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Got my 8890V yesterday

post #1 of 11
11/29/03 at 4:25pm
Thread Starter 
Hi All,

I got my new 8890V yesterday morning about 10:20am, thanks to Tom at PCT for the quick turnaround at their end. I live in Cali so my laptop had to go coast to coast to avoid sales tax.

First I would like to dispel a couple of rumors. The 8890 is not ugly be any means, even in basic black it looks smooth and industrial strength. I was not surprised with the size or weight, but it is larger and heavier than the Dell Latitude that I just got through working with. It isn’t any nosier than the Dell either, but the fans due run much more often, even with the CompUSA heat-pipe cooling stand that has been discussed on these forums.

I lucked out and got a very clean 16” LCD with no dead/stuck pixels and it is the perfect Laptop display for a near sighted guy like me. It looks great at both 1600 x 1200 and 800 x 600 as you would expect. It looked good at 1280 x 1024, and 1024 x 768 as well.

I set it up with 2 x 60 gig 7200 rpm drives raided together and so far it seems very fast even compared to my Dell Precision Workstation 360. I bought this machine primarily for software development so I can’t say how good it is at gaming (at least not yet).

I thought long and hard about buying a 5680, but the 8890 won me over for the following reasons.

Larger screen (there really is a difference)
RAID controller
Built in floppy that does not kill an option bay (we hate ’em, but they are still needed)
6 in 1 media card reader
DVI output (I have a nice flat panel at both home and work)
TV Tuner and SVHS in/out

I am sure the 5680 is a lot easier to carry around, but I am not on the road that much.

I am another happy PCTorque/Sager customer thanks to this forum which caught my eye and saved me from the Alienware phase game.

Happy Computing

Dave
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post #2 of 11
11/29/03 at 4:28pm
Congrats! Sounds hot. UDAMAN!
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post #3 of 11
11/29/03 at 4:49pm
Congrats!
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post #4 of 11
11/29/03 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dswantek
Hi All,

I got my new 8890V yesterday morning about 10:20am, thanks to Tom at PCT for the quick turnaround at their end. I live in Cali so my laptop had to go coast to coast to avoid sales tax.

First I would like to dispel a couple of rumors. The 8890 is not ugly be any means, even in basic black it looks smooth and industrial strength. I was not surprised with the size or weight, but it is larger and heavier than the Dell Latitude that I just got through working with. It isn’t any nosier than the Dell either, but the fans due run much more often, even with the CompUSA heat-pipe cooling stand that has been discussed on these forums.

I lucked out and got a very clean 16” LCD with no dead/stuck pixels and it is the perfect Laptop display for a near sighted guy like me. It looks great at both 1600 x 1200 and 800 x 600 as you would expect. It looked good at 1280 x 1024, and 1024 x 768 as well.

I set it up with 2 x 60 gig 7200 rpm drives raided together and so far it seems very fast even compared to my Dell Precision Workstation 360. I bought this machine primarily for software development so I can’t say how good it is at gaming (at least not yet).

I thought long and hard about buying a 5680, but the 8890 won me over for the following reasons.

Larger screen (there really is a difference)
RAID controller
Built in floppy that does not kill an option bay (we hate ’em, but they are still needed)
6 in 1 media card reader
DVI output (I have a nice flat panel at both home and work)
TV Tuner and SVHS in/out

I am sure the 5680 is a lot easier to carry around, but I am not on the road that much.

I am another happy PCTorque/Sager customer thanks to this forum which caught my eye and saved me from the Alienware phase game.

Happy Computing

Dave

Dave,

I am actually considering getting the exact same setup for software development too, Please post some feedback once you get your software environment setup. I am concerned about the high resolution and the ability to easily read the text in the editors with a magnifying glass.

Thanks
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post #5 of 11
11/29/03 at 6:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dswantek
Hi All,

I got my new 8890V yesterday morning about 10:20am, thanks to Tom at PCT for the quick turnaround at their end. I live in Cali so my laptop had to go coast to coast to avoid sales tax.

First I would like to dispel a couple of rumors. The 8890 is not ugly be any means, even in basic black it looks smooth and industrial strength. I was not surprised with the size or weight, but it is larger and heavier than the Dell Latitude that I just got through working with. It isn’t any nosier than the Dell either, but the fans due run much more often, even with the CompUSA heat-pipe cooling stand that has been discussed on these forums.

I lucked out and got a very clean 16” LCD with no dead/stuck pixels and it is the perfect Laptop display for a near sighted guy like me. It looks great at both 1600 x 1200 and 800 x 600 as you would expect. It looked good at 1280 x 1024, and 1024 x 768 as well.

I set it up with 2 x 60 gig 7200 rpm drives raided together and so far it seems very fast even compared to my Dell Precision Workstation 360. I bought this machine primarily for software development so I can’t say how good it is at gaming (at least not yet).

I thought long and hard about buying a 5680, but the 8890 won me over for the following reasons.

Larger screen (there really is a difference)
RAID controller
Built in floppy that does not kill an option bay (we hate ’em, but they are still needed)
6 in 1 media card reader
DVI output (I have a nice flat panel at both home and work)
TV Tuner and SVHS in/out

I am sure the 5680 is a lot easier to carry around, but I am not on the road that much.

I am another happy PCTorque/Sager customer thanks to this forum which caught my eye and saved me from the Alienware phase game.

Happy Computing

Dave
Enjpy
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post #6 of 11
11/29/03 at 7:12pm
Thread Starter 

No problem

No Problem,

I have installed Visual Studio.Net 2003 so far and it looks fine to me, about the same as it does on my other flat panels. I am going to start loading MX Studio next and then copy over my project files. I will say that the Notebook is not as good as my Sony SDM-HS93, but that is not really a far comparison, cause the Sony has incredible specs. I tried VS.net at native resolution 1600 x 1200 and had no problem reading small text with a physical magnifying glass. I have not tried the digital magnifier that is built into Windows accessibility features. My vision is bad enough that I usually drop the resolution down to either 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600 when I need to read a lot of text. 800 x 600 works well on the UXGA display, cause it is exactly half of the native resolution. The ATI 9600 comes with a very nice resolution changer that can be run in a prompt-less mode.

Let me know if you have anything specific (resolution, app, etc.) that you would like to know more about and I be glad to tell you how it looks. I am very pleased so far.

Dave
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post #7 of 11
11/29/03 at 7:33pm
Dave,

Any chance you could post some pics of the VS editors in 1600 x 1200 and 1024 x 768 res. I will also be using VS.net, although, I am still doing a lot in VB6 (a lot of production apps to support).

You also said, " had no problem reading small text with a physical magnifying glass" did you mean that or were you joking? Did you mean without?

I guess the thing that I am most concerned with is the resolution and the small size of text. I still in front of this computer 12-14 hours a day, don't want to be straining all day. Not to mention all my poker playing at night!

Mark
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post #8 of 11
11/29/03 at 8:06pm
how did you get that uxga screen?
i thought they weren't making those anymore.
and i'm here with a sxga+ with unbalanced brightness.
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post #9 of 11
11/29/03 at 9:38pm
Thread Starter 

PCTorque

yyy,

PCTorque started selling them again (for a limited time), about 2 weeks ago. The only option they offer is UXGA. I just checked and they still have them. They are quoting a 2 to 3 week delay, but they have been shipping faster then that.

I have seen some people theorizing that the SXGA+ is a better way to go, but I do not buy it myself.

If you are truely disatisified; contact your vendor and take advantage Sager's 30 day (or is it 10) return policy.

Best of luck

Dave
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post #10 of 11
11/29/03 at 9:53pm
I for one use VS2k3 with default font sizes / options at uxga on the 8890 with no problem at all. If you can read uxga text on a decent 19" crt you can read it on the 8890 uxga. I even use it on my desk from 3ft away because I find it easier to read than the crt (19"). If you're still interested I'll post you some pics but I wont get my 8890 back for a week or so.
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post #11 of 11
11/29/03 at 11:31pm
Thread Starter 

Magnifying Glass???

Mark,

I was serious about the magnifying glass, because I got the impression from your post that was what you were interested in. I was guessing that you may be nearsighted too. I am quite nearsighted and my vision cannot be corrected much with glasses. I need a mag to read some of the type clearly in native UXGA res. To put things into perspective I use the same mag to read the smallest type in the phone book too. I will try to take some shots of VS.NET running in native UXGA and post ‘em tomorrow.

Oh, and bye the way; don’t feel bad about the legacy VB coding. I got stuck with some undocumented Clipper and Fox Pro apps when they dumped two of my colleges a couple years ago.

Happy Computing

Dave
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