The BEEBSTER 8886 Review

The ultimate in reviewage (lol, in other words it will be long and cummulative).

Well, I have started. I opened the box and found one monster of a machine... I mean that both literally and figuratively. It is a beast. I pulled everything out of the box and noticed that it was well packaged and completely undamaged. The lappy itself is very sturdy, all of the buttons feel like they are attached and not like they're stuck on their with jello, lol. They all feel good to the touch and the keyboard is just amazing. I will have to get used to the del key being down by the spacebar, but I can live with that :-) I use that key a lot, so I will get used to it quickly. I have the lappy up on my cooling mod, which fits it well. I first tried putting in a music cd just to try listening to it without the computer being on. I found this function to be quite nice. I turned the on switch for it on the audiodj and put in the cd, then I hit play and voila! The speakers were VERY loud compared to my own lappy's speakers, but, as with all laptop speakers, they were lacking in
bass. Then I plugged in my Windowsxp cd and turned on the computer. It was a nice feeling :-) The sounds that came from the computer at that point were varied as it ran through the POST. There is a lot to load up on this machine. I got into the windows installer after a little while. It had to load all of the drivers from the cd first. I then formatted the main hard drive and began the install.

Up until this point, the hard drive had not made any major noises... I heard a slight clunk every once in a while, but it was only noticeable when I put my head down by the keyboard. The fan came on for probably 30% of the time during the driver loadup because the processor was flying along with a bunch of work to do. It was a nice hand warmer :-) As far as its loudness... Well, it sounded like a fan, lol. My current laptop makes the same noise... But the 8886 has a huge vent on the side and so you can hear it a little more. The power cord, though, did make more noise when its fan(s) came on. They were somewhat startling :-) I put that down on the floor though and haven't heard from it since. Once it started formatting, I didn't hear much from the fans in the lappy itself at all.

The screen... Wow. The screen. Lol, I set my two lappies next to each other, mine is a 15inch SXGA+ at 1400x1050. The 8886 is a 15.7 inch SXGA at 1280x1024. My gosh is it HUGE. I thought that there wouldn't be much plastic framing around the screen in order to fit it, but there is plenty of room for holding it. Plus, did I say wow yet? If you want to know how big it is and you have a 15 inch screen, take a ruler and measure .7 inches from the top right corner of your screen diagonally and pretend the screen extends that far vertically and horizontally. It has the same viewing area as most 17 inch CRTs (LCDs are measured in viewing area, CRTs usually are otherwise if I'm not mistaken, mine was at least).

I will bring reports to you guys as often as I possibly can :-) I'll do new things with it every day and just keep a log of it on my other lappy, lol. I've got to go now though, unfortunately there are other things to do that aren't computer-related. Blah. :-)



OK, it's later. I installed windows XP pro, it was a lot faster with the install than my current lappy. There were noises coming from the hard drive, I couldn't tell which one at first, and it sounded like something rubbing, lol. I eventually got Intel Application Accelerator installed and changed the settings for both hard drives to Maximum Performance. The sound muted immediately after I changed the setting for the toshiba hard drive. Phew.

Alrighty, so I went through the driver installation in the order given by Adam in another thread, and it worked beautifully. I took my time with it and investigated options. I also installed Service Pack 1 right before installing the USB2 controller. I will try something USB2 later and something firewire when I can get my hands on it. The lappy has had no trouble with heat whatsoever. I've been multitasking like all getout, lol. I installed 3 programs at once at one point, and it ran like a beauty. I've been copying files from cds and installing and updating and I even accidently connected it to my lappy when they got within infrared range. They both made a spiffy sound and asked if I'd like to transfer files, lol. I've typed on the keyboard and it was excellent. Actually the size of the palm rests are great and they are smoothly rounded (unlike my lappy, lol, where I get lines on my wrists that make it look like I was trying to slit them after I type for too long).

