Dell 8200 vs. Sager 5660 - Page 2

The 8886 is not a consideration for me because of the low screen resolution. To ME, that is sort of the #1 priority decision to make. If you don't have a particular preference in that regard, the 8886 probably IS your best bet.

One, dunno about better antennas in internal setups, but I DO know that if you go with an external card, you can get an Orinoco card which has a jack that allows you to plug in an external antenna which would absolutely give you way better range than any internal antenna.

Two, the Dell is a Mini-PCI card. I believe that means that you can easily open the case and remove the card or replace it with another one. I would fully expect Dell to offer a MiniPCI 802.11a card at some point, or at least that you could buy one someplace else that would work in your Dell.

If you add a USB2.0 PC Card to a Dell, it would be as fast as a built-in port in a Sager. It would probably have 2 ports on it. This would give you 4 USB ports total (like the Sager), but 2 of them would be USB 1.1. But you could plug a small USB hub into one of those ports to allow you to plug as many USB 2.0 devices into your laptop as you could with the Sager.

The more I consider this issue, the less important the Sager's advantage seems to become, in my own mind.

This is really an issue of convenience more than capability. If you want to use 2 drives, do you really want to have to break out a separate enclosure and plug it into a FW/USB port in your laptop, when you could have it installed internally and available all the time?

What I read indicated that the PowerPad is not available for Dell (or Sager) yet, but they are working on it for Dell. But when would you ever use that when a cigarette lighter or airplane power plug wasn't available? For myself, I can't see paying $350 - $430 for a 12 to 16 hour battery pack versus well under 100 bucks for a cable that will let me use a cigarette lighter plug or airplane power plug. Even when I'm just hanging out in airports waiting on connections, I've never had a problem finding someplace to sit where there was an AC outlet close by, so, right now, I can't envision ever being away from any kind of power source for longer than the 1 - 2 hours that an internal battery would give me.

I feel the same way about that and about the ability upgrade CPUs also. I've bought many PCs before with an eye to upgradability and *rarely* have I ever taken of it. I've commonly added RAM and other peripherals, but usually, when I've considered upgrading the CPU or video, I have found that it doesn't make sense because better/faster motherboards, faster drives, faster hard drive controllers, etc. are out there and I can get much bigger bang for my buck other ways than just upgrading one or two internal pieces.

If the 8886 screen resolution is not a problem for you, get that one! If it even had 1400x1050, I would consider it, but 1280x1024 just doesn't give me enough screen real estate for when I'm hacking code or doing other normal (for me) stuff.

This is an issue for me, too. When I finally get off the pot and lay down buckazoids, it will be for a laptop that I expect to last me at least 4 years. Pretty much all the laptops I've ever seen that were 3 to 4 years old and had actually been used regularly had developed problems of one sort or another. Problems with the screen appear to be pretty common. Also, accidental damage to an LCD screen appears to be pretty easy. So, the CompleteCare warranty that Dell offers would be a big positive to me (I've heard that a UXGA LCD screen replacement can easily run $800 - $900). Except that I live in Florida and their fine print says CompleteCare is not available in Florida (dammit!). I have also noted that one of the 3 vendors that I'm considering purchasing a Sager from has an optional LCD damage protection warranty. I think it's an extra $100. If I buy the Sager, I would probably buy it from a vendor that could sell me that along with it.

- Stu

I apologize that it took me so long to respond to this, I had a paper to write last night and then today I've been studying for biology and I just finished with that. Here it goes!

Glad to hear that you have more questions! I love hearing them! Yes, the 8886 is a possibility, one that you might consider more closely despite the fact that it just makes it so you have to choose between three incredible systems, lol. You shouldn't worry about the drivers in the 8886, it would be no more than what you'd install in a dell after installing PCMCIA cards and all the rest.

If you will be using wifi, as I said, you might consider finding someone who has a sager and uses a pcmcia card for wifi and see what their experience has been thus far. The minipci option on the dell is great, and actually some members here have commented on the possibility of adding a minipci wifi to their own sagers by themselves. I only mention that because if they are successful than it is obviously a possibility for future sagers.

Yes, the dell does not have usb2, that's icky... You can easily pay more and add a card and use more battery power and the like by adding a card, but that will just take the dell down to one PCMCIA port, just like the 5660. It should be as fast as regular integrated USB2, but it is another peripheral. And I don't think many of them come with 4, lol, although USB2 is daisy-chainable which means you are pretty much limitless with how many you plug together (by pretty much I mean no one would reach the limit, lol).

The 8200 has a second hard drive option, yes, but so does the 8886 (it also has a third drive option, lol). External drives will be faster if they are desktop drives... Their max transfer rate is lower, but their access time is better and thus your computer will run faster on things that are on those external drives. It is inconvenient because you have to plug them into an outlet, though. But, it is unlikely you will use the max transfer rate of firewire/USB2 with most applications.

THe powerxtender cable would be nice, and it will be available for sagers. I have one at home now with the 8886 and I will give a review of its functionality when I go on a road trip later this month. The electrovaya isn't available for the inspiron 8200, either, last time I checked. You may want to check again, though.

The ability to swap video cards is only important if you are going to keep the rest of the system. It is useless practically in a dell because you cannot swap the CPU, and it is unavailable in the sagers... But when it does become available, it will be more useful because more of the sagers can be upgraded.

The processor comparisons between the alienware and the dell showed significant differences in certain programs... namely games that relied more on processor power. In the real world, 400 Mhz will make a difference in future programs that will approach recommended CPU requirements of at or above 2 Ghz...

The 8886 does have an SXGA screen, but it is also much bigger than the dell screen. I will report on it when I see it at home later. The dell screen is capable of more colors, but more people cannot tell any difference and any blurbs that show up on the sagers show just as noticeably on the dells from the reports of people on this forum who have or had both. But, it is 12 pounds. :-)

It has a serial port, which is good, legacy ports are a nice thing to have. The tv tuner will definitely make it easier to get your vcr or camcorder things in there. You could get a dazzle, but the 8886 carries it around in there. Also, you can use it as a tv or as a vcd or svcd recorder. It would only be easier in that the internal tuner is faster than most external ones unless they are on USB2, and that you wouldn't have to carry around an external tuner. Again, though, that depends on how often you will use it.

I've heard that the phillips warranty is nice for the sagers. I know that phillips magnavox is an excellent company from my personal experience. I haven't dealt with them with sagers, but I have with other electronics and they rate pretty highly for me.

These forums are something that dell cannot provide :-) Honestly, I visit dell forums all the time and just see people's questions sit there unanswered, or answered with a question from another person who had the same problem... I've never seen a response written as long as Stu's or mine, ever. lol, now, whether they are helpful is up to you. :-) Not to mention that Adam is here, lol, the significance of that is just a given.

Good luck with your decision! No matter what you decide, though, you are always welcome to ask anything and I know for a fact that people here will respond to their best ability. :-) Good day!

(PS: You should talk to PCTorque about your options in terms of configuring the machine... I'm sure they could get it to something you'd be really happy with.)

lol, good luck deciding based on those :-) In your position, I'd have a lot of trouble, lol; I don't have any trouble now because of the forums and because of the hardware/price ratio of the sagers. And, of course, I love the do it yourself type of setup... I hope whatever you decide works well for you! Good luck!

Do what I did. Go down to your local CompUSA and look at screens. The Toshiba 5105-S701 has a 15" UXGA screen. I don't know if it's the exact same LCD panel as the 5660, but it's the same size and specs, so it should give you a pretty good idea of what the 5660 (or Inspiron non-UltraSharp) screen would look like.

Then, for comparison, there are tons of laptops available that have 1280x1024 screens. A lot of the Sony VAIOs have 16" screens, so if you find one of those in a store and set it to 1280x1024, that should give you an okay basis for comparison to the 8886 with its 15.7" screen.

I went to my local CompUSA and they had all these in stock, so I was able to compare a 5660-equivalent screen directly side-by-side to an 8886-equivalent screen. And, as I said, 1280x1024 is not enough for me. I think it would be fine for me for playing games, but not for hacking code and stuff like that, where I want as many lines of text displayed at once as possible.

