Another Sentia review

Day 1 – it arrives!

My Sentia finally arrived this Monday! It was a long weekend knowing from the FedEx tracking page that my new computer was sitting in a warehouse a few miles away.
My old laptop is a 2 year old Fujitsu P2110. It was a neat little package but was seriously lacking in power. It’s Crusoe based, and 10 hours of battery life is the norm. So needless to say my battery life expectations are high.
I’m a net/db admin, so I need a reliable laptop that has decent battery life (for when I’m working from the couch or the coffee shop), performs well and has a high resolution screen. I have no problems with Intel, so a Centrino laptop seemed to be the way to go. Fujitsu didn’t have the specs I was looking for this time (the old one had a slow HD), I don’t care for Gateway or HP and I’ve had it with Dell. The ThinkPads had the specs, but they’re just soooo ugly! Enter AW. Good looking box, plenty of power, decent battery life and a 1400x1050 14” screen. Sign me up!
It was 20 days from the day I ordered online to the day that it was delivered to my doorstep. I spent a day arguing with AMEX and another 5 days of that was shipping (including a weekend). I don’t understand why AW does not offer express shipping. After paying over $2500 for a laptop, another hundred to get it quickly is not a big deal.
Upon opening the box, the first thing that I find is that my spare AC power supply and battery are thrown in loosely in the top of the box! No bubble wrap, peanuts or anything. Not what I expected from AW. The packaging is such that it did not damage the laptop any (it was stored safely below), but I’m glad that I hadn’t ordered any fragile accessories. The packaging for the laptop itself was first rate, double boxed with plenty of foam on the corners. I’m really surprised that they did not take more time to secure the accessories.
The laptop is beautiful! I waffled between the black and green. I ended up ordering the black on the grounds that it would look more professional. When I spoke with customer service to confirm the order, they informed that it would be a 2 month wait for black! Being a firm believer in fate and ka, I went with the green. I am NOT disappointed with that choice.
Turned the computer on and went through the usual XP setup screens. On the last screen, the machine hung. Nothing serious, I think this is an XP thing, I’ve seen it before. Wait about 10 minutes then power it off. It boots fine. Not much time to play tonight, but the machine is sweet! Connects to my wifi network with no trouble, the screen is excellent, and it has to be the best looking laptop I’ve ever seen.

More to come…

-continued-
I finally get to the office so that I can start installing everything and I notice a really quick blue screen after rebooting. After turning off 'automatically reboot' in Windows so that I can read the error, I track it down to Ahead inCD (with the help of this board ). I don’t know or care what it does, but it’s gone and I’m getting no more blue screens.

One thing I don’t care for is that most of the ports (USB, LAN, etc.) are on the sides, instead of the back. This is because the main battery loads in from the back. It’s not a big deal but it looks cleaner when everything is in the back. I usually only have power and network plugged in anyways, unless I’m out and about and then I don’t even have that.

The keyboard is decent. I prefer one that is a bit crisper than this. It’s good though; good size, the arrangement of the keys is not too funky compared to a standard keyboard. The more I use it the more I like it.

For a while I kept getting a ‘CMOS checksum bad’ message in the bios when I rebooted. I went into the bios just to see what options were there, and then exited without saving. Now it no longer does it. I just read in the manual that this should be fixed by a reboot or changing the battery. I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

Sound – the speakers are nothing to rave about. They’re functional but if you’re doing any serious listening you’ll want external speakers or headphones. At first, I couldn’t hear sound coming out until I realized that it had an external volume control.

The screen is excellent No dead pixels, plenty bright. It’s big enough and has a high enough resolution to have a bunch of apps viewable at once.

No complaints about performance. Even though I’m coming from a horribly underpowered laptop, my office PC is a 3GHz P4 with 1.5 GB of RAM. This laptop ROCKS

-continued-

One additional note on the keyboard. The wrist rests get a little warm over time. Not hot, but it might be a bit uncomfortable if you were writing the great american novel.

Battery life – I worked for about 5 ½ hours today on a full charge with both batteries. This is perfectly acceptable for me, I guess if someone needed more they could always get additional batteries. One interesting thing is that it drains the primary battery completely before switching to the secondary.

Touch pad – I was kicking myself for not asking CS for a black touchpad, but now that I see it, it’s not bad. I was expecting it to be white but it turns out to be gray. Black would still look better, but it’s not worth changing.

All in all, I think this is an excellent laptop. Even though it is not designed for it, I think it would even be a great desktop replacement; considering what most people use on their desktops. Plenty of performance without the weight. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is tired of boring laptops and needs decent performance and battery life.

You're right that going into the BIOS fixed it. The interesting thing is that in the manual it doesn't say anything about that. It just says to either change the battery (whch is ridiculous on a new system) or reboot. The message appears during POST, which means that you already have rebooted! If they are testing these systems as well as they claim, you would think that they would enter the BIOS themselves to make sure that their customers don't see this message. Oh well, it's still a great system.