This is a pseudo-review of my final 8790. The laptop is actually my third, after one DOA and another with stuck pixels and a solarized line running from the top to the bottom of the screen on the left side in 3D mode. PCT's customer service was phenomenal; Laura kept trying to expedite my cross-shipments probably in spite of Sager's annoyance. 
This laptop was supposed to be a desktop replacement for me to take to grad school, so all the issues of fan noise don't bother me. There is however a heat problem on the left side of the laptop. The area around the upper left speaker is very hot. Running a heavy load will cause it to be uncomfortable to the touch; when you pop open the DVD during this time try and touch the tray/plate (or surrounding metal), you might flinch. I don't know if I should be worried about that.
About the actual hardware… this one has a perfect screen, and seems noticeably brighter than my previous 8790's. The fan noise is lessened, there is no longer the initial high pitch whir; it just slowly spins up to speed. The soundcard is decent but for my uses very limited. It will not produce Quadrophonic sound. Not even when you switch to 4.1/6.1 with rear speakers plugged to center/lfe port like Sager suggests... and even after disabling 3D depth. The result of the sound coming out is bogus for a separate channel. Even with a headphone plugged in for cue monitoring it's just too weak of a signal compared to the main speaker port. But that's ok, I used a USB solution. This even has optical and an amplified monitor port, which is nice because I like to blow my eardrums:
Problem: i'm satisfied with my 8790 with what it can do, but there is one conflict/bug in the architecture that i'm hoping Sager's engineers can fix.
I do digital DJ'ing for my own sets and parties and use a program called Traktor 2.5. Here is what it looks like in use:
This program skips and chugs every 2 seconds, even when you try to drag the program window around it will freeze every 2 seconds. It's impossible to mix with this problem. So this was solved with disabling USB29. All my previous 8790s have produced the same symptoms with various setups. The only way the program will work smoothly is with USB29 disabled.
I've also noticed that the TV program also lags every 2 seconds when I plug-in my PS2, I haven't tried watching cable yet. CPU utilization is normal with no spiking; it just lags within the program. Here are some pictures showing PS2 running on the 8790 with widescreen enabled within the game. Some games have options like 16:9 and progressive.
DVD viewing on the 8790 is enjoyable, but it's too bad no movie out there uses the 1.6:1 aspect ratio that is 1440x900. It's always 1.77:1 (which is 16:9), or 2.35:1 letterbox. So.. you will always have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen without morph/zooming. I wish the laptop was 1280x720 native (or 2560x1440 haha). Here is a 16:9 Finding Nemo in motion:
A 2.35:1 letterbox movie called Hero:
Now off to gaming... It's nice to see modern games out there all coming with widescreen capability (even if its hidden). Here is Raven Shield, UT2k4, and Painkiller all in 1440x900 glory:
This laptop was supposed to be a desktop replacement for me to take to grad school, so all the issues of fan noise don't bother me. There is however a heat problem on the left side of the laptop. The area around the upper left speaker is very hot. Running a heavy load will cause it to be uncomfortable to the touch; when you pop open the DVD during this time try and touch the tray/plate (or surrounding metal), you might flinch. I don't know if I should be worried about that.
About the actual hardware… this one has a perfect screen, and seems noticeably brighter than my previous 8790's. The fan noise is lessened, there is no longer the initial high pitch whir; it just slowly spins up to speed. The soundcard is decent but for my uses very limited. It will not produce Quadrophonic sound. Not even when you switch to 4.1/6.1 with rear speakers plugged to center/lfe port like Sager suggests... and even after disabling 3D depth. The result of the sound coming out is bogus for a separate channel. Even with a headphone plugged in for cue monitoring it's just too weak of a signal compared to the main speaker port. But that's ok, I used a USB solution. This even has optical and an amplified monitor port, which is nice because I like to blow my eardrums:
Problem: i'm satisfied with my 8790 with what it can do, but there is one conflict/bug in the architecture that i'm hoping Sager's engineers can fix.
I do digital DJ'ing for my own sets and parties and use a program called Traktor 2.5. Here is what it looks like in use:
This program skips and chugs every 2 seconds, even when you try to drag the program window around it will freeze every 2 seconds. It's impossible to mix with this problem. So this was solved with disabling USB29. All my previous 8790s have produced the same symptoms with various setups. The only way the program will work smoothly is with USB29 disabled.
I've also noticed that the TV program also lags every 2 seconds when I plug-in my PS2, I haven't tried watching cable yet. CPU utilization is normal with no spiking; it just lags within the program. Here are some pictures showing PS2 running on the 8790 with widescreen enabled within the game. Some games have options like 16:9 and progressive.
DVD viewing on the 8790 is enjoyable, but it's too bad no movie out there uses the 1.6:1 aspect ratio that is 1440x900. It's always 1.77:1 (which is 16:9), or 2.35:1 letterbox. So.. you will always have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen without morph/zooming. I wish the laptop was 1280x720 native (or 2560x1440 haha). Here is a 16:9 Finding Nemo in motion:
A 2.35:1 letterbox movie called Hero:
Now off to gaming... It's nice to see modern games out there all coming with widescreen capability (even if its hidden). Here is Raven Shield, UT2k4, and Painkiller all in 1440x900 glory:
