MSI Mega Book...drool - Page 2

lucky you

i bet you anything once this hits american (or Canada) the silly consumers won't care abouteh 7200 rpm or 1gb ram or sxga so it'll xga 512 80gb 4200 rpm and maybe even 64mb m11 :P

Wow nice deal the only laptops my local store has are like overpriced, underpowered pos laptops.

It will be able to play HL2 and Doom3 but not on high settings since reccomended specs are 2 ghz 512mb 9800 and five channel sound card or speaker

This is available now in the US with the older 64MB M10. Talk to CoffeeShark. I also found one other reseller:

EBC Computers

The problem is, it's hard to settle for the limited specs available in the US, when much better options are already available in Japan. Hopefully, MSI will bring the 128MB 9700/SXGA over here soon.


FrancisQ, does the shop you're talking to have a website by any chance? What's the name of the store? I looked through a number of Japanese resellers sites today and couldn't find a trace of this model online.

See rincewind's thread: How doom3 will run with a 9600 and 9800.

I think basically, yes, it should be able to play the new games at med-low settings and resolution. The specs put it close to the top range of Pentium-M machines (unless you want to spend a fortune on a 2.0GHz chip). If you wanted higher performance on a notebook, you'd really need to go for a heavier machine with the fastest A64 or P4 chip you can get. Of course, you'd be giving up at least half the battery life too.

M510C Review and Benches on Cnet Taiwan

The model tested is the P-M 1.5GHz/64MB M10/40GB HD (4,200RPM?) which gets 2633 in 3DMark03. The Japanese model should perform much better.

FrancisQ, please give us a full review with benches and photos if you do pick this one up. Maybe you can convince the shop to run 3DMark03 while you're still considering it.

Here's a review in Polish. I don't know what it says, but it has great close-up pics of all the details of the machine inside and out.

MSI MEGABOOK M510C on pclab.pl

This notebook's manual says its battery is an 8 cell. So, we should expect a little better battery performance than most Centrinos, but I think 7 hours is streching it quite a bit. I don't know if any of you noticed, but a new Clevo notebook has a 12 cell battery option. Its going to be distributed by Sager and VoodooPC, so far. Of course that one is a bit bigger/heavier, and I have to say this one looks a lot nicer.

DanW

EBC computers is awful. I lived in Utah for nearly 10 years and bought a few things from them, as did my friends.

Bottom line with them: if you buy something from them, plan on throwing any warranty out the window as they will look for ANY way to screw you out of it.

My friend bought an OEM processor from them once and they claimed it had a 30 day warranty from them and a 1 year from Intel. The proc went bad and we tried to take it back. They got out a magnifying glass to look for the tiniest scratch to say it was physically damaged. Needless to say, mounting a HSF will put tiny scratches on it and they refused to take it back. We called Intel and they said they didn't offer a 1 year warranty and that the reseller had lied. I believed Intel, as I never heard of them offering warranties on OEM stuff and I even questioned the store and they swore up and down that Intel would warranty it.

Then a guy I worked with bought a set of speakers from them and when he got them home and upwrapped them, he found the speaker cords were ripped out. He tried to take them back and they accused him of doing it and refused to exchange them.

Bottomline: they're cheap, but count on throwing any warranty out the window with whatever you buy from them.

Super

Great, thanks for the link. I was actually on Mouse Computers main site today, but I didn't find G-Tune. I have friends in Japan who could send me one, but it seems silly to import one if MSI will release the upgraded model in the US soon.

Actually, the the US site for the MSI M510C only claims "up to 6 hours" on the spec sheet. That's close to what CoffeeShark found in his review.

Well, I can't speak from experience, but I did look up their ResellerRatings when I found them and they're rated just about as low as you can go.

After reading their reseller ratings (didn't know they were on there), the experiences posted on there are very much in line with mine and others' I know.

Makes me wonder how they stay in business.

I can handle a Japanese system (besides, I'd probably do a fresh install anyway), but it's likely that a model with the same options will eventually make it over here. Ideally, I'd probably try to get ahold of a barebones SXGA/9700 system. As always, it's just a question of how long we have to wait...

Keep us posted on your shopping.

I posted some realworld shots when I sold one on this forum:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=30000
(scroll down)

P.S. I used EBC for parts for a short while, and I think Superguy and the others have hit the nail on the head. Resellerratings is an accurate portrayal. No service at all, a very low-end reseller, below-board business practices, used parts, etc.

coffeshark how much do you think that japan spec will cost in NA?

With these specs:
Pentium M (Dothan)1.8Ghz Centrino
1024MB DDR-SDRAM
60GB Hitachi Travelstar HD (7200rpm)
ATI MR9700 (128MB)
DVD+RW combo drive
15"SXGA screen (1400x1050)

I would estimate about $700 more. that would put it around $2100-2300 depending on retailer.

Nice pics. Serves me right for not reading every post in the Reviews and For Sale section. You really should have posted earlier in the Notebook General, so more people would know about it.

lol bloke, I apologize profusely.

Of course, you could've always used that thing called 'Search'.

How do I search for something I've never heard of?

hmm 2100 isn't too bad

there's a secondary battery optin right?

think those same stats and price could be availabe in hong kong? my uncle lives in hong kong and he is coming to visit in august, so if it is, i could get him to buy it and bring it over!