Also, I've seen people mention in other threads about problems with fuzzy text when running LCD screens at a non-native resolution. My understanding is that the Radeon 9000 chipset uses some new techniques for dealing with that problem and LCDs with that chipset on the display adapter should look considerably better at non-native resolutions than other/older video cards would. So, you could run a 5660 at 1280x1024, probably without *any* problem. But, of course, you could not run an 8886 at higher than 1280x1024, except on an external monitor.

- Stu

Yo Joe!

Here's yet another iron for your fire. Toshiba Satellite 5105-S701. I've found them on the 'net for $1800. That's w/P4-M 1.8, 512MB RAM, DVD/CD-RW, 15" UXGA screen, 60GB hard drive, GeForce4 460 Go 64MB DDR video, Agere Mini-PCI 802.11b wireless, 3 USB 2.0 (I *think* they're 2.0), 1 Firewire, 56k modem, 10/100 NIC, 1 PCMCIA Type II slot. It's got front panel controls like the Sager for playing CDs without opening/turning on the computer. It comes with a remote control to control the CD or DVD when playing one of those or (supposedly) to control a PowerPoint slideshow, when doing that kind of thing.

After reading a bit on Dell's forum about the Inspiron, I don't know that I would buy one of those after all. Lots of people are reporting problems, and there seems to be no fix available for some of them. In particular, one problem that causes the CPU to run at half (or some way slow) speed some times is a special concern.

OTOH, I haven't read anything bad about the Toshiba yet.

And, if you're willing to spend an extra $500, you can get the 5205-S703, which upgrades you to a P4-M 2.0, and a built-in DVD-RW, so you can burn DVDs, instead of just being able to burn CDs.

http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/cont...e_5205S703.pdf

The video is not quite as fast for gaming as the Radeon 9000 in the Sager or the Dell, but then, if you're like me, gaming is of secondary importance. And some people are claiming that nVidia's drivers and support are better than ATI's.

Also, note that the Agere wireless in the Toshibas is essentially the same as what is offered for the Dell's. They're both Hermes chipset cards - which is good!

And for either Toshiba, you can buy a Toshiba 3 year extended warranty that covers accidental damage (I believe) for $229.

- Stu

If it doesn't say USB2, then they are more than likely not 2, lol. Also, the toshiba is similar to the 5660 with some of the same downfalls, but it also has the downfalls of the dell at the same time (mobile processor) and it has not as good graphics. Consider those things carefully as well.

If you have any questions about the 8886, I have one now so you can post them to the review thread I started. Good luck with your decision!

I have a toshiba desktop (an old one) and it went through hell and back for me, lol. It's still chugging along :-) I would highly recommend their desktops to anyone who is looking for a quickly configured one. However, they've had problems with their laptops in the past. Not to mention their attempt at Sagerishness (a desktop processor in a lappy) overheated on many an occasion and had troubles out the wazzoo with build quality. You can read about it in some of the older posts on these forums. I have never owned one, though, so take that however you like :-) Good luck!

For what it is worth, our Corporate standard for laptops used to be IBM Thinkpads. All in all, they were pretty good and seemed to last a couple of years before any problems would show up. The sales force were pretty rough on them and they held up well.

We recently switched to Toshiba's. Bad move. They have only been out in the field a few months and they are not wearing as well as the IBM's. Build quality is not as good as it should be.

I looked hard and long at the Toshiba's. I came very close to getting one at Compusa a couple of weeks ago. They had a great sale and rebate combo during a weekend deal. However the Toshiba forums and groups I checked out seemed to say you are taking a chance buying one. You may get a good one that will work fine for a while or you may get one that will show problems in a short while and good luck getting Toshiba service to fix it for you. I don't know if this is true or not as I didn't buy one, I ordered a 5660 from PCTorque a few days ago, but there were a lot of disgruntled people complaining about service. Enough to make me look elsewhere.

Martin Parrott

Dell, IBM, Sager, To****a (not misspelling)!

