ago when the video card started giving me pixilation and random "noise" on the monitor.

Called Sager and they told me to try an external monitor, which I did, to see if it was the monitor of the video card.....video card is bad. I can still see the screen but it is very ugly.

Does anyone know what kind of motherboard it is, or where to buy a new motherboard?

Would like to just replace the motherboard,,,this is one of the good ones.

 

Have my NP5793 now for about 4 months....... not a scratch.... just the PERFECT laptop! At first, I found it bulky... but now, carrying it around has become second nature for me, and it's so sturdy and well built, it's good to know that I have made a good decision in purchasing a worthwhile notebook!

 

9262 for about 2 weeks? heh its still GREAT!! =) and the 'wow's doesn't seem to stop everytime someone finds out what's in this monster

 

I had a 5760 for 2 months and 9262 for about 7 months now.Going great infact better.

@Dustoff:6 years is a good time IMHO.

 

I've had the NP5793 for ~5 months.

So far the green headphone jack has stopped working. And the silver paint is starting to wear off, especially on the edges. Also my AC adapter has just recently begun to act weird in terms of shutting off randomly, and making an awful high-frequency noise when plugged into the notebook.

Also, the notebook is starting to get overheated (too much dust? ) The CPU heats up to 70-80 degrees celcius under load...and the GPU can reach 93 degrees celcius when I use FN+3 to make the notebook shut up

 

5792 since january... no problems!!!

 

sager 9260

Had a screen problem when i got it, sent it back, got fixed promptly...

No problems since then, and no dead pixels!

I cant be any happier

 

Yes it is....that is why I want to replace the video card. Unfortunately it is attached to the motherboard. I need a motherboard for the 8880.

 

Are those temps using high fan mode fn+1?

 

I have a 2090 that just turned a year old a week or two ago. I've had a few problems, but still love the machine to death, as well as the knowledgeable customer support at PowerNotebooks and even Sager themselves.

The first problem started everything-- I tried dual booting XP and Vista just for kicks, which was a bad idea because the XP install got corrupted... long story short I'm pretty sure I fried the mobo after restarting too fast too many times in a row.
This led to an RMA, and when I got it back the battery refused to charge no matter what.
Two RMA's later, that got completely fixed.

The other problem I had was with my dvd drive-- it would burn CD's well until the 350MB mark, at which point the discs had too many errors to be read (proved so using a Nero somethingoranother tool). So I called up Sager and they said they'd cross ship one for free. The new drive is silent compared to the old one and works awesome, even though it feels like a cheaper build.

So despite these problems, I think I'll still find Donald again for grad school and pick up another notebook from him sometime. I've had zero dead pixels, a working green jack, one overheat (after 4 hours straight in 80F ambient flat on a desk), and a faithful AC adapter. Considering the problems I saw my friends had in college, it's a sturdy machine. I love my computer and the stuff inside it considering how much I paid.

That is all

 

5791 since september last year, PERFECT condition

 

I've had my Sager NP9262 for 6 months.

Defects:
* Lower right speaker was DOA. I noticed the sound was really off immediately. Over the next week I investigated myself. After that it took 3+ weeks and threats to return it before Justin @ Xotic stepped up and got Sager to issue a service RMA.
* Bluetooth module is BT2.0 / USB1.1 - i.e. low-speed USB. This restricts the data-rate of the Bluetooth connections sufficiently that the default drivers are not able to handle A2DP audio and a mouse at the same time. I am going to spend some time harassing Sager support about the details of how to replace the BT module.
* Poor Vista-64 support by NVidia. Neither clock tweaking function is enabled (PowerMizer and ... I forget the name of the other menu). This leads to very limited over/underclocking options (Vista's power saving settings have a *small* effect when plugged in only).

Damage from wear & tear
* Its hard plastic shell survived a 3' vertical drop into a pile of clothes (cats + unstable platform )... but somehow I've cracked out a 3mm notch in one of the corners. (I frequently relocate)
* I anticipated power supply issues with the heavy relocation I do (and the massive size). One power cord is becoming slightly distressed (twisted sheathe). I will be swapping the PS I don't relocate fequently for the one I do.
* I am very nervous about the location of the front audio jacks. Not made for "in lap" use at all. So I use bluetooth headphones (I'm really liking having no wires)

Care & maintenance
* I use the Lapinator Plus. It works just fine for gaming at any power saving profile.
* The physical interface between the cooling fans and the copper heatsink radiator fins accumulates a great deal of dust. In a dusty or highly mobile environment the fans should be cleaned out every 4 months IMO. Fortunately it is easy and only somewhat delicate maintenance.

 

Those temps are with fans on automatic control. I never use fn+1 as I can't stand the noise it makes...