Official Sager NP8130/Clevo P151HM1 Owners Lounge

The problem with Optimus is precicely that it is a software solution... were it to be handled at a lower level, one could expect it would be more robust.

 

A DVD's native resolution is 720x480. Watching it in full screen means it's having to be upscaled/stretched to fit your display's native 1920x1080. So yes, it's not going to look as good when viewed full screen close up or in a window (because the window has lower resolution).

 

It's the manufacturers' way of crippling the capabilities of the machine and keeping people dependent on drivers so that they can pay more money if they have to.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Exactly. If you want crisp and sharp picture at 1080p and up close, that's what Blu-Ray is for. The reason so many "upconverting" standalone DVD players existed is because 720x480 just doesn't look great on a 1080p screen, especially up close. While DVD at 720x480 looks better than broadcast TV at the same resolution, that's usually because cable TV is (or was) analog. Digital channels can run at the same resolution and have DVD quality. Even streaming HD TV channels usually only run at 720p except for the rare few that are full 1080p.

 

Damn I'm getting so anxious. Should be delivered early next week and I'm so excited.

I really haven't seen ONE bad review or impression of this laptop. That speaks volumes.

Just as a bit of explanation, my R2 is my primary gaming machine. However, when I get home from work and spend time with my fiance, we're usually in my bed relaxing. This will function as my "in bed do everything" machine, from gaming to watching movies to photo editing.

It's multi purpose. Totally feel like I went with the right machine. My only concern is the touchpad, since it's ALL I'll be using, but I'm sure I'll find appropriate settings in the driver to make up for any inefficiencies.

I also have to give my praises to XoticPC. They're an absolute pleasure to deal with. I can be an indecisive PITA of a consumer, and they took care of a cancellation and reorder due to my picky-ness without the slightest bit of contention.

 

I've got to say, I've only had the laptop a week and I've gotten used to the touchpad. It's honestly not that bad at all.

 

Thank you Saturnotaku and Malibu for clarifying! I understand it now. I guess I better make use of my Blu-ray drive then

 

I received my laptop yesterday, and so far, I have been overall pleased with it with two exceptions so far:

1. Webcam (as I had stated in my previous post a few pages back)
2. Touchpad - I came from a Thinkpad T40 to a MBP and now NP8130. I have to say that it's different and may need getting used too. I find my fingers to be "sore" after using it for too long as it feels slightly rough. I also have trouble sometimes using it as when I try to move the cursor with my index finger, it won't move at all. Instead, it will have this circle thing (which I have no idea what it means) and as I keep trying several times, it still wont move. Can anyone shed some light on this? I do wish the trackpad would have been smoother.

 

Circle means that you're in the right place for scrolling. If you want, you can turn off one finger scroll. I did.

 

Sorry Elblufer, I am not sure what you mean.

 

You might want to invest a little in a nice wireless laser mouse. They are accurate on any surface and recent models have great battery life if they aren't bluetooth based.

 

^^Or darkfield based. I love my performance mouse MX, but I also REALLY miss my MX Revolution because of the poor battery life.

 

There are two types of scrolling allowed on synaptics touchpads. One is one finger, where you scroll down the right side or across the bottom of the touchpad, and the other is two finger touch, where you scroll down the center of the keyboard with two fingers to scroll down.

To adjust which of these items are turned on, go to your synaptics control panel (there should be a quick launch button for it, or it's in mouse and keyboard settings).

 

No... it's Nvidia deploying a technology that 99% of laptops don't need, so manufacturer couldn't care less about it. Most people are quite happy about the defaut IGP, other will pay extra for discreet graphics (few)..... the benefits of Optimus are theoretically good, but it'll never work because there's no market for it. Nobody's going to invest to support it except Nvidia engineers having some fun... Not until someone like Apple or HP bake it into all their laptops by default. But if I was them I wouldn't bother.

 

The 15- and 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pro line employs switchable graphics, at least on the OS X side; this functionality doesn't work in Boot Camp. The HP dv6-6000 had graphic switching via hotkey combo like the M11x R1. The current dv6-6100 uses AMD's implementation of automatic switching. It's just like Optimus. The Dell XPS line has been using Optimus since the technology first came in to being. The Lenovo ThinkPad W-series has it, along with the IdeaPad Y470/Y570, too. So that's basically all the major OEMs. Wanna try a new theory?

