After having owned a 5680 (named Mistress) for a little over a month, I felt it was time to let everyone who was still in doubt know what a great machine this is. First, I had the opportunity to see this laptop before I purchased it and was impressed with it's beauty. Now that I have my own, I enjoy it's wonderful style even more.
I have customized the look of the laptop just a little by making a collage of pictures of my wife and fitting it to a template of the wrist pad. It fits perfectly and now my wife is always around, even though she's on the other side of the world
. I also ordered a stainless steel badge for the top, and am in the process of sticking it on.
I am impressed with the keyboard on this laptop, the size of which is more generous than my previous laptops, and the keys have a more natural feel. The ease at which I can remove the keyboard for cleaning or diving further into the laptop is wonderful. I can now break my warranty with greater ease than I had ever imagined.
I have tried out every single component except for the 802.11g internal wireless card. These are not allowed where I work, and the building I work in has copper mesh in the walls and ceiling to prevent me from even trying. Internal Bluetooth works well, and I've synced with several PDAs so far. Everything else also works, though the GigE NIC can cause problems if you let it auto negotiate or if the next device in line doesn't support GigE. This can be easily resolved by forcing the NIC to operate at 100Mbps/Full Duplex (assuming your network devices support this connection).
I am currently running this laptop 12+ hours continuously 7 days a week. I am running dual screens, the 16" UXGA LCD on the laptop and a 17" POS LCD, both are simultaneously running at 1600x1200 16-bit. Due to the noise level of the room I work in, I never hear the fans from my laptop, and due to the temperature of this room, the laptop helps keep my left hand warm.
After setting up XP SP1 and turning off all of the worthless services, I ran 3DMark03 and scored around 2890. That seemed about on par with the scores I see others posting. I downloaded Powerstrip and cranked up the GPU core to 380 and memory to 260 and scored right at 3200. I'm too big of a wuss to crank it up farther than that, but maybe I'll try since I see some people putting up the core up in the 400s.
It took me a little while to figure out how to use the S/PDIF connection. I wound up having to purchase a toslink mini adapter from Sony. I regularly use an external hard drive with USB 2.0, and have no problems there.
Software wise, I run CompuSec full disk encryption on both my internal drives and my external drive with no noticeable decrease in performance. I also run the XP firewall, NAV CE 8.1, Sygate Personal Firewall, Outlook 2003, Windows Media Player, IE, and RamDisk all at the same time with normal CPU utilization around 1% and RAM utilization around 400MB (256 MB make up a RAM Disk). The only software I've never been able to get to work was the included e-mail checking software that enables the mail light on the LCD to function.
Overall, I'd give this 5680 a 9.5 out of 10. There are only 3 things wrong with it. One, it uses an Intel chip instead of the superior AMD 64. Two, it uses an ATI video card instead of an NVidia. And, three, it cost $2500. Still, there's no faster laptop on the market, so all of the above only took off .5 points out of 10.
Oh, and one last note. While playing a DVD, I was able to get 1 hour 15 minutes of battery life.
I have customized the look of the laptop just a little by making a collage of pictures of my wife and fitting it to a template of the wrist pad. It fits perfectly and now my wife is always around, even though she's on the other side of the world
. I also ordered a stainless steel badge for the top, and am in the process of sticking it on.I am impressed with the keyboard on this laptop, the size of which is more generous than my previous laptops, and the keys have a more natural feel. The ease at which I can remove the keyboard for cleaning or diving further into the laptop is wonderful. I can now break my warranty with greater ease than I had ever imagined.
I have tried out every single component except for the 802.11g internal wireless card. These are not allowed where I work, and the building I work in has copper mesh in the walls and ceiling to prevent me from even trying. Internal Bluetooth works well, and I've synced with several PDAs so far. Everything else also works, though the GigE NIC can cause problems if you let it auto negotiate or if the next device in line doesn't support GigE. This can be easily resolved by forcing the NIC to operate at 100Mbps/Full Duplex (assuming your network devices support this connection).
I am currently running this laptop 12+ hours continuously 7 days a week. I am running dual screens, the 16" UXGA LCD on the laptop and a 17" POS LCD, both are simultaneously running at 1600x1200 16-bit. Due to the noise level of the room I work in, I never hear the fans from my laptop, and due to the temperature of this room, the laptop helps keep my left hand warm.
After setting up XP SP1 and turning off all of the worthless services, I ran 3DMark03 and scored around 2890. That seemed about on par with the scores I see others posting. I downloaded Powerstrip and cranked up the GPU core to 380 and memory to 260 and scored right at 3200. I'm too big of a wuss to crank it up farther than that, but maybe I'll try since I see some people putting up the core up in the 400s.
It took me a little while to figure out how to use the S/PDIF connection. I wound up having to purchase a toslink mini adapter from Sony. I regularly use an external hard drive with USB 2.0, and have no problems there.
Software wise, I run CompuSec full disk encryption on both my internal drives and my external drive with no noticeable decrease in performance. I also run the XP firewall, NAV CE 8.1, Sygate Personal Firewall, Outlook 2003, Windows Media Player, IE, and RamDisk all at the same time with normal CPU utilization around 1% and RAM utilization around 400MB (256 MB make up a RAM Disk). The only software I've never been able to get to work was the included e-mail checking software that enables the mail light on the LCD to function.
Overall, I'd give this 5680 a 9.5 out of 10. There are only 3 things wrong with it. One, it uses an Intel chip instead of the superior AMD 64. Two, it uses an ATI video card instead of an NVidia. And, three, it cost $2500. Still, there's no faster laptop on the market, so all of the above only took off .5 points out of 10.
Oh, and one last note. While playing a DVD, I was able to get 1 hour 15 minutes of battery life.
...
