8790 First Impressions...

I must say that I was this close to buying an AW, but like most others who post here, found my way to this forum and read through everything and all the opinions and feedback. What a valuable tool! After reading I knew a Sager was the most bang-for-the-buck hands down. According to the specs, this thing would spank a Dell XPS, and had options even the AW didn't have at $1500 more. This is what I ordered based on all the good things I had heard here:

NP8790V - 17.0" WIDE VIEWING ANGLES WSXGA+ ACTIVE MATRIX LCD WITH SUPER CLEAR GLOSSY SURFACE DISPLAY, PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSOR WITH HT TECHNOLOGY EXTREME EDITION 3.4GHZ NOTEBOOK COMPUTER
2048MB PC3200 (2 DIMMs)
60.0GB (7200rpm) Ultra DMA Hard Drive
External USB 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
4X DVD ± R/RW Dual-Mode Combo Drive & Softwares
8 Cells Smart Li-ION Battery
60GB (7200rpm) Secondary Hard Disk Drive
Integrated 56K V.90 Internal Fax/Modem
Integrated 1000Mbps Ethernet LAN + Internal 108Mbps Turbo Mode 802.11g Wireless LAN
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
TSB312, Targus, Sport Deluxe Computer Backpack-Platinum/Black
Subwoofer/ TV Tuner

I ordered this system direct through the Sager web-site last Thursday morning at 8:00 AM. By 12:00 same day Sager was calling to confirm my order and ask if I had any questions. I added the subwoofer to the order as there is not an option to add it and the tv tuner on the Sager drop-down listing. Sager rep said system would be put together and shipped by Friday (next day). I thought, no way. Every Dell or Gateway I bought took at least a week to build and ship.

Friday (a day later) the system ships! Can't believe. Paid for three day shipping so I got it Wed night. Wow.

If you have any reservation about spending your coin on a Sager you shouldn't.

Some quick impressions:

Notebook is BIG, should be- right?, not a complaint at all. A solid build all around, quality. Fit right in the Targus backpack from Sager with room to spare in the notebook pocket. Some people have said it is snug, but I had plenty of room to slide it in and out, not really snug at all. Plenty of room for not only the power supply, but a 60 cd case, mouse, and tons of other gear. The pack was heavy, but again, this is a desktop replacement that you can pack around, but again- not uncomfortable at all.

Power suppy "power brick" was not as big as some people make it out to be. Slightly larger than the HP one on my old notebook, just longer & with a fan.

Screen is BEAUTIFUL, oh my god is that nice. VERY bright, wide viewing angles, no dead pix.

Keyboard is solid as a rock and full size, even full size backspace key!. Solid feel on the keys unlike any notebook I have had, & no flexing.

Maybe something changed since the earlier systems, but my fans do not speed up and slow down on power-up. In fact, the 6 hours I played with the thing installing everything and running through some games, I could hardly hear the fans running. The fan on the power supply actually was louder than the fans on the system. As for the heat issues, the left palm rest does get warm, but not any warmer than the HP notebook bottom and battery this unit replaces. I suppose if you did block the fans it would heat up, but with it sitting on the table, it did not seem to be that warm, even with the P4EE chip and running for hours.

Takes less time to boot up than my desktop, and that is even with it doing the search for the onboard raid. I did not have the raid setup even tough got the two 60 gig drives, simply because I would hate to have the raid fail and lose something I was doing for work. I was not sure if there were any heat issues it would accelerate a drive failure.

Cool that the remote control can power the computer up and shut it down from across the room!

All together, very satisfied, this system rocks, well worth the money, and no waiting to get one built. It may not look as pretty as an AW, but I didn't buy it to impress anyone, bought it to be a great work / game system. You can't go wrong with this system.

I have been playing the 8790 for a few weeks now, nothing but impressed. Followed the advice here and did the AS5 application, and must say computer runs much cooler now. The fans don't even kick on unless I am into some serious gaming action, and I can only assume that it will run cooler as the AS5 cures with time. Getting the old waxy looking crap off the heatsink and CPU was easy (messy), but only took about 20 mins. Followed the directions on the Arctic Silver web-site to-the-letter and did not use too much, just a dab. I see many people talk here about going overboard on too much when doing the application thinking more is better, so I was pretty light on the amount I used.

Was also impressed with the cooling system in general on this computer and the ease of getting to the processor. The heat pipe contraption came right out as one piece once the 4 spring screws that hold the heatsink on came off.

I would not hesitate to recommend someone doing the AS5 application, too bad they don't do that at the factory. Like the black crap they use does anything but make a mess.

Also updated with the latest Omega drivers and oc'd the video. I thought the video was fast for a notebook before, but damn it is really fast now!!

The best part of this system to me besides the speed, is still the screen. It makes my desktop LCD look like junk. The clarity and brightness of this thing even at angles is just awesome- one of the big sell points for this system.

Still getting the gawk from people when I pull this monster out and boot it up anywhere I take it!!! Lovin' it.

Well another plus via experimentation. I swapped out the TV tuner module for the subwoofer as I ordered both and have not messed with the tuner at all since day one. Couldn't figure out why the audio was sooo bad on this computer.

Poking around in the AC97 audio rack, I found that I had to actually turn the subwoofer on via the rack setting to 6.1 audio with subwoofer worked best (even checking swap subwoofer with center channel seems to improve sound). Setting the EQ all the way up on all the sliders, the environment setting to "Living Room", the subwoofer in the Windows volume stack all the way up, and the 3D slider on the same stack all the way down, the audio is MUCH better, loud and clear, no distortion all the way to max volume, and not bad bass response of the subwoofer for being so small. The audio really rocks at these settings!

I still can't get my USB headphones to work, as some people have e-mailed me with the same situation with the exact USB headset. I assume it is a problem with all USB headsets and this system, as they work fine on my other notebooks. You get an error that there is not a driver for these, but the driver is really a generic XP driver within Windows that should auto-install. I tried even searching for the updated driver on the XP cd, and nothing. A shame as the USB headphones are really nice. Anyone have any ideas? Would appreciate the insight.