SagerMeister's m7700 Aurora & Odyssey Backpack Review - Page 4

Mine lasted for 7 seconds, but it supplied enough power that I was able to charge back some kilowatt-hours to the power company. Bastids!!!!

Seriously, my results are in line with others'. A bit more than an hour on a full charge. I expect that to drop slowly as I put more charge/discharge cycles on the battery over time.

Certainly can't argue your point (I need to save all of my arguing energy for my honey-do list writing wifey). I'm not really a gamer by trade, so I defer to the experts on that subject matter.

I have tremendous respect for hulioni's video card/driver tweaking acumen, and I have tried his suggestions of using the updated drivers at laptopvideo2go.com. Those resulted in a boost of roughly 500 dMarks ('05) over baseline. All of my other machines have been requested by the Smithsonian as special anachronistic exhibits, so I have no real comparitive basis upon which to make deductions. The only deductions I've been good at lately are those involving my dwindling checking account.

Internally, the temps range from 55 to 65C or so for the GPU. The chip hangs around 38 to 42C when idle. Goes above 60C when under load.

Externally, it's quite comfortable, but I haven't used it in summertime conditions yet. So far I've had no problem using this as a true laptop on my lap for hours doing run-of-the mill web development applications. Haven't tried it running complex games for more than an hour at a time.

Heat-wise, it doesn't even come close to getting uncomfortable. The heat dissipation is light years ahead of older systems, especially those sporting the hotter P-4 desktop chips crammed into the same restricted space.

Heat is not a concern, at least for my usage profile.

Web development -- correct.

I don't have any worries about temps on my system. The Intel chips run hotter. Having owned an older 2.2Ghz DTR, I would shy away from an Intel system running at higher speeds.

Everything I've seen points to the AMD dual cores as running faster on most applications than on their Intel counterparts. Given the supreme multitasking benefits of dual core, plus the lower power consumption and thermal output, the dual core is a no-brainer.

The keyboard/touchpad spacing took some getting used to. After 10 days or so, my hands (specifically my right thumb) finally acquired the "muscular memory" where I don't even think about it anymore. I still have some problems with the location of the left CTRL key, as it is swapped relative to the Fn key compared with my old machine.

Portability is much better than expected. I take it to work, commuting 2+ hours each way, including walking/standing waiting around for trains, etc. I can't say enough about the superb balance and weight distribution of the 7700. Yes, it's a heavy laptop relative to others, but it handles lighter than its specs. I wouldn't mind ditching the "power cinder block", but even with that, the headphones, and the X-cool travel stand, the weight is certainly manageable using the backpack.

I run my system roughly 12 to 15 hours per day, 7 days a week. I hibernate it overnight, or, if I know I'll be away from it for a few hours, I'll hibernate it. During the days I commute to work, you can subtract 2 hours from the 12 to 15 hours of up-time.

I recommend some kind of a laptop stand to ensure unrestricted air flow underneath the machine. The stand doesn't have to be fancy--just something to give it a little more elevation. Other than that, I treat it just like any other laptop I've owned.

I don't have a decibel meter, but the Aurora's noise output is less than that of my old Sager 5620-V. Most of the continuous noise comes from the GPU fan. To me, it's not loud, and I have sensitive hearing. For instance, I wouldn't have any problem taking this machine into a library and having to worry about getting kicked out for causing a disturbance (well, at least an audible one; visually, this laptop might cause a pretty big ruckus!). I can use the Aurora on my lap and not have to boost the TV volume at all to compete with the laptop's fans. Whether this will still be true a year from now as the fan bearings wear remains to be seen.

For the dual Xeon question, you're right, I can only make an educated guess. I have a dual Xeon machine I run as a web server, but I haven't benchmarked it. You're comparing a desktop with a laptop which is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. My experience is that desktops tend to be faster vs. comparably equipped laptops, and I guess the Xeon will be faster rendering graphics in photoshop, etc. The question is will it be "real world" faster--enough to make a big difference? I'm guessing not. Have you benchmarked your rig at all?

There is one pretty big problem a few of us are having and that's random lockups with no logged error messages. You can check out one of the threads here. I don't know what % of the Alienware AMD dual core laptop owning crowd is experiencing these lockups. Not sure if it's hardware, driver, or software oriented, but the lack of error messages concerns me.

Yer velcome!

My other incarnations of XP Pro have done ok; I really think I've got some kind of hardware-related problem. They're the worst to troubleshoot. The freezes are totally random and occur anywhere within 5 minutes to 5 days of each other. No logged errors whatsoever. I uninstalled Autopsy long ago because I had heard the same problems as have you. Didn't change anything for me tho.

Perfect screen? I'd say your chances are pretty decent. Haven't heard much whining about dead pixels recently, but I haven't read all of the threads either. Mine was (and still is) pristine.

For benchmarking, I used the standard 3dmark05/06 apps since they are free and readily available. Certainly they are more for the gaming set, but it gives me an idea of what the Aurora can do.

Ha! I also found this time-limited, but fully functional trialware that you can run for fun. It's more representative of non-gaming machines.

Haven't contacted support yet as I'm still trying a couple of other things (most notably, running with AMD Cool 'N Quiet off). Support will have me wipe/reformat, so I want to do everything I can before I take that drastic step.