Official Sager NP8130/Clevo P151HM1 Owners Lounge

I've thought about going with an ssd, but I'm studying to become a programmer and have a 100gb easy of programs & coding libraries. I'm already using about 200 gigs on my current machine. Granted I have a lot of junkware installed, I can't see my space requirements getting any smaller. Hopefully the Momentus XT will hold me over till, some cheaper ssd's come around in 1-2 years, but isn't that what they said 1-2 years ago.

 

Order shipped! yeahhhhh! Delivery date of 3/25! Niiice! just in time for the weekend! Thanks XoticPC!

 

Hi,

I am trying to decide whether to purchase this model, and two items are bugging me:

Battery life. I've searched the forum and am having a hard time with a clear answer. Are you able to get 2.30 hours of full battery life while using desktop applications? How about when watching movies? Any BatteryEater test results?

Speakers Have read negative feedback about the speakers. How bad is bad? Can you still watch DVDs by using the computer as a "tv replacement" in a small setting?

Otherwise, this looks fantastic due to the screen, graphics card, CPU, simple design, etc.

Thank you!

 

I can't answer re: the battery life yet...
For the speakers, they're pretty good. But, I honestly don't think it'd ever be fair to expect notebook speakers to ever be good enough for a TV replacement. Up close (for computer usage), they're comparable to my MacBook Pro speakers.... Perhaps a big richer due to the small subwoofer at the bottom.

 

Thank you so much - that is helpful. Please let me know your impressions on battery life as you use it - would be much appreciated!

 

Battery life is about 3hrs for me using wifi. But thats usually me researching things for papers and stuff. Nothing really intensive going on. Could easily eek out 3.5-4hrs with brightness down, wifi off, and turning off the screen when not in use

 

Can anyone comment on the quality of the webcam? I had the 5125 and it was absolutely awful quality.

 

Strange because in the Xotic video review it looks like the trackpad is pretty good size and he comments that the trackpad is "big".

 

Latest Intel drives are a big letdown. But the real point is that getting any SSD is going to be a noticeable improvement over a mechanical drive. Going from a 1st gen indilinx Vertex 1 drive to a 2nd gen Sandforce Vertex 3 I doubt you'll notice much of a difference. If you have to shell out for a 6gbps drive then wait for the Vertex 3, it should be available this month at the same price point as competing 6gbps drives but with much better performance.

Mysterious, what do you mean by saying OCZ is cleaning up by buying Indilinx? OCZ is well established in the drive industry and has rocked the boat for quite a few established companies. Indilinx wasn't a competitor and I don't think acquiring indilinx is much of a surprise given the growth and direction of the company. I also don't see anything in their recent history that would need cleaning besides the whole 34nm/25nm fiasco, but they are working to fix that by dropping prices on affected models and offering replacements for affected products. Essentially ramping up customer support to handle the complaints. It's not the kind of problem that buying another company is going to solve.


For those thinking about adding a SSD to their system like I plan to do, here are a few guidelines:
1: Where do I put it?
You can always replace your stock hard drive with an SSD but then you would easily run out of drive space or end up paying hundreds for a large SSD, not recommended. Instead... Add a drive to the optical bay or install one in the mini-PCIe slot. If you install to the optical bay you need a 12.7mm SATA-to-SATA drive caddy. These work great and are easy to install. You can configure your laptop at most resellers with this choice already but you can save money and get better performing drives doing it yourself. You can find the caddys on ebay but the one's available from newmodeus are much nicer and highly recommended. Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy (OBHD-SATA12-SATA-BU) Univ, 12.7mm [OBHD-SATA12-SATA-BU] - $44.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

For the mini-PCIe slot your best bet is the Intel SodaCreek drives. 40gb here Newegg.com - Intel 310 Series (Soda Creek) SSDMAEMC040G2C1 mSATA 40GB mSATA (mini PCIe form factor) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD or 80gb here Newegg.com - Intel 310 Series (Soda Creek) SSDMAEMC080G2C1 mSATA 80GB mSATA (mini PCIe form factor) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD

2: How much space do I need?
I bought my last SSD when Sandforce drives were prohibitively expensive and found that the Intel 80gb was the best price/gb ratio and still gave me enough room to not feel cramped. I found the best way to calculate space is by looking at how much drive space is used on your current system and subtracting the space you can save by moving some files to another drive. This method takes into account all the extra stuff you might skip over if you were using addition to calculate drive space. Make the most of the benefits of having two types of drives in your system and cater to their strengths, storage capacity for mechanical drives and fast data access for SSDs. Keep in mind that you don't want to copy your entire "Users" directory onto your data drive,anyone who tells you otherwise is delusional. Your User directory contains folders like your desktop and hidden AppData folder(often accessed program files like your Firefox profile go in here) that you want on an SSD. Instead just copy the folders that take up all the space to your data drive, "Movies, Music, Pictures, Downloads, , etc." these kinds of files are usually accessed sequentially and won't benefit from faster SSD access speeds anyways.

3: Drive recommendations.
I started off writing recommendations based on different price points but gave up. There are too many drives competing in the sub $100 price point to go over all of the but if you can cough up an extra $14 ADATA has a 64gb sandforce drive for a paltry $114. If you want to spend under $250 buy a sandforce drive, OCZ beats out most of the competition on pricing even when they aren't offering rebates and I'd rank Sandforce performance above that of Intel's G2 drives. If you want to spend over $250 wait a few weeks for the Vertex 3 as it leads the next generation of drives in performance. For the cautious, give the Vertex 3 about 3 months or so to expose any potential drive-killing firmware bugs.

Avoid the OCZ drives with "E" model numbers like the 2VTXE120G,these drives have lower capacity, performance, and longevity than non-"E" drives.

I plan on getting a 100gb Vertex 2 @ $199 unless a spectacular rebate crops up on a larger drive.

 

Wow, thanks for that extensive post! +Rep to you!

I was going to use an optical bay caddy anyways, but it's nice to read the process and options again.

About the OCZ comment: http://forum.notebookreview.com/solid-state-drives-ssds-flash-storage/563360-possible-reason-avoid-ocz.html

I'm well aware that OCZ is the leader in the SSD industry, but it's recent history and support has been quite sketchy.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Regular scaremongering. OWC's site is misleading as they try very hard to make is seem as if the technology used in sandforce drives is unique to their product. They sell the same sandforce drive as every other manufacturer and are looking to smear the competition in any way possible to make their drive stand out. They chose OCZ as their biggest competitor and easy target. OCZ's drives don't use premium memory but then again, neither do their competitors. The sandforce controller was designed to reduce wear level on a SSD so that drive manufacturers could use cheaper memory modules by design without the drives dying prematurely. If that bothers you a lot then buy an Intel drive by all means. But at this point pretty much everyone is using Micron's 25nm nand flash anyways.

 

I saw that review, but for me big is about 4" wide...
Is it bigger than some? Yes. But Toshibas, Macbook Pros and others have bigger trackpads. The sagers is somewhere in the middle.

I guess it's a measure of what you compare it to. I'll try to post a comparative picture with measuring tape as reference later tonight so you can judge by yourself.

 

It's not that big of a deal so don't got out of your way. I was just courious.

This HP DV6 that I'm using now has a large trackpad and although the buttons are so stiff they are unusable, the trackpad itself works and feels great. I'm a little nervous that I'll feel cramped going down to a smaller trackpad but that is a minor thing that I will get used to if it's even a problem at all.

 

Delivered today, and it is awesome! Woooo!

Thanks, Malibal!

 

All right, if you insist. I'm still going to be very cautious.

Since I have SATA III in my notebook-to-come, I might as well spend the extra money for the extra performance and take advantage of it. I'm in no hurry though...Just trying to figure out how to clone my drive the moment it arrives on my doorstep.

As in...do I not open the notebook and then clone my drive when I have the funds and time to buy an SSD? Or do I use my notebook normally, then do a fresh install of windows (which I'd like to avoid), and then clone the drive onto my SSD...

Either ways, I'm going to clone the drive onto my Momentus XT, pop it into the notebook, and use the old (original drive that came with the notebook) one as a backup. Then when it's time for my SSD, I'll put the original drive back in, clone it onto my SSD, put the SSD in the SATA III interface, and wipe my Momentus XT clean and use it as a storage drive in the optical bay caddy...

Sounds confusing? It is!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Congrats!!

 

Yeah, personally I feel cramped... And the buttons are really "narrow" at the bottom of the trackpad which adds to the feeling of it being relatively small.

But, at the end of the day I'll get used to it! At least it's multi-touch enabled with Pinch to zoom functionality!

 

Did anyone else get the redline boost?

 

I suggest re-installing windows with your SSD as you can have problems if the drive isn't cloned properly. You will probably need to do some file reorganization beforehand anyways. I try to use as much portable software as possible to reduce the inconvenience of installing on new computers and I can move the programs between data drives and SSD with no consequence.

 

I agree, Win7 will recognize that the system disc is an SSD and does some behind-the-scenes optimization that it doesn't do for regular HDD. If you clone a disk image those things won't happen and you'll be stuck making the tweaks on your own.

 

Nope, because most people can over-clock it themselves.

 

Hey batman...do you know for sure if the 80GB soda creek will work on the 8130? I'm thinking of picking one of those up as my boot drive...

Mr. Mysterious

 

Glad you are enjoying it!