I have set all of the settings I wanted to set, including putting the page file completely on the hard drive where windows is NOT, lol. I have that luxury because I have two hard drives. Putting them on separate partitions will not help, so it wouldn't be worth the time. I installed the tv tuner program as well, and I found it to be just incredible. I don't have much experience with tv tuner programs, so that will involve a lot of exploration before I am ready to do a detailed review, but all I know is I opened it and I was able to watch all of the open air channels and use the remote to do it all. I saw part of ER :-) lol, it was great! (The tv tuner, I mean; ER is cool too though). I am going to run benchmarks and the like later and write reviews of that. Because I am on dialup, I will probably only be able to browse the threads that I am writing, so I apologize, but I trust that the members of this forum will all help anyone who shows up just because it's an awesome place :-) My parents were so impressed with the 8886 though... It is hard to miss. It dwarfs my lappy in all aspects: performance related and size related. I love it :-)

I installed Norton Antivirus on there as well as a number of apps that I install on any computer I use (winrar, realone, media player 9 beta, acrobat reader, etc). I have a barrage of demos and games that I intend to try and to compare with my desktop system after I have its graphics card installed. My desktop is a 1.4 Ghz P4 w/ 256 RDRAM and a 45 gig 7200 rpm hard drive. It will have the Radeon 9000 with 128 DDR by tomorrow. I realize that it has less than half of the hardware capabilities in processor and ram, but keep that in mind when I compare them. I will also be comparing to my friend's desktop: 2.26Ghz P4, 512 RDRAM PC800, 7200 rpm hard drive, Nvidia GeForce4 ti4200 w/ 128 DDR. We'll see how it fares against them.

I also got on the internet on dialup with no problem. I signed on at 44kbps whereas most other computers in this house don't sign on past 28.8 because of our crappy phonelines, lol. While typing, I find that my own lappy has trouble with the spacebar because I type really quickly and it just doesn't sense it when I hit the spacebar but this computer has yet to skip a space. And wow is the FIR useful! It was so convenient because just now I forgot to transfer all of my "Favorites" for IE to the sager, so I just moved my lappy near the sager and selected the folder and sent it, it was sent in under 5 seconds. Yeah, 115kbps isn't fast, but it's good for small files. I didn't have to put anything on a disk, I didn't have to burn anything on a cd, I didn't have to plug in my crossover cable, which isn't here at the moment anyway. Soo, I like it.

There are a few things that I need to mention, though. One, I don't have a memory disk for the mp3 player. Adam forgot to send it with the lappy and he was the one who emailed me and told me about it, lol, before I even noticed, and he even offered to send it, but I told him not to because he's already done an incredible amount so far. I will describe the mp3 player physically as small and actually pretty nice looking. It comes with all sorts of accessories (USB2 cable, a leathery pouch, earphones, etc.). I like it :-) Also, just so Adam is aware, I am missing one of the covers for the PCMCIA slots, I'm assuming Adam just didn't put it on there and you have it (I hope, lol). One last thing... The switch that is normally supposed to turn off my screen when I shut it doesn't work... not because it is broken, but because I don't seem to have an option in the power options to turn off the screen. It just says shut down or do nothing... My lappy has a third option to turn off the screen which I really like... Any idea why this is so? I will look into it and let everyone know if I find out.

The build quality is excellent, though. It looks extremely professional and just plain slick. I love typing on it because my wrists feel great on the smoothness, lol. Anyways, it's time to get to gaming. I'll write more later!

I am going to run benchmarks and games over the next while and I'll post the results nightly or so. Hope this is of help to everyone! Have a great day!

Ok, yeah, definitely annoying how that got posted with the formatting... I'll try and fix that somehow.

Ahh, much better :-)

I will try and find a way to verify that this has 16 megs cache, but I am almost certain that it does. Also, pretty much any 7200 rpm hard drive will be faster than any 5400 rpm hard drive. The cache helps with some things, but consider that the write speed from the cache to the drive is not very high and that when you install or copy things to or from the drive, you will want sustained rates (and you will be doing it with things bigger than 16 megs, lol). Sustained rates depend on the ATA interface. I can give you more specifics if you need them :-) Hope that helped!

There is a periodic thumping sound that actually comes out of the speakers on this... It sounds like a fast heartbeat, lol, and it mutes when you turn off the speakers. I believe another member of this forum heard the same thing at some point... I will definitely have to look into it. Actually, the sound has actually stopped ever since I took the page file off of the main hard drive and put it on the second one... I guess it helps the toshiba one to have something to do constantly? lol, again, I will have to look into it more. It doesn't make sense because if anyone with one hard drive hears this, then what's up? I'll keep everyone posted as always :-)

Default settings with powerstrip on the 8886 are 170 memory and 250 engine. The 3dmark score at this clock speed and with the drivers that come on the cd was 6842. The benchmark was actually fun to watch :-) What kills it is the multiple lighting scenarios. It's still an excellent score, though, considering the low default clock rate. I will do more extensive stuff with this over the weekend, including different drivers and different clock speeds. For now, with the same drivers and a memory setting of 180 and an engine setting of 280, I got 7315. To compare, my lappy (the configuration of which I'm sure everyone knows by now, lol, it's got an M7) got a 3446. This is all done with 3dmark2001se on all of the standard default settings. Excellent scores!

I installed WinDVD, worked like a charm. Actually, first I watched Conan O'Brian on the tv tuner because they had Patrick Stewart on the show (Star Trek Nemesis comes out tomorrow... Woohoo!). Anyway, I recorded the interview, about 10 minutes, with the tuner at NTSC resolution (720x480) and at the max bitrate for everything. My gosh, the hard drive didn't even look like it budged, lol. It just wrote every once in a while and when I hit stop it asked for a filename and it saved it. The file was 250 or so megabytes. Then I played that on WinDVD, cuz it was an mpeg2. Sweet :-) I like it!

My gosh, installing games is even fun on this thing :-) It's SOOO fast! It opens batch files in no time and unzips huge installation files in a flash compared to my lappy and to any desktop I've seen. That's just so sweet! I will report on gameplay next.

Well holy cow. This thing loaded up the biggest battlefield 1942 map there is in under 15 seconds.... WHOA! My lappy and most desktops take a full minute at least! Not to mention I have every possible setting to the MAXIMUM possible except the resolution is at 1024x768x32. Everything else, graphically and with the audio, is to the max. 64 channels. I played and there was not a single flicker. The graphics card is not overclocked or anything. I even hit escape to go to the menu and it literally just came right up... I know it sounds stupid to say that, but for those of you who have played this game, you know that it takes a heck of a long time to exit to the menu, lol, especially during gameplay... I am so impressed it is insane.

Ok, even more impressed... I just established a network connection over infrared (yes, I know, slow), and I played battlefield over lan! Lol, I hosted on the 8886 and joined on my lappy, and it worked great! The ping averaged around 50, lol, that's better than with many internet games even with high speed connections... 115kbps isn't all that slow in a direct connection... It's about 14.5KBps (kilobytes), which isn't great of course, but it's decent for gameplay if it's just with one computer. I'm glad I tried that, lol, now I can play with my brother without a crossover cable. I don't have a router or hub or anything, just a $10 crossover LAN cable that is not at my house at the moment but will be soon. Lol, anyways, time for sleep! Goodnight!

Well, I'm on the dialup on my lappy this morning and wow is it slow... and I don't mean slow for dialup, I mean slow compared to the sager. I've had to hit refresh about 8 billion times to get a page to come up... I suppose something in my settings is smacked up, but on both lappies I have iolo systemworks and it is set to optimize the connections for 56k... Glad to see the sager runs well on dialup :-)

As far as the looks are concerned... WHen you first see it it will look quite thick. Actually, it always looks thick :-) But that is not to say it does not look good. It is packed with things, and it is easy to see that from looking at it. THe silver highlights give it a nice look as well. The screen is gorgeous and the keyboard layout and touchpad placement are both excellent. Personally, I love it. The screen is a bit thick as well, but there is a cool little Sager logo in silver on the back and it looks pretty sweet as well. The audiodj gives it more functionality as well as more silver, and the balance between black and silver is, IMO, an attractive one.

Also, I did mean to make it clear that this is a promo unit and the few faults that I did find were, as Adam said, as a result of it being used and him forgetting to include minor things, lol, not anything that would happen from the factory. The computer has incredible functionality and possible uses, most of which I will try and comment on during the course of this long review :-)

Definitely noticing an increase in speed of application loading. I can see that WindowsXP is adapting to the hardware and starting to utilize it more efficiently. Boot times are also getting smaller. I plan on getting a lot of stuff done this weekend, it should be fun :-) I've been playing battlefield and going through the usual areas where computers get choppy or skip frames... I have yet to see any :-) This graphics card is incredible. I love the contrast on the LCD for gaming as well. All of the colors and textures on battlefield appear so lifelike!