I have owned Sagers off/on Since 1994, Thinkpads have been my primary notebooks since 1997, I ordered a To****a ounce, and I own Dell 7500 and 8100 notebooks.

I currently have a Dell 8100, Thinkpad A21p, A30p, A31p, and a Sager 8600.

I would NOT buy a To****a. If it breaks, it is your PROBLEM.

Dell builds a nice laptop and their support is top notch.

Thinkpads are the BEST build. I don't know how their support is because none of the 8 Thinkpads I have ever owned has broken (including the ones I have given to my 10 year old daughter to use as a game console)!

Sagers have gotten much better over the years. It used to be you saved a couple thousand $$$$ and the door hinges, etc fell off. Well, the 8600 is a very WELL, NICE build machine. I have had mine since early November and it has been my primary machine.

When I travel, I still use my Thinkpad A31p because of:

1) Smaller,
2) Works with my Extrovaya external battery.

Hope this helps.

Happy Holidays,

Shane

I haven't had to deal with them in any cases yet. What I would suggest doing for people who are unsure to get it or not is to wait. You have 11 months form the purchase to buy the extended warranty. The cost of the extended warranty will be based on the original purchase price and you can get it 30 days before your 1 year from Sager ends. At that time, you will have been around to see what people think of it.

I am in the same boat as the one who started this thread. I can't make my mind up on which Lappy to buy.

I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 that is about 4 years old. It works great except the screen blanks out and I have to keep touching a button to bring it back. This started after my 3 year warrenty was up. I had a few problems with the Dell and when I contacted Tech support they where great. I sent the Dell back 1 time to have some hinge covers replaced and also a plastic piece had broke off. I got it back in 2 days so my experience with Dell customer service has been good.

The difference in price for what you get with Dell VS Sager is what keeps me from getting a 8200 from Dell.

Seems that the Sager has alot more bang for the buck. I really appriciate these forums as a way to help me make up my mind.

lol...I have the same dell laptop as you. It's been pretty durable for the past few years and the one time I did have a problem was when I spilt coke all over it and it ruined the screen and keyboard It was suppose to cost about 500 or so to fix when I asked for the estimate but somehow I got it back without being charged so I have no complaints about their service

I've already decided that my replacement machine will be a sager. It tends to suit my needs the best (power and affordability). My current dilemma is deciding between the 5660 or 8886 line. I still have a few months before I actually purchase it so I'll be able to see how each evolves before I make my decision.

I don't own a sager but I have this 8886 and I can tell you right now that it does not look to be cheaply made. I have had it on for a loooong time and I've moved it around the house and I've multitasked, etc... It held up without a single problem. There is no part of the lappy where you can push in the plastic like on other laptops. This lappy was doing heavy duty LAN gaming for like 5 hours straight today and it had no problems with heat. I wish I could have had a sager a long time ago so I could try the philips warranty, but of course for that to happen I would have had to have a problem, lol. I can't draw a definite conclusion after only a few days, but if these fews days are any indication (you can find out what happens during my days in the review section, lol), then I'm confident I would not have used the warranty besides accidents. Because of the possibility of accidents, I agree that a better idea of the phillips warranty would be necessary. Hopefully someone on the forums will have had experience with them (and hopefully good ones). Good luck to all!

LOL when I got the Dell I told myself that the screens can't get much bigger(Mine is 14") that the video card is great for gaming(it is a 8 meg ATI) and that 3 grand was not to much to pay for a laptop!

I love the pace of Technology!

That's exactly what I thought...lol I got the 15" and when I had my 8MB card and played some games like quake on it I was ooing and ahhing all the time. 3k seemed like a bargain at the time for such a powerful machine

16" is large and I can't imagine it getting much larger. A 17" with a border around it would be immense. If anything 16" will probably be the max and the only thing that will improve after that is the LCD technology (resolution, brightness...etc)

The resolution is actually approaching the limit to the human eye... I don't imagine it going much further, lol. And if you get a screen any bigger than 16 inches, then the lappy is gonna be HUGE, lol. I love the 8886 screen personally.