 

Well I have not tried it myself yet, as I am still waiting for mine to be shipped, however, it seems as if it is compatible with just about every laptop with the pci-e mini slot. I ordered mine from newegg, thinking that the laptop and the drive would come at the same time... CURSE YOU SAGER!!!! jk. But it seems, basically, that there will be one mxm3 slot on the mainboard that the gfx card will be jammed into, and there should be 2 pci-e mini cardslots, one with your fancy intel network card, and one that should take the SSD.

 

Guess I'm not most people!

 

Really? I've read a couple of reviews about this thing and it seems like it's only compatible with a few Dell laptops...

And DUH, I know you haven't tried it out yet...our shipments are racing against each other!

Mr. Mysterious

 

I think it will work, here is my reasoning:

Intel® Huron River QM67 EPIC Module with Intel® QM67 Chipset-EPI-QM67_Avalue Technology Inc. <-- This is a mainboard for small form factor computers that has the huron river chipset and a SB cpu, and it says that it supports mSata.

These laptops use the HM65 chip, which is quite similar to the one used for the embedded platform.

Here is the Mini slot in the 8130:



But someone should ask clevo/sager/intel/xotic/whatever.

 

I hope it doesn't work...then I won't buy something I can't afford .

 

I would expect soda creek msata drives will work on any computer that is electrically compatible with the proper drivers. BIOS boot support of the drives is the real question here.

 

I remember reading somewhere that the mPCIe slot in the 8130 will be bottlenecked at USB 2.0 speeds..

I vaguely remember this so I don't even know where it was from..

Can anyone who remember this being discussed somewhere chime in?

 

Doesn't seem right. mPCIEe is electrically PCIe it's treated the same by the intel chipset regardless of being in a notebook or desktop. The repair guide PDF has extensive documentation of all motherboard connectors on the 8130 and should be able to back my claims up.

 

As promised, comparitive picture of the trackpad.
Sager 8130 on the left, 15" MacbookPro on the right.
There's a good half-inch difference in width, but in height the difference is even more significant (and the buttons and really narrow and awkward to use).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22864893/trackpad.JPG

 

Thanks for the pics. The trackpad on my HP is also 4" wide but it's not as tall as the MacbookPro. I think I'll be ok because I don't use the whole touchpad and the buttons on this are unusable so just having buttons that I can actually click without pulling a muscle will be a big upgrade.

 

Just got home with a sticker on my door that ups tried to deliver my laptop while i wasnt home, time to go pick it up!! the weird thing is im still in phase 2. I'll let you guys know what its like when pick it up!

 

That's plenty big for me, lol Not that it matters, I'll be using an external 24" screen, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse about 95% of the time with this lovely machine.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Ok. I'm going crazy waiting for my laptop. I've watched the Xotic and PowerNotebooks videos on youtube too many times. I'm starting to see the PowerNotebooks lightning bolt when I close my eyes.

Can someone who has already got their 8130 help me and post some pictures of their laptop? It doesn't have to be an indepth review, just some good pictures of the laptop.

Please!

 

Thanks for the trackpad picture, is the plastic really that black with white speckles in it? Most of the video I've seen makes the plastic look greyish but I prefer the looks of the tight shot you took.

 

Yes. The 8130 is black, with little shiny speckles every now and then. To my eyes, it looks just like charcoal. The 8150 finish might be a bit grayer, but i don't have one on hand to compare.

 

i can't decided if i'd feel more amused or more sympathetic towards you if this sticker was not actually for you laptop

 

We've got to maintain our composure. It'll be okay...

 

It is because it said Sager on the sticker lol

 

How can you be so calm at a time like this??

 

When did you order yours?

 

I'd sort of a textured finish... the speckles are more the light effect, but yeah it can "glitter" a bit. But it's pitch black, no gray.

 

I ordered mine 2/17. btw i recieved it about an hour ago and i can honestly say. its amazing!! the track pad does feel alittle cheap but works fine, not a big deal if u use and external mouse. everything else is great! like everyone said, the screen looks beautiful! great computer overall

 

Does anyone know how to get rid of the "Personal Safe" program? The icon is stuck on my desktop and I can't get rid of it....

edit: actually i don't want to get rid of the program just the icon

 

i also would like to know. its pretty annoying not being able to delete it. Also wanted to say thanks to Xoticpc, you guys were great! If i ever need another laptop, i will buy it from you guys! Thanks!!

 

haha how are you enjoying your laptop so far though? I absolutely love it

+1 for thanks to Xotic and I will also be another return customer

 

Ok i found it

1. Launch Protector Suite 2009
2. Control Center Home
3. Applications
4. Encrypted Archives > Personal Safe

There should be a box for "Show on Desktop"

 

I love it! people were complaining about the keyboard but i personally like the extra space between the keys. the display is great. The battery so far seems pretty good to, been on battery for about 2 hours and the battery is only at 66%, and ive had at least 4 windows open the whole time with wi fi on and display at half brightness. waited a a month and a half for it and the wait is definetly worth it!!