**Corrupted's Review of the 8790-S**

I received my 8790-S yesterday morning. I have not had a whole lot of time to do a complete evaluation. But I will post my thoughts on the laptop so far.

This is not the fastest computer I have owned but it is defiantly the fastest laptop I have ever owned and this is my 8th laptop. Don’t get me wrong it is a nice computer it’s just not as fast as a high end Desktop workstation.

The specs:

85 Sager 8790-S Notebook: 8790-S
1008 Display: 17" WXGA+ LCD (Widescreen
1440 X 900)
1034 Processor: P4 3.4GHZ Northwood CPU
1009 Video: 256MB ATI Radeon Mobility 9700
(M11)
850 RAM: 1024MB 400DDR Dual Channel
(2-512MB)
842 Main Hard Drive: 60GB 7200RPM
999 Media Drive: 2X DVD+R/-R/RW/CD- No
702 Keyboard Layout: USA
1025 TV Tuner/Subwoofer: Subwoofer
1010 Modem: 56K RJ11 Phone Modem
853 Network Card: 10/100/1000 NIC
494 Operating System: No Operating System
1023 Battery: 8 Cell Li-Ion Smart battery

990 Car Adapter: Direct Car adapter
1041 Wireless Network: Internal 802.11g
TURBO (108Mbps) wireless
852 Bluetooth: Internal Bluetooth
1028 Card Reader: Internal 7-in-1 Card
Reader
1029 Camera: Integrated Digital Video

Installation of the OS and drivers was a breeze. I did have to uninstall the Omega drivers because of a 0X8E error, which is a driver issue, BIOS or memory. I chose the driver and the issue has not returned.

Stock Performance:

11,848 3D Mark 2001
3,379 3D Mark 2003
27,064 AquaMark3

This was done with the standard Sager Video Drivers. I imagine if I install Power Strip I would get the same score as Adam got when he overclocked ATI card since the stock specs are nearly identical.

I installed and played last night Far Cry, UT 2004 and HALO all at max setting at 1024 x 768 and everyone played just fine. I’m so impressed on how well it play I think I will bump up the resolution tonight and may install Power Strip if I need to bump the Video Card up a tad to play at higher resolution.

Sound:

If there was anything that made me say WOW it was the sound. This is defiantly the best sounding speaker set on a notebook I have ever heard. Enough said.

Wireless:

I have a few issues with the wireless connection 80% of the time when I make a call I lose the signal. I have moved the Linksys router out of my office into another room away from the 2.4 GHz Plantronics phone bases station. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Bluetooth:

There seems to be an issue with the internal Bluetooth interfering with my phone. It causes bad static on the line. I disabled the Bluetooth in the device manger and the static ended if I enable it static is back. Again, any suggestions would be appreciated. I want to get a Bluetooth mouse.

7 in 1 Card Reader:

This is a great device and it works fine.

LCD:

Very bright screen and NO DEAD PIXELS. I think I personally would prefer a higher resolution but 1440 x 900 is not bad.

Noise:

The fan noise is a little louder that most laptops but you get use to it in a day. The DVD Burner is a bit noisy as well. Hope it’s not defective.

Heat:

The palm rest get a little warm but not bad. I think it not that hot at all compared to the Sager 5670.

Appearance:

Overall looks is pretty cool. The two coolest things that stand out are the Blue Buttons and the Chrome around the touchpad.

Keyboard:

This keyboard is awesome. I type all day long on my computer and it is very solid and the palm rest is very sold while resting your hands on it.

IEEE1394:

OMG, could they have put the port somewhere else besides the front!

Conclusion:

This is a very nice Desktop replacement. If you need portability day to day do not get. But if you need high end Work Station Notebook this is your ticket. Despite the few issues I have ATM I really like this laptop. I believe that the less Technical Savvy person might find it frustrating because the manual is not very good at explaining the extra features.

Overall I give it 4 out of 5.

This thing is a beast. I have been playing Far Cry at 1440 x 900 all setting set on Very High and i runs soooo smooth not 1 studder. UT 2004 at 1152x864 everything set on the highest setting at it runs flawess as hell I just wish they had a setting of 1440x900 in UT 2004.

I was so impressed I thought I would go crazy so I connected a 17" CRT monitor and set the resolution to 1600x1200 and set Far Cry and UT 2004 to 1600x1200 and again everything maxed. When I started the game I was cringing then OMG it started and both bames ran so smooth. This laptop has some serious gaming power.

I ran Prime95 Torture Burnin test for about 3 hour and it pased all test. I know that Prime95 is a burnin tool of choice by many. I can certianly give yours a try though.

Mine failed on that test as well. But I was monitoring it and it seems that everything goes though the cycles except the DVDR drive. It just set there searching for data. I put a windows XP CD in the Drive but maybe thats not goos enough. So I suspect that the DVDR Drive is what is causing the failure. Try using Prime95, mine works fine on that one and it stress your hardware harder. If you fail on Prime95 tune your GPU down if your overclocking it but if not I would call Sager. But I'm pretty sure that it an issue with the softeware and our CD Drives.

I just wrote it off as a software issue. I am able to do my work, play my demanding game at high setting with not one issue. That's good enough for me.