I worked on installing the graphics card and windowsXP on my desktop today (after I went and saw Star Trek Nemesis... WHOA awesome movie, lol). After I was all finished, I put my two lappies next to each other and established an infrared connection... then I used my crossover cable and connected the 8886 to my desktop. I then ran a battlefield server nondedicated on the sager and my brother played on the desktop and my father played on my lappy :-) I, of course, played on the 8886. It was just spectacular. The machine is seriously built to handle any situation it comes in. Listen to music, on or off, or on an mp3 player. Watch tv, vcr, dvd, vcd, anything, record it, play games, do it all. Work, play, however you want. :-) And yes, I will play games other than battlefield, I just haven't installed others yet because I have been working on the desktop :-) More soon!

I hooked this baby up to dialup for my dad earlier and he did some surfing, loved it. Then he started listening to some streaming audio broadcast he wanted to hear, and as he was doing that, I opened up battlefield and disabled sounds in it, and he played around in battlefield while he listened. Not a flinch in the system. It was quite nice to see. Earlier I tried everything to get the system to slow down in the game and I put everything to max that was possible to change in game. I had 64 computer players and as much of the system resources to the AI as possible. It flinched a little bit at the beginning as it loaded the players, but by after about 5 seconds into the game it was all cleared up again. :-) Behold the power of the Sager.

THe keyboard gets a lil warm when the computer stays on for dozens of hours straight, lol, but I kinda like the warmth. It's not hot, it's warm. THe rest of the computer does well when it's moved while on or anything of the sort. The screen is kinda heavy so when you close it you need to be careful that it doesn't slam (don't just push it down and let it go, in other words, lol). But when it's open, it doesn't shake around at all and it's quite sturdy. Not to mention big and bright and brilliant. I watched this screen for many many hours straight and got nothing in terms of headaches or eye strain. At its native resolution, it is PERFECT for me. It looks just plain good. I'd been using it to download things from online for my dad because it's the fastest computer here for dialup. lol, fastest in terms of everything, but hey.

More to come... sorry I haven't been responding in other areas of the forums. My gosh I can't stand dialup... Once you are on high speed, you can't go back. Not to mention I have to keep the phone line free. Blah. Otherwise I'd be on here doing this constantly, lol. I'll try and make up for it in this review though. Hope it helps people!

I tried out the burner here just now. It's the older 16x model. For experiment's sake, I put in an old crusty cd-rw that I knew was full of error sections and was limited to a write speed of less than what the burner is capable of. I used nero, and nicely the burner limited its speed to the read speed that the cd-rw is limited to, and subsequently it limited its burning speed to the limit of the cd-rw that I burned the copy onto. The errors showed up in the log as unrecoverable errors, so now I have a cd without the smacked up parts so that computers actually read it without freezing. Lol, so, the burner I am happy with. :-) Just like the rest.

I just played some GTA3... I put everything to maximum and the resolution to native at 32 bit color. It ran beautifully during the movies (which, on my lappy, run like absolute crap if I don't turn the resolution down to 640x480x16 and the view distance to none). THe framerate from a visual judgment held steady and wasn undetectable until I got into the busy part of the city, and then it must have dropped below 30 on a few occasions because I could "see" the frames. I must admit, at these settings it is amazing that it held that well, lol. GTA3 is a power hungry game because it was built for a pure graphics system. Glad to see the sager is handling it well. I actaully stopped playing that game because it looked and played pretty far below par on my lappy, so I'm happy to be able to resume playing with the 8886 :-)

Everything is finished with my desktop, I love it now that it has XP and the new graphics card in it. It played everything well, but didn't play Battlefield1942 anywhere near as well as the 8886 did. Granted, lol, it had half the processing power and 1/4 the RAM (at twice the speed, PC800 as opposed to PC266). But it's got the 7200rpm hard drive, and twice the video memory with the Radeon 9000. I will get a 3dmark on it later for comparisons. I figure someone prolly has close to one of the systems I will benchmark so they can get comparisons. :-) Today I will be installing games galor and getting reviewage on them with the 8886. I will use FRAPS to get my fps for each of them just so they are uniform. Keep in mind that it won't show above the refresh rate of the monitor, so if it is at 60, that means it could be anywhere above 60 fps, lol. Actually, that is based on what happened to someone else in the forums... I'll see what happens when I use it. By the way, the 8886 has been on since yesterday around noon, so 26 hours with constant use, and it's doing great. I had it doing stuff all night (burning, etc). Not a single error :-)

Alrighty, first, of course, since it's already installed, is battlefield 1942 v1.2. WIth all settings to max, both audio and visual, 29 computer players and I, in the biggest map on Battlefield if I'm not mistaken (el alamein), and resolution at 1024x768x32, the framerate begins around 45 and over the course of the first minute rises steadily to 80. I suppose the computer players are being loaded and such. When huge explosions and such happen, the fps drops to around 55 and then rises back up to 78 or so. That depends on how close the explosions are, of course. THe lowest it got was 40 during an explosion for an instant. It actually got up to 100 at some point, so obviously the 60hz thing didn't matter with battlefield. If anyone wants certain settings or scenerios tested for this (or any) game, please post and I will do my best to accomodate.

Alright, GTA3... Wow. This game eats resources for breakfast, poorly designed in my opinion. They didn't change it to utilize PC resources well. But anyways, with all settings to max at native resolution and 32 bit color (trails off, frame sync and limiter off, view distance max, audio to default except the dynamic acoustic thing off), I got about 15 to 20 fps in the city where there was major action. On the outskirts it held around 25 to 30. It got kinda choppy in the city when I got in areas with lots of people and cars and sounds. So, I turned the resolution to 1024x768x32 (which is the best resolution for gameplay IMO), the fps started around 30 and then jumped to 60 as I got into the game. In city where there was tons of action it held around 40. Glad to see it was just the resolution that gave the card too much to do, lol. I don't have the update patch for this game which I imagine has fixes for resource hog junk (just like the BF1942 1.2 patch did). But, the game played very well. I almost couldn't stop playing... But then I remembered I have No One Lives Forever 2 the demo... WHOA is that insane with graphics... Off we go to that!

It's the second demo with 4 levels. WIth the default max settings (it give some settings listed for three levels of detail, the max one puts everything to max, lol, and requires 2ghz, 128megs of video ram, etc), it plays BEAUTIFULLY. It is seriously one of the most realistic and just plain eye candy type games. You shoot someone with a cross bow and if they're by a wall they get hung up against it... and then you pull out the arrow and they fall forward against you and then to the ground. Wow. lol, and the 8886 played it with unyielding precision. The water looks so incredible that you just want to jump in it, lol. All elements of nature react to you and the game engine, despite its complexity, does not even make the 8886 flinch. Framerates at these settings were great. I got as low as 45 and as high as 100. There are some screenshots I took that hopefully will get posted up here thanks to the generous people here :-) The size might not be accurate, depending on whether he changes it, but it looks pretty nice. It shows how accurate the game is with arrows stuck in people and most especially the water and nature rendering... WOW.

I decided to also take a pic of my favorite scene in battlefield. I cut out a piece just so it would be less to send over dialup. You can see that antialiasing is not on and it is not at native resolution because of the pixelized lines (the flag mainly) in the distance, but you can also see how great the scene looks without anisotropic filtering... The sampling for the textures in the distance is excellent! Hope you all like this and thank you to the picture poster (vanfanel) :-)

Alrighty, well, I'll keep working, got possibly Mafia, Medal of Honor Allied Assault and Spearhead, Soldier of Fortune 2, and Freespace 2. I've also got lots of demos I can do reports on. I'm going to start doing more hardware writing too. I'll do some games and some of everything else. My friend came and used the 8886 today and was thoroughly impressed, lol, just when I told him the list of its abilities... He loved the screen and keyboard for gaming. I have an optical mouse hooked up to it so that definitely works out well. It's on my cooling mod and I've added an antenna to the mod now so I can watch tv :-) I recorded some Conan O'Brian a couple of night back I think I told you all. Anyways, more to come! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!


Also, in response to your question tdn327, I do have a burner with the 8886. I have done some major burning already and earlier while I was burning I played No One Lives Forever 2, lol, in fact those screenshots came right after I finished burning (by those screenshots I mean the ones that will hopefully be posted here soon). It did not affect gameplay or burning speed in the slightest. :-) Most of the programs get loaded up into RAM when you have as much ram as this system does (a gig), and so the hard drive can be reserved for the burner. I cannot say the same for my laptop or my desktop though, lol, the 8886 is the only one I'd feel truly comfortable multitasking with. I might have mentioned, but the other day my dad listened to streaming audio from the internet and played Battlefield1942 at the same time with no effect to either program. The 8886 handles beautifully in all situations I have put it through thus far. As far as battery life, I was planning on doing a test of that soon as well. I will try and post it tomorrow night since you asked :-) Hope this helps!

Glad to hear it! :-) Yes, thank you vanfanel! I am glad the shots turned out well. The water looks incredible on the last one, and I love the hanging dead person and the arrow in the side of the other lady. :-) Lol, I mean I love the graphics of it of course. More to come!

Just thought I'd mention that the viewing angles for the screen are pretty good. I have this 8886 up on my cooler mod, and that puts the screen at eye level with me... I have the screen set 90 degrees with the surface of the table and it looks perfect. If you tilt it either way past 10 to 15 degrees, it starts looking kinda "foggy", and that happens with all LCD screens. Viewing angles from up or down are TERRIBLE, lol. Side to side on the 8886 is remarkable though. My brother watched me play a game from almost completely sideways to the computer and could see the guys that were far off in the distance. Of course past a certain point the shading that happens with LCDs starts to kick in... prolly 50 or 60 degrees either way. I am quite happy with it though :-)

Great experience just now. I started copying an entire cd to the hard drive (the nonwindows hard drive) and I decided I'd load up battlefield using a no-cd exe and I loaded it and played and there was NO difference in performance. It was so sweet... I don't have to worry about things that take long because I can just do something else, like game, meanwhile :-) I am in the process of installing all of the games that I have in order to run through a review of each in terms of performance with the 8886. Then I'll load up other drivers and try benchmarking with them.

Ok, another great report from the 8886... I unzipped a 450 megabyte zip file while playing battlefield :-) Not flinches. It showed network connection problems for my brother for an instant and then all was perfect again. Keep in mind that with battlefield I am running these reviews as a server... The 8886 is serving, coordinating 29 computer players... and with this latest report, I was playing with my brother over LAN and that means the 8886 was also sending all of this info to him and receiving all of his information. Not to mention right now I am typing this as battlefield is minimized and still running (my brother is shooting people up across the table from me), and the zip file is still unzipping, but at no less of a rate than it did when it was doing it alone. Wow, seriously, I don't know how I'm going to go back to my computer... I will be so used to having everything running at once, lol.

One other thing that some people might overlook... Keyboards generally have a limit to how many keys can be held down at a time. My laptop only allows like three, so when I fly in battlefield it is impossible to use the keyboard because I have to make sure I don't hold more than three keys or else the fourth and on won't respond. On the 8886, I found the limit to be 5 as opposed to three... I think that is awesome and that it indicates a higher quality keyboard and system. Just thought I'd mention that because some people don't take that into account. Yes, you don't generally use that many keys at once, but I figure it counts for something symbolically if nothing else.

I just installed tribes2, I had never played it before... Kinda took some getting used to. Apparently it's an older DOS game but with all of the sweet features of new games. I used a heavily modded version, lol, with like 300 maps. It played without any problems whatsoever on max settings for all. It played like a movie :-) I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought because I couldn't find any vehicles (I had heard it was like BF1942 and it had vehicles) but after several maps without any, I quit and now I'm starting on Medal of Honor Allied Assault and then Spearhead. I will bring back fps reports and the like. :-)

Medal of Honor AA looks GREAT. It is the good ol' Quake engine, but quite optimized. All settings at maximum with resolution at native and 32 bits. It looks quite good :-) I'll just take one screenshot and have it posted (thanks vanfanel) and let it speak for itself. The game itself runs perfectly just like bf1942. The framerate hovered between 45 and 75, with more towards the upper than the lower. It hit 45 and 50 only when I looked at things that had little parts moving around (trees, lol; like in the screenshot). But keep in mind this is at native resolution, which is HUGE and quite resource intensive for gaming. The real test will come with UT2k3. I don't know anything about mafia, and Soldier of Fortune might show off more of this lappy's capabilities. Limitless thus far :-) Enjoy the screenshot!

