Well, I had the entire weekend to play around with the lappy and here are my musings.
1. It is a true desktop replacement. Do not expect any kind of battery life. Even an hour is being optimistic. As I've read in other posts, think of the internal battery as a UPS only.
2. The shear performance of the machine is astounding. I have yet to have a game go below 25FPS (except for a strange situation with Battlefield 1942 that I'm still working on where it will hang at 10FPS for about 20 seconds whenever I enter a plane). City of Heroes 1600x1200, all effects at 100% dips down to 18FPS in outside, high population areas (n00b zones and near trainers), but comfortably at 30FPS in other parts of the city, and 40 - 80FPS while inside mission zones.
3. Components: I opted for the non DVD burner, and it's a real class act. It has been able to read discs that my other CD/DVD drives have scoffed at. DVD playback is flawless, much better than even my home unit. DVD image is a bit grainy on older films, even digitally remastered, but on newer films I'd give it a passing grade.
4. Sound = Tha Suck! The built in speakers may as well have been left out as far as I'm concerned. I'm a sound nut though, so my opinion may not count. I had some problems with the sound drivers the first couple of days. But oddly enough, reinstalling the drivers solved the problem. Thank goodness it fixed it, cause I was about to blow $100 on the Audigy 2 NX USB sound device. I still may buy it at a later date if I can't get decent sound with my wireless headphones without it. Right now, I have the sound lined out of the headset port to my old desktop computer (Soundblaster Live! Platinum w/ Cambridge Soundworks 5 point surround sound w/ sub). It sounds awesome hooked up this way!
5. Heat. Sitting Idle, can't even hear the machine running. I find it amazingly quiet compared to some of the noise issues I had heard about here in the forums. Even when I use Henrik's Max Fan program to turn the fans on max, I still can't hear the fans over whatever game I'm playing. I will say this though, the lappy gets hot! If at all possible hook an external keyboard up. I'm in the process of designing a stand for the lappy to sit on while I have it hooked up to an external keyboard. If I try and use an external keyboard between me and the lappy the screen just seems to far away. I may just try and get used to the warmth of the keyboard, since when I take it to lan parties not having to bring an external keyboard would be one less piece of gear to carry with me <----lazy
One other thing I noticed was the power pack gets extremely hot. Make sure nothing gets around it while it's on.
6. 15" UXGA LCD - Loving it! No dead pixels!
Image quality is so sharp it's amazing. Even my old CRT which I have enjoyed for almost 3 years just seems fuzzy now. I can't say enough about how beautiful this screen is. I'm still tweaking colors, contrast, brightness, etc for optimum viewing, but overall I love it!
More to come as I'm running out of time at work!
1. It is a true desktop replacement. Do not expect any kind of battery life. Even an hour is being optimistic. As I've read in other posts, think of the internal battery as a UPS only.
2. The shear performance of the machine is astounding. I have yet to have a game go below 25FPS (except for a strange situation with Battlefield 1942 that I'm still working on where it will hang at 10FPS for about 20 seconds whenever I enter a plane). City of Heroes 1600x1200, all effects at 100% dips down to 18FPS in outside, high population areas (n00b zones and near trainers), but comfortably at 30FPS in other parts of the city, and 40 - 80FPS while inside mission zones.
3. Components: I opted for the non DVD burner, and it's a real class act. It has been able to read discs that my other CD/DVD drives have scoffed at. DVD playback is flawless, much better than even my home unit. DVD image is a bit grainy on older films, even digitally remastered, but on newer films I'd give it a passing grade.
4. Sound = Tha Suck! The built in speakers may as well have been left out as far as I'm concerned. I'm a sound nut though, so my opinion may not count. I had some problems with the sound drivers the first couple of days. But oddly enough, reinstalling the drivers solved the problem. Thank goodness it fixed it, cause I was about to blow $100 on the Audigy 2 NX USB sound device. I still may buy it at a later date if I can't get decent sound with my wireless headphones without it. Right now, I have the sound lined out of the headset port to my old desktop computer (Soundblaster Live! Platinum w/ Cambridge Soundworks 5 point surround sound w/ sub). It sounds awesome hooked up this way!
5. Heat. Sitting Idle, can't even hear the machine running. I find it amazingly quiet compared to some of the noise issues I had heard about here in the forums. Even when I use Henrik's Max Fan program to turn the fans on max, I still can't hear the fans over whatever game I'm playing. I will say this though, the lappy gets hot! If at all possible hook an external keyboard up. I'm in the process of designing a stand for the lappy to sit on while I have it hooked up to an external keyboard. If I try and use an external keyboard between me and the lappy the screen just seems to far away. I may just try and get used to the warmth of the keyboard, since when I take it to lan parties not having to bring an external keyboard would be one less piece of gear to carry with me <----lazy
One other thing I noticed was the power pack gets extremely hot. Make sure nothing gets around it while it's on.6. 15" UXGA LCD - Loving it! No dead pixels!
Image quality is so sharp it's amazing. Even my old CRT which I have enjoyed for almost 3 years just seems fuzzy now. I can't say enough about how beautiful this screen is. I'm still tweaking colors, contrast, brightness, etc for optimum viewing, but overall I love it!More to come as I'm running out of time at work!
