Expect updates daily as I continue on with this beast. I am also going to upload pics as soon as I can. I think I only snapped 3 
Intro: Ive been stuck on an old HP P4 @ 1.3Ghz w/ 128mb rdram for the past 5 years and I finally couldn't take it any more. I had saved up money for the past few holidays and birthdays and finally wanted to do something about the slowness I had to live with every day. I researched here and many other websites reading reviews and checking out all the pics I could. Eventually I was down to xtremenotebooks.com and pctorque.com. Of course I ended up going with pctorque after some minor persuasion.
----------------------------------------------
Sager 5720-C Configuration:
Pentium M 1.86 GHz Sonoma 533MHz
17" WSXGA+ LCD (Glossy WideScreen 1680 X 1050)
nVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX
2048MB 533DDR2 (2x1024)
80GB 5400RPM SATA
8x DVD+- combo drive with DVD+R DL
56K RJ11 Phone Modem
10/100/1000 NIC
Windows XP Professional
Lithium-Ion Battery (8cell)
Basic Black business case
AC Adapter w/ Power Cord
Intel PRO/Wireless A+B+G
Built-in 4-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MSPRO/SD/MMC)
Total: $2216.18
----------------------------------------------
PC Torque:
The process went smooth as butter. Besides my parents insisting on sending a check everything went good. The only downside as already stated was sending a check in. I reccommend nobody take this route. It took a week after sending in a check for them to recieve it. Another week to clear it. A few days to build it. And I believe 5 days to ship it. Its all in my sig if your really interested. But nearly a month of waiting which is WAY too much. Next purchase will not be made with a check thats for sure. Luke was also very pleasant to speak to and promptly replied to my PM's, Phone Calls, etc about my laptop inquiries.
----------------------------------------------
DVD Drive:
I have not felt a need to burn any cd's yet nor do I have any blank DVD's but I'm sure it works
. The drive itself is not very noisy. At certain times it can speed up and then you may notice it but overall its not a problem. I happen to dislike all laptop drives just because their so skinny and they seem like you could break it so easily. I am always scared it's gonna snap in half when i put or take out disks but I know in the end that the design has worked for years and that I shouldn't worry. But I am still very careful around it hehe ^_^
----------------------------------------------
The Screen:
Absolutely magnificent. I came from a 5+ year old 17 in. CRT that was really taking a toll on me. Comparing them side my beside really made me notice how close to death the CRT was. And it has recently began to show different brightness and even colors across the screen when dragging an object across the desktop. Anyway back to the LCD screen. Its simply breath taking. I've had the laptop since Tuesday so I've had 4 good days of play to see how it works out. I am an LCD newbie but as from as what I can tell the brightness is even throughout. No corner seems to be any brighter or darker then any other area. Even though the resolution is a lot bigger then what I am used to I have no trouble at all reading normal sized text an arm or more length away. Text is very crisp compared to the desktop one I used for the last couple of years where I would have to be closer then an arms length to get through the fuzzy/blurry look. I do get some glare because there is a window behind me but during normal use it just blends into the background and I don't notice it unless I start focusing at it.
----------------------------------------------
HD:
The harddrive is good enough for me. The 5400 RPM seems as fast if not faster then the desktop I had using a 7200RPM drive. The fact that this computer is so much faster then my previous desktop makes it seem like a speed demon. It boots into windows in about 25 seconds as opposed to my desktop getting easily 10 seconds more! The only noise I notice is when the HD is being accessed and spins up for a second.
----------------------------------------------
The Keyboard:
The keyboard looks very pleasant and is east to type with. Playing Counter-Strike: Source using WASD has given me no issues at all especially since I am comming from years of using the directional arrows. My only worry was tapping caps lock or Fn accidently but it has not happened yet. Overall a great keyboard!
----------------------------------------------
The Sound:
The sound is nothing special seeing as how it is a laptop but I can say it sounds good enough to play winamp radio on it non stop and games. I rarely even use headphones but they are useful for certain occasions. The speakers sound a lot better on low/medium then on high where it just starts to sound bad imho.
----------------------------------------------
Wireless:
As soon as I installed XP Pro and then SP2 I started loading the drivers from the cd. As soon as the intallation was done the wireless signal picked up 2 connections in my area. Both worked just fine but I cannot say how far away they were. They had to be at least 30 feet from the location of the laptop which is in the middle of a basement. Speed is very good for internet and no complaints there. However I have been playing CS Source online and I can say that when it works it works good. However every couple of minutes it spikes. Usually not a big deal for me but it can be a pain sometimes. Besides a 1-4 second lag spike it works like a dream. I'm not sure if I could squeeze even more range out of the wirless signal by doing what some of the guys have suggested in the forum topics about this range issue but so far I'm satisfied with the range.
----------------------------------------------
Battery:
Still doing tests on this but I don't plan to have the laptop unplugged for very long periods of time so it's not much of a problem to me. I drained the battery to 30% on full speed/brightness just to see the results. It was pretty impressive to me. I am sure I could squeeze a lot of juice if I ran the brightness way down and ran it in max mattery mode. But otherwise I'm not looking at this to get me through an 8 hour plane trip.
----------------------------------------------
Heat:
I personally thing the heat is not that bad. The keyboard does not feel warm except the area around the Enter key. The numpad feels a lot cooler and the WASD area also feels cooler then the Enter button area. Upon bootup the system runs awfully quiet. A few minutes into running the laptop I will hear a fan start up. Then a few minues later usually another one starts up. In a quiet room with nothing running but the laptops fans the sound will be noticeable. For me it's not a problem. As soon as you start playing music or anything else producing sounds in the room the the fans sink back into the background making them barely audible. Overall I would say that the heat is really not that bad where most of your time is spent. Also the sound is not as loud as some people say it might be. After using a MUCH louder desktop for the past few years it makes me think this laptop cooling is inaudible
----------------------------------------------
Pros and Cons:
+ Greak look, sleek, colors go together nicely
+ Excellent screen
+ Good keyboard
+ Top notch gaming performance
- Sending a check in took nearly a month to recieve!!! NEVER USE A CHECK!!!
- Hissing noise... Although I only notice it when the sound is completely off and even then its not a big problem. Definately not a turnoff in any way!
- Touchpad can get in the way when you type. My left thumb which usually goes for the space sometimes double taps or starts moving the mouse as it rests but since I dont use touchpads its not a problem for me at all Just Fn+F1 to turn it off and use a real mouse for gaming
----------------------------------------------
The Benchmarks:
3DMark05: 6771 @ stock
Counter-Strike Source: 102.88 fps
Intro: Ive been stuck on an old HP P4 @ 1.3Ghz w/ 128mb rdram for the past 5 years and I finally couldn't take it any more. I had saved up money for the past few holidays and birthdays and finally wanted to do something about the slowness I had to live with every day. I researched here and many other websites reading reviews and checking out all the pics I could. Eventually I was down to xtremenotebooks.com and pctorque.com. Of course I ended up going with pctorque after some minor persuasion.
----------------------------------------------
Sager 5720-C Configuration:
Pentium M 1.86 GHz Sonoma 533MHz
17" WSXGA+ LCD (Glossy WideScreen 1680 X 1050)
nVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX
2048MB 533DDR2 (2x1024)
80GB 5400RPM SATA
8x DVD+- combo drive with DVD+R DL
56K RJ11 Phone Modem
10/100/1000 NIC
Windows XP Professional
Lithium-Ion Battery (8cell)
Basic Black business case
AC Adapter w/ Power Cord
Intel PRO/Wireless A+B+G
Built-in 4-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MSPRO/SD/MMC)
Total: $2216.18
----------------------------------------------
PC Torque:
The process went smooth as butter. Besides my parents insisting on sending a check everything went good. The only downside as already stated was sending a check in. I reccommend nobody take this route. It took a week after sending in a check for them to recieve it. Another week to clear it. A few days to build it. And I believe 5 days to ship it. Its all in my sig if your really interested. But nearly a month of waiting which is WAY too much. Next purchase will not be made with a check thats for sure. Luke was also very pleasant to speak to and promptly replied to my PM's, Phone Calls, etc about my laptop inquiries.
----------------------------------------------
DVD Drive:
I have not felt a need to burn any cd's yet nor do I have any blank DVD's but I'm sure it works
. The drive itself is not very noisy. At certain times it can speed up and then you may notice it but overall its not a problem. I happen to dislike all laptop drives just because their so skinny and they seem like you could break it so easily. I am always scared it's gonna snap in half when i put or take out disks but I know in the end that the design has worked for years and that I shouldn't worry. But I am still very careful around it hehe ^_^----------------------------------------------
The Screen:
Absolutely magnificent. I came from a 5+ year old 17 in. CRT that was really taking a toll on me. Comparing them side my beside really made me notice how close to death the CRT was. And it has recently began to show different brightness and even colors across the screen when dragging an object across the desktop. Anyway back to the LCD screen. Its simply breath taking. I've had the laptop since Tuesday so I've had 4 good days of play to see how it works out. I am an LCD newbie but as from as what I can tell the brightness is even throughout. No corner seems to be any brighter or darker then any other area. Even though the resolution is a lot bigger then what I am used to I have no trouble at all reading normal sized text an arm or more length away. Text is very crisp compared to the desktop one I used for the last couple of years where I would have to be closer then an arms length to get through the fuzzy/blurry look. I do get some glare because there is a window behind me but during normal use it just blends into the background and I don't notice it unless I start focusing at it.
----------------------------------------------
HD:
The harddrive is good enough for me. The 5400 RPM seems as fast if not faster then the desktop I had using a 7200RPM drive. The fact that this computer is so much faster then my previous desktop makes it seem like a speed demon. It boots into windows in about 25 seconds as opposed to my desktop getting easily 10 seconds more! The only noise I notice is when the HD is being accessed and spins up for a second.
----------------------------------------------
The Keyboard:
The keyboard looks very pleasant and is east to type with. Playing Counter-Strike: Source using WASD has given me no issues at all especially since I am comming from years of using the directional arrows. My only worry was tapping caps lock or Fn accidently but it has not happened yet. Overall a great keyboard!
----------------------------------------------
The Sound:
The sound is nothing special seeing as how it is a laptop but I can say it sounds good enough to play winamp radio on it non stop and games. I rarely even use headphones but they are useful for certain occasions. The speakers sound a lot better on low/medium then on high where it just starts to sound bad imho.
----------------------------------------------
Wireless:
As soon as I installed XP Pro and then SP2 I started loading the drivers from the cd. As soon as the intallation was done the wireless signal picked up 2 connections in my area. Both worked just fine but I cannot say how far away they were. They had to be at least 30 feet from the location of the laptop which is in the middle of a basement. Speed is very good for internet and no complaints there. However I have been playing CS Source online and I can say that when it works it works good. However every couple of minutes it spikes. Usually not a big deal for me but it can be a pain sometimes. Besides a 1-4 second lag spike it works like a dream. I'm not sure if I could squeeze even more range out of the wirless signal by doing what some of the guys have suggested in the forum topics about this range issue but so far I'm satisfied with the range.
----------------------------------------------
Battery:
Still doing tests on this but I don't plan to have the laptop unplugged for very long periods of time so it's not much of a problem to me. I drained the battery to 30% on full speed/brightness just to see the results. It was pretty impressive to me. I am sure I could squeeze a lot of juice if I ran the brightness way down and ran it in max mattery mode. But otherwise I'm not looking at this to get me through an 8 hour plane trip.
----------------------------------------------
Heat:
I personally thing the heat is not that bad. The keyboard does not feel warm except the area around the Enter key. The numpad feels a lot cooler and the WASD area also feels cooler then the Enter button area. Upon bootup the system runs awfully quiet. A few minutes into running the laptop I will hear a fan start up. Then a few minues later usually another one starts up. In a quiet room with nothing running but the laptops fans the sound will be noticeable. For me it's not a problem. As soon as you start playing music or anything else producing sounds in the room the the fans sink back into the background making them barely audible. Overall I would say that the heat is really not that bad where most of your time is spent. Also the sound is not as loud as some people say it might be. After using a MUCH louder desktop for the past few years it makes me think this laptop cooling is inaudible
----------------------------------------------
Pros and Cons:
+ Greak look, sleek, colors go together nicely
+ Excellent screen
+ Good keyboard
+ Top notch gaming performance
- Sending a check in took nearly a month to recieve!!! NEVER USE A CHECK!!!
- Hissing noise... Although I only notice it when the sound is completely off and even then its not a big problem. Definately not a turnoff in any way!
- Touchpad can get in the way when you type. My left thumb which usually goes for the space sometimes double taps or starts moving the mouse as it rests but since I dont use touchpads its not a problem for me at all Just Fn+F1 to turn it off and use a real mouse for gaming
----------------------------------------------
The Benchmarks:
3DMark05: 6771 @ stock
Counter-Strike Source: 102.88 fps
I owned a 5720 for several months and absolutely loved it. It is overall a great machine with the only real drawbacks of the beast being its incompatiblity with the Audigy 2 ZS sound card because of the pcmcia hardware the notebook utilizes and the hissing noise in the headphone jack. Now I am recieving my new 5760 today via UPS after two months of regretting trading off my good old 5720. Great review and have fun with it!