 

Great idea, but you should never use any kind of laptop in bed unless you have a hard surface to protect the airvents, like a lapdesk or something. Otherwise, it just heats up unbelievably.

I will admit that I use my netbook while in bed all the time, but only because the fans never come on, so everything stays nice and cool.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I've been doing it for years without issue. I monitor my temps closely and always use laptops in this manner with good cooling.

Believe me, I'm careful.

 

All right I was a bit confused because you clearly know a bit about laptops lol

Mr. Mysterious

 

I'm thinking about doing a very quick 485m+180watt power brick mod in the near future.

The price drop on that card REALLY caught my eye. Naturally, it was a mere week after I placed my order after I already cancelled the 5165. No way could I put poor XoticPC through that again!

Oh well, I'll just have to experiment.

I shall build.....franken...top

 

Well as others have said, it is obviously pretty straightforward, shouldn't take you too long to do the swap if you go that route

The cost might be a bit steep if you plan on buying the 485m separate, but you could sell the 560m and recoup a bit of that anyway.

 

And you get to keep the non-rubberized NP8130 instead of the rubberized NP8150! (which means something if you use your trackpad regularly)

 

Exactly. If I decide to do it I'll sell the 560m first. This isn't my main machine so it won't be putting me out too much.

 

Yeah, to be honest the rubber coating turned me off.

I had a m17x R3 briefly with that coating and it's just NOT durable whatsoever. It feels fragile and is prone to flaking off after wear.

I'm sure the 8150 might be a bit better constructed as far as the rubber coating is concerned, but that brief experience with it kind of ruined my taste for it.

And the fact that the trackpad is coated in it as well? No thanks, that's just a silly oversight.

I also researched the difference between the 8130 and 8150 a bit, and really they are the same exact machine. You're paying a premium for rubber coating that you may not even want (in my case), and the larger power brick initially.

I'm quite excited to tinker with my 8130 down the road and do definitely believe I made the right decision.

Hell, it's entirely plausible I'll be way more than satisfied with the 560m. The only reason this even popped into my mind is because of the price drop on the 485m. It now makes much more financial sense to look at.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the price drop is on upgrading to the 485M when you're configuring a laptop. I'm sure if you wait a bit, the price for the standalone 485M (with the heatsink) will drop a little more and will become much more affordable.

If it doesn't, then I'm going to just go ahead and buy the 6970m OR wait to see what the 6990m is capable of if/when it gets released.

Then again, the 6970m is apparently getting "discontinued". Makes no sense because it's one of the better cards out there.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Hmm, I didn't realize that but it looks like you're right.

And that's what I thought they'd be doing with the 485m, discontinuing it.

Still, it's ridiculous to discontinue such a good card. I guess they just don't want to further drop the price and really mess up the pricing tiers of the market.

The 6970m is comparatively cheap as it is.

 

Do keep in mind that the 6970 will decrease your battery life, though, due to higher idling voltages.

 

Hey ElBlufer....I was a little confused by your sig. I've had the HDX16t and they've never shipped with a 5400RPM drive. It's always been 7200...

Maybe you got an earlier model? Mine's still running strong though

Mr. Mysterious

 

I'm excited to try out this SSD. I've always preferred the stability of Intel SSD's and Sata III is exciting. It's not a mindblowing leap, but I'll take it.

I'm also curious about the performance of the Momentus XT I put in the optical bay. I've read the Anandtech summaries and am intrigued as to the real world performance (ie: how the drive feels).

Most likely going to use that drive to back up my music and movies while keeping my games on the SSD for loading times.

 

If you're using the XT as a storage/data drive, it's not going to be any different than a normal 7200RPM drive. But, most likely, you already know this The XT is meant to be a boot drive.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Like I said I've never used one. I know it intelligently caches frequently used files to the 4GBs of NAND which like you said most likely means I won't see much, if any gains over a regular 7.2k drive if it's not used for the OS.

The reason I got it: It can't be slower than a 7.2k drive, it can only be faster. Wasn't going to dish out for another SSD and for the price difference between it and a regular 7.2k, I figured I'd take the shot it may be even the slightest bit faster.

Edit: I actually do recall reading somewhere on a tech site that it can be used as a storage drive and said it felt slightly faster (than regular 7.2k), but I can't remember where I read that and of course it's only anecdotal.

Actually, a few of the guys on the Alienware forums (aww, I have two homes now!) use these drives (the XT) as their storage drives with an SSD as the primary. They seem to swear by it.

 

There's nothing wrong with using the XT as a storage drive....heck, I'm doing it (by necessity, not choice), but some people coughcough herecoughcough would feel that it's being wasted.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Fortunately I don't play by anyone's rules.

...Not even my own.

 

Freakin' Craig Hoffman...

Mr. Mysterious

 

And I mean that. I said I wasn't going to spend more than $1800 on this unit. You can see how well that worked out.

 

Lol, we've all been there. I was supposed to be aiming for the 5160

Mr. Mysterious

 

DVD is only 480p. Your display is 1080p. It's stretching the image substantially. You need to start watching HD content.

There are some filters you can apply with various media players and codecs to improve the image of DVD video on your laptop however, but it cannot create detail where none exists.

 

Yes, I might as well start phasing out DVDs and start watching some HD content now given how big and bright my new screen is. The only drawback I have to this is sometimes I download movies/shows online and DVD's are so much smaller in size compared to HD contect (like 10x because a HD movie is like 10GB while a DVD movie is less than 1GB). That's a lot of space on a harddrive.

 

One follow-up question: Will I be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p if I play it on my computer?

On a side-note, gosh I wished the Sager computers had backlit keyboard. At least we know now that the future generation will have it, probably with Ivy Bridge.

 

Yep, first model of it available.

 

That is because the DVD rips you download are usually compressed into common 700MB formats. Raw DVD video in MPEG-2 is 4-9GB. That may be another reason for your problems with picture quality.

Conversely, you can get HD 720p or 1080p rips in .mkv compressed formats that are only ~1GB in size and yet many, many times higher quality and in higher resolution than the common DVD rips you fine online.

It all depends on who ripped it and how they encoded it.

 

Like I said above, it depends on the video format. Some compression techniques will make it less obvious or have no difference at all. All HD television right now is still 720p actually, and highly compressed at that. A 720p video can look better than 1080p video depending on other factors like compression, original source, etc. It varies. 1080p of course, always has more information. Since the screen is only 15.6", I don't really think you will notice much difference.

 

Ah yes, you are right as most of the DVD size I have is roughly 700MB. I didnt know they could be bigger than that until you stated that it could.

I'll have to check out MKV files as I dont know I've played them before. Thanks for the help. +1

 

any help with thx trustudio pro???it doesnt work.either is off or on its the same......now sound its crap.

 

hi,

can someone confirm me whether the gtx560m currently ship with 8130 is 192bit memory bandwith or 128bit?

also why it is "up to" 192bit mentioned on Nvidia spec, and what factor decides which one is in which laptop?

thanks

 

It ships with the 192 bit version. That's a question you'll have to ask NVIDIA; they probably put it there to possibly account for different versions of the card.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Anybody have any insight as to a docking station?

I'd like to grab one and just looking for a good price:quality ratio.
And I've never actually used a docking station in the past, so I'm not sure if they are model/manufacturer specific. Doesn't seem to be based off categorization of the docking station included in the customization of this model on Xotic, but doesn't hurt to ask

 

There have been no docking stations that are compatible with this machine at this time. It's up to Clevo/Sager to create one...and I don't think they will

Mr. Mysterious

 

...really?

That's just depressing xD
The one that's an option on Xotic wouldn't be compatible with it?
Sager NP8130 (Built on Clevo P151HM1) XOTIC PC

 

.........dammit, I completely forgot about that. Yes, it'll obviously work with it....I just thought that it had to fit the chassis of the laptop perfectly.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Well, that's just a universal docking station. It's not really a designed for this laptop docking station in the sense as it's a unit that the laptop plugs directly into without fuss so you can pick it up and put it in right away.

It's probably just a separate box with a bunch of cables that you connect to the laptop which defeats the purpose of it.