Ok, WOW. MOHAA Spearhead is just plain sweet. I started off in a bomber as a parachuter and we parachuted into Normandy and I got into artillery guns and took out trees and soldiers alike... It was so insanely realistic and with everything to the same settings as Allied Assault (which means a lot of pressure on the graphics cuz of the high native resolution) it held fairly well on fps. I took one screenshot during an explosion, lol, I set a charge on a canon to destroy it and I thought it would make a nice screenshot. Now with all of that happening, the fps dropped to 30, which is still higher than most movies. It usually was around 45 to 55 and it went a lot higher when there was no action (which was rarely, lol, the game and the computer were both remarkable). The screenshot was taking right in the middle of the explosion, so imagine all that you see there flying past you, lol. The fire looks pixelized, but believe me, in action it was SO real, lol. The M9 does a great job to say the least. I am so excited from playing just a few minutes, lol, and I am kinda irritated because I have more games to install but I hate leaving eacho one behind. I'm going to have to play each one later on for extended periods of time. Next game: Soldier of Fortune 2 Double Helix!

Alrighty, well, it is ok. The game played excellently, but it's not worth a screenshot. All settings were at max, native resolution, 32 bits, etc. If anyone has played Urban Terror (the mod for quake), it's just like that but with professional graphics. They are pretty nice, but not spectacular. I kept framerates above 75 the whole time. Not much to say except for that, lol, so now on to Unreal Tournament 2k3...

UT2k3 was pretty hefty on the resources... Let's just say I went through all of the settings and put it all to max. Resolution was at native and 32 bit color. I would be afraid to put the resolution that high on a game like this... I loaded the most open and graphics requiring level I could find and the fps went between 15 and 35 depending on the action going on... To be honest though, even at 15, I didn't noice choppiness or skipped frames like I do on other games when the settings are too high for the system... It played beautifully. The picture with the lower fps showing was on native resolution. I then took the resolution down to 1024x768 and kept everything else the same. I took that screenshot looking to the furthest point on the map with action and the frames barely dropped towards 30. That was awesome. :-) Plain and simple, the 8886 can game, lol. All of these games have shown it, and if I was any good at UT, I'd take this baby around and beat everyone up at it. lol, but anyways, those were the main games for review. I have a few others that I might include (Hitman2, Mafia, Alien vs. Predator 2, Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast) if anyone wants me to. Just lemme know and I'd be happy to :-) If I play them on here, I'll write about them though. UT2k3 played VERY well on here considering the load I put it under... I almost felt sorry for what the M9 was up against until I saw how it handled :-) So that's that, I'm going to bed now. More tomorrow!

Alrighty, the 8886 has been lan gaming all day, lol, it shows no signs of slowdown or anything after istalling all of those games and loading it up with programs. The battery tests come now. The first one involves just the lappy with the no power saving bios setting where it stays at FULL SPEED. The battery starts at 100%, and it will be playing a divx (mpeg4) version of The Matrix in WinDVD at full screen. No external peripherals are connected, and its speakers are set to half volume. It lasts 1:24 til the low battery signal. It lasts til 1:32 when the second warning comes on and the movie playback stops. I played it for another lil while before it started a constant beeping and flashing of the battery light. Lol, I ran it down completely. I got to just past 1:38 and then the computer shut off automatically. It stopped beeping after a few second actually. Keep in mind that I played this off of a cd, so it was using the drive just as it would with a dvd. It beeped on and off until it died, lol. I guess it's good to warn the user. I am going to time how long it takes to charge it back up while the computer is on. During the charge, I had the lappy on and I was either typing this or playing a game, lol, and the external USB mouse was plugged in as well as the external powered speakers and it was a lan game, just to give you an idea of specifics.

As far as the bios is concerned, you can control pretty much anything you'd like. I love the bios... my lappy has a crappy bios where you can see the date and time and that's about it, lol. This bios has settings for tons of stuff... You can turn off the low battery beep that I described in the previous paragraph. You can also set it to not turn on numlock during the boot up, for example. That's a small example to illustrate just how specific it gets. I went into the bios and changed it to the default high power saving mode (where it goes to half speed and shuts off the hard drives every time they aren't used for 5 seconds. In the other mode, the hard drives are shut off if they aren't used for 10 minutes, and in both cases you can customize how long that time is. :-)

Anyways, I'm going to post this now because I have to get online anyway. I will write more later, especially about the battery recharge time and of course about the battery longevity when on power saving mode in the bios. Have a great night everyone!

