Selll me on a Sager

If you actually browse over the threads on the next 6 pages (besides the first one), you can find a ton of info on all of that. People will post here to your thread as well, but if you are looking for a wide variety of input and responses, I would hit "next" on the bottom right and look through the rest of the threads too. I say this mainly because that same question was on everyone's mind at one time or another, lol. Good luck!!

Im trying to decide the same thing. I was leaning toward DEll, but after reading in the Dell forum about the cheep plastic lid and hinges there's no way I'll be happy with that. There's a new Inspiron coming out whenever. I'm pretty much sold on Sager, but I would like to wait till the new Geforce or Ati comes out. Right now there's a sweet deal with free upgrades at Pc Torque .

The review I did in the review section was done without being biased or cleaning any details up. What you see is basically what you get. I'm not into convincing anyone, just presenting what it can do and letting anyone decide for themselves. Dell and Sager both have their benefits. Some will argue the Sager display is better, some will argue the Dell is better. Compare price to price, features to features for what you're looking for/need and make the decision since you're the one spending the money.
If you choose to go with Sager, buy from Sager themselves, or a reseller depending on what you feel comfortable with. If you go for Dell, well, buy from Dell =).
The 5660 has more raw performance, the 8200 has a better battery life. The 8200 has an option for built in wireless, the Sager is usually priced better.

I used to be a Dell Only type of guy, I did my own DD and I am very happy with 5660, I would buy from PCtorque, I highly recommend Adam. How can you beat all you get and the price difference between the top of line Sager and top of line Dell, i finally learned that I was paying for the Dell dude's Ferrari's (in other words their multi million dollar ad campaign) they advertise on TV in print on line and lots of it......A Clevo is so much bang for the buck !!! Once you try it you will never look back. at least that's how I feel.

_Dan

can u say 2.8 Ghz P4 , 1GB Ram, 4 USB Ports, UXGA, ATI 9000,

Fully loaded Dell about 5K

Sager 2600K

i cant think of any more

oh yes

Sagerforums.com !!!

Your local best buy or compusa or circuit city should have lappies with those screens, you just have to see what the native resolution is (it would be written in the specs, XGA, SXGA, SXGA+, UXGA). Once you find one with each, make sure that it is set to that resolution in actuality. That will provide a comparison of the resolutions (the contrast ratios, colors, brightness, etc, depend on the brand). From what I've heard those aspects compare well on sagers.

I vote Habib MOD !!!!

Also, regardless of resolution, you can set the size of pretty much everything in windows xp. So, if readability is a problem with UXGA, winxp will solve it. However, many games won't run well at high resolutions, so a lower native resolution might be desired (in my case it is, LCD screens are most clear at their native resolutions because that is how many pixels are physically present... any resolution lower than that and it makes the view fuzzy sometimes). Plus the 8886 has a larger screen. 15.7 inches is actually much bigger than 15 inches when measured diagonally... But, whatever you get and get used to will ultimately look great.
(Lol, thanks for the vote, Dan; I only wrote that there jokingly, but it was very kind of you)

Beebster, you must be a student...

I can't imagine anyone having time holding down a job/familiy while at the same time being such an ANIMAL on these boards

But I do always appreciate your comments.

I was concerned about the UXGA/SXGA question before I got my 8886. Though this may be the first time anyone has said anything negative about a Sager, running my native SXGA in XGA (like when I hook up to an LCD projector) makes the screen look pretty much like garbage. Well, maybe garbage is too strong of a word, but the reports that say the M9K eliminates problems w/ scaling are vastly overstated...

My advice is to get the screen that you'd like to spend the most time reading. The SXGA is absolutely beautiful and definitely not too small. Great for spreadsheets (especially when you hook up another monitor and spread the window across BOTH screens. I've seen UXGA and I think it's just too small for my eyes (get too tired after a long time.

Lol, I am a student, an honors student, no less, so time is not plentiful, and I work, lol. But I'm a quick typist and I do a lot of my work on my lappy so it actualy doesn't take much time to help people out on here.
But yes, I agree that going to XGA might not be the best of ideas cuz you go from 1280x1024 to 1024x768... imagine the algorithm that has to convert the physical pixels present to XGA. It's not like making every two pixels appear as one... It's some wierd ratio, and it's really hard to do and easily seen as fuzzy. Garbage would be the word to describe it on ANY LCD screen, lol. The M9 actually does help with it using the antialiasing, but you have to turn it on for it to do anything :-) Put it to 16x and enable it always if you want. That might help, but again, the algorithm is pretty complex and difficult to do in those circumstances, so don't expect much. It's mainly an improvement for games since you generally can't run games at a high native resolution (one of the reasons I like the SXGA screen on the 8886). But, a UXGA screen would be good if you lost any pixels cuz they'd be pretty impossible to see, lol. Each to his/her own I suppose :-)

Yeah, I remember being a student...

...and thinking I was really busy. I had a job too. I guess it all depends on how you spend your time. I'll just say that w/ 2 kids and a full-time job, time can be sparse.

LOL, I have to wait 'til everyone in my fam goes to bed before I can play morrowind (I'll probably beat the game in approximately 7 1/2 years!) and post to these forums. I often harken back longingly to my younger days gaming on P2 400 w/ my 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB card (don't laugh, that was state-of-the-art back then). But I guess I don't miss gaming enough to miss out on time w/ my kids... They're only young once you know. Except by the time I'm getting to the point where I need help w/ Morrowind, everyone will have forgotten about it (Probably playing Elderscrolls:7 or something).

Yeah, I forgot about AA... didn't know that's what made the scaling work better. I'll have to try that next time I take down the res. However (this was interesting), even tho the lappy screen looked bad at non-native res, the projector looked absolutely beautiful (a pretty nice Sanyo 2K lumins LCD). Thought that was strange--must be that the projector is interpreting the signal in its native res.

Way to go w/ the honors Beebster. You a CS major? What are you plans to do w/ that education?

If you like sales, investment advising/financial planning is one of the most rewarding (emotionally and financially) carreers that exist.

Except selling sweet laptops online, right PCTORQUE... Or selling diamonds, right DanGordon...

lol, yeah, I imagine with kids someday things will be far different :-) But yeah, it would look fine on a projector because "native" resolutions only apply to LCD screens. Monitors and projectors look fine at all supported resolutions because they don't have physical pixels, lol, just electrons hitting phosphorus. You mentioned the projector was an LCD? How can you have an LCD projector? :-) As far as my major, I'm actually premed believe it or not. Good stuff. I am minoring in business though, lol.

I think you can run the LCD and the External source at different resolutions (not sure) try playing with the ati display settings and see if you can do that. If you can then you wont have to scale the LCD down to XGA

You most certainly can :-) If you right click on the desktop and hit properties and then go to Settings and down to Advanced, you can find the tab that controls all of the displays, and I think it's called Displays :-) You can setup each through there if I'm not mistaken. (There is a max limit, cuz obviously the card can only handle so much... but since you are scaling down, I doubt that will present any problem.)

yes beebster, once again is correct, i beginning to wonder if beb and PCT, are the same person???? .....lol, just kidding....
Here is my setup , I have my 17 inch pivotable planar falt panel plugged into my 5660, and thanks to PCT or hebeeb , whoever it was..... i learned how to attach and that i can use my flat panel to use as an extension of my desktop, its really cloo dragging stuff over to another monitor and havein all this spcae, i would llike a 3rd, and i have a dell I8000, but i do not think i could use it, does XP support 3 or is it the Vid card that has to support it ???

the is another port on the flat panel that is open

here is a link to the monitor


http://www.planar.com/monitors/PV174.asp

could i use that port that is unused and somehow plug it into another flat panel or into my Dell I8000?

Peace in the Sagerland forum !!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Dan

Lol, no, it was PCTorque that provided the info on how to extend the desktop. They are awesome :-) I would never even dare to compare. As far as your other question though, I don't think you could extend it to three (it is the video card that supports that function). There are desktop cards that support three now, but I'm not sure that the lappy ones do... I will check for you. But the other port on your flat panel is another input. There is a digital DVI and an analogue one.

Here is the info straight from ATI:

HYDRAVISION™ Multi-monitor Management Software enables you to tailor your desktop to the way you work, so you can manage increased amounts of information and improve your productivity. Your productivity is increased thanks to two aspects HYDRAVISION™:
Breadth - increase your desktop work space by using up to two monitors
Depth - create multiple layers of desktop workspace with Multi-Desk
Flexible and easy to use
Within minutes HYDRAVISION™ gives you the power to manage independent monitor display features and:
Determine the behavior of pop-up windows and dialog boxes in different applications
Switch between desktop with a mouse click or "Hot Key"
Vary your settings from one application to the next
Customize the features of HYDRAVISION™ to an application

Increase your productivity
ATI wanted to increase your productivity even more, so we have introduced more cool features in version 3 of HYDRAVISION™:
Transparent windows and menus
"Always-on-Top"
Multi-Desk properties
Cycle through desktops view
Move To Monitor
Internet Explorer extension


So, it says use up to two monitors... I have yet to determine whether that means two separate and not including the laptop LCD, lol. I will check on that too.