SagerMeister's m7700 Aurora & Odyssey Backpack Review - Page 3

Ok, thanks for the heads-up. Hopefully they'll get it fixed shortly.

Here's an update of the Aurora's capabilities.

I decided to do my own "stress test" to see how the Aurora would handle multiple tasks. These are the applications I had open simultaneously:

Windows Explorer
Remote Desktop MMC Console (remoted in to my server at work)
Add/Remove Programs
Filezilla FTP
Windows Media Player playing a home video
Free Agent Usenet Newsreader downloading new posts
Adobe Photoshop CS2 with 150 640x480 images open at the same time (I also opened all of them as a single batch, not one by one)
Opera 8.1 browser with 8 tabbed windows open
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8
MS Outlook
Mailwasher Pro 5.0
MS Word
MS Excel
MS Powerpoint
PerfectDisk Defragmenter (two instances defragging both of my partitions)
PowerDVD running a different video than the one Windows Media player was running
America's Army video game
Internet Explorer
Poker Tracker database of over 800,000 hands served from a Postgres 8.0 back end database (hosted locally)
Cold Fusion Server 7
IIS 6.0 w/5 websites running (hosted locally)
Task manager
Si Meter
RivaTuner 2.0
Norton Anti-Virus
Zone Alarm
Mobilemeter

This doesn't even include all of the services that are running in the background. All told, I'm using just about 2GB of RAM for all of this stuff.

Ya know what? This friggin machine didn't miss a beat. I could flip back and forth between any and all windows seamlessly. No hiccups with the videos. I could bring up any of the 150 images loaded into photoshop very quickly. There was no latency or delay with my remote access application managing my server at work. It was as if I was sitting at my server's console. Even America's Army ran seamlessly. I mean, it's just incredible.

This is EXACTLY why I bought the Aurora. So far it has met or exceeded my every expectation.

No, I'm one of these recalcitrant weirdos who gets my wife to perform live. Go figure.


LOL...Yang pretty much summed it up.

I've owned two Sagers back-to-back and I've been pretty happy overall with them. For me, cost wasn't an issue this time, and I wanted something that "made a statement" visually. I may have opted for a Sager if they offered paint schemes. At the same time, I couldn't wait on a custom paint job as I had to get the machine pretty quickly. Alienware, while more expensive, was less costly than Hypersonic (which I also looked at, but got scared when DB started having his pre-shipment problems with them), and offered the conspiracy blue paint.

Also, I've dealt with Sager tech support and, while I eventually got stuff taken care of, it was very difficult talking on the phone with them. I felt I needed a personal translator at times. Alienware offers a better online tech support system. Not sure yet about the quality of their tech reps. Hope I never have to find out.

If money is an issue, I'd recommend buying a Sager through PC-Torque. If you buy through them I believe they'll handle any tech support issues, plus their pricing is some of the best you'll find.

Over 6K? Dang, did you get a 24 karat gold plated case or sumtin'? What else did you get besides the FX-60 that added to the cost?

I just took a look at the configurator and I see the FX-60 is over $500 more than the 4800+ X2. That's a pretty penny.

Yours didn't get kicked back from phase 8 to phase 5, did it? I think that's happened to some people.

Well, if your machine is anything like mine, it'll be worth the wait. I know that's tough medicine to swallow now, but once you get it the phase game will be all but forgotten.

Back by popular demand! Ok, let's give the audience what they want...

The machine's performance has been exemplary. Everything I've stated previously I still emphatically stand by.

I've encountered a couple of self-inflicted problems, mostly with the audio. I found the Audigy 2 ZS notebook PCMCIA card on sale for $56 after rebate, so I couldn't pass it up. As soon as I plugged it in, I couldn't believe the difference! If you value high quality sound at all, this is a must. The integrated audio can't handle high bass level stuff (techno, house, heavy rock) without distorting. The Audigy 2 handles it great, and the Ozma headphones are an excellent match. I picked up nuances of songs I had never heard before.

The downside is Creative's driver and software set. I should've just installed the card's drivers and left it at that. There's so much application crap they include with the installation package, and as a techno dweeb I must try all of it, of course. Well I can't get some of the bundled stuff like the integrated sound mixer and equalizer to work reliably. I've done everything under the sun to troubleshoot it, but no dice. Unfortunately, I think I've dirtied my XP install where I'm probably facing a wipe/reinstall. Even system restores aren't restoring properly. Again, this is my fault and no fault of the Aurora. Installing sound drivers just sucks when it goes badly. That's always been my experience.

One other problem I've had is the occasional hard lockup. Everything just freezes, most of the time when I'm browsing in Opera 8.51. I haven't narrowed it down yet, but no doubt it was something I've installed that's just not playing nicely. This is another reason to wipe/reinstall the OS.

Keep in mind I have a lot of stuff running on this machine, especially background processes like IIS, ColdFusion, Postgres SQL database junk, and other stuff--probably too much. In any case, the computer just keeps marching along smartly, especially speed-wise. Applications load and run quickly and I don't feel I'm stressing the computer at all. Not even close.

Fan noise seems to have picked up somewhat, but this has been my normal experience with other computers. It's still not obnoxious, but it's definitely audible. The GPU fan cycles on for two minutes/off for one minute. The other fans aren't too noticeable until you start gaming. Then they ramp up. I expect the fans to get noisier slowly as the computer ages. Their bearings wear which increases the noise level over time.

The few times I've played America's Army, the computer has done great. The highest I've ever seen the GPU temp was 93C near the end of a heavy gaming session. The screen is still amazingly beautiful and no dead pixels. I just have to keep the dust off of it to keep it looking nice.

I have no complaints about the wireless internet. I've yet to be dropped during normal use.

Traveling with this beast is not a problem for me. Again, the backpack is great and it doesn't feel like I'm toting around 21 pounds. Using the computer on my lap is still very comfortable. I'm continually amazed by how well the weight is distributed. I don't feel and "pressure points" on my upper legs like I did with my old laptop, even though this one is heavier.

In short, everything works pretty much as advertised and as I had hoped. The stuff that is problematic has been caused mostly by yours truly.

LOL...nice one. Good ol' Homer.

Actually, the FedEx dude never saw me with the camera. Our place has those "hey thief, over here!!!" elongated rectangular windows bracketing the front door. I snapped the pictures while inside the house looking out one of those windows. I was afraid that if I overtly took the guy's photos, he'd drop the Alienware box. Sure didn't want an impromptu drop test done on my baby.

Yes, in my opinion the audio is that bad. The integrated audio picks up some of the electromechanical noise from the Aurora (hard drive read/writes, scrolling noise, etc.). It's especially noticeable if you want to play mood music tracks that can't cover up the computer's internal racket because there's no heavy metal noise to mask the sounds. Also, whenever you have to max out all of the settings just to get somewhat decent sound, then it's just not up to snuff.

Again, if audio isn't your bag and you just want to play music on your lappy's built-in speakers, then no worries. You can get by fine. However, if you have a home stereo you wish to hook up to your lappy, then by all means spring for the Audigy card. Don't waste your time with the internal sound. Caveat: you can't pass audio through the Audigy to your internal speakers. You have to use an external hookup. (Maybe someone has a workaround for this, but I'm too lazy to search for it since I wouldn't want to do this anyway).

Hey, there he is! Thans for the link. Since you went to the trouble of posting it, now I'll have to try it out.

Once again we're in accord about love for the laptop. Now that I'm more or less used to the differences in key placement and operation compared to my old machine, I'm enjoying it more each day as well.

I did have a self-inflicted problem with installing the Audigy drivers that necessitated wiping the drive to get things back to normal, but if I don't wipe the drive at least once during a migration to a new machine, I consider it a failure, LOL. Interestingly enough, the drive-wipe solved the problem I was having with the AMD Power Monitor installation. Never did figure that one out.

Thanks for the heads-up on the 6750 opticals. Man, that was quite the ordeal you had there! Very happy for you that it was taken care of the right way. I'll give TS a call soon so I can get my (hopefully) 2 drives!

The Audigy is definitely worth it in my mind. My biggest concern was not wanting to use up my 1 PCMCIA slot on a sound card of all things, but the reliability of the internal wireless has been top drawer. No need to drop to a PCMCIA wireless card. ZipZoomfly has it for 60 smackers after a $30 rebate and ships it 2nd day for free.

BTW, last weekend I did do the wipe/reinstall. Went smooth as silk and now everything is behaving as it should. Props to AW for the respawn utility. Saved me 2 hours of screwing around with installing everything individually.