(PS: Thanks for the addition DW!)

Well I'm glad to hear it is helping someone :-) Thanks again vanfanel, and I like what you did for 56kers, lol. More to come as always!

The brightness settings on the first battery benchmark were at maximum. I love a bright screen, and the 8886 certainly provides. As far as viewing angle during the movie, it was somewhat limited as with all LCD screens. You have to adjust it so wherever you are sitting is within the range. It is about as limited as my own LCD on my laptop, which is about as good as any LCD gets (with movies it is especially important to get the full effects visually, which makes the viewing angles more strict than with regular computing). Also, the speaker settings at half were LOUD, lol, I could hear the movie in the kitchen (a few rooms down) at times. I'm glad that is the case, because my own lappy sucks with movies unless you have external speakers. You can't hear half of what is said. The placement of the speakers up front is nice for that too, as has been mentioned by PCTorque in his review.

Anyways, I just typed up a report on here and I've been typing up this review on here (and as you can see it isn't short), and I can say with confidence that I can sit and look at this screen for hours without a single bit of strain on my eyes. I have all font sizes and DPI and such set to normal and the resolution is on native, and it's easy to read, easy to see everything, and very nice and crisp. Not to mention I have plenty of room on the desktop to work with! My father commented on how nice the screen is on more than one occasion when he went from my SXGA 15 inch lappy screen to this one... 15.7 inches is MUCH bigger than 15, lol, without question. Movies look great on here, too.

Just something I thought I'd mention... After many hours of gaming, the keyboard on the 8886 gets kinda warm, but to be honest, it should not be taken as a problem at all. Consider what is packed into that frame and it's easy to see how the outside of the system can get hot... I actually prefer it that way because that shows that it is dissipating heat. It's the same situation as with the fans... hot air leaving the vents is not bad, lol, it's GREAT because it shows that heat is not trapped in there. Also, the heat that leaves the system is really not that hot compared to mobile laptops because the maximum temperature for the desktop processor is much lower than for mobile... Thus, the fact that it runs perfectly stable for several days constantly on and working shows that the heat dissipation systems are top notch.

Hehe, I just realized that I haven't used the disk drive yet. Well, I just did, and it works like any other disk drive :-) It's a little loud when reading this disk because most of the disks in my house are ancient and from when they first came out, so the magnetic film is going bad. Kinda funny, (actually not really), cuz files disappear at random when taking a disk from one computer to another. Aw well, it worked on here :-) That's about as difficult of a test as I can think of for the disk drive.

A word of caution about the battery now that I've done the first battery test... Recharging takes a LONG time when the computer is on. I started recharging at 6:30 and it is 1:30 in the morning now and the battery is at around 70% charge... Explanation: The power supply is enough to power the laptop, which already takes a TON of power, and the battery is a HUGE battery with 12 cells and a much bigger charge than most lappy batteries. Thus, it takes a long time to charge. My advice is to charge it while the computer is off. Tomorrow, I will play a movie on battery with the power saving setting on in the bios (half processor speed, hard drives shut off earlier) and get the times on that. After that, I will get the time on charging the battery with the laptop off. Consider the time for charging it with the laptop on to be prolly 10 hours... The laptop by itself takes up more power than prolly two laptops, lol, which is why an external battery such as the electrovaya is probably impractical. It has enough charge to make other laptops last an extra 6 hours, but other laptops don't use the power the 8886 does. At best, you'll get 2 extra hours out of a battery like that if it even works with the 8886... Consider also that it makes the computer think it's on ac, so that means the 8886 will run at full speed. If you are looking for a laptop that will run primarily on battery power, you may want to consider these things about the 8886. I want a desktop that I can move around without unplugging anything but the power cord (if that) and that has the full capabilities of a desktop. You can use it in the car (that review will come soon) and you can use it on battery for a while, but the machine simply isn't meant to be used like those thin and lights out there, lol. Thin and light lappy, thin and light performance. All things considered, I am very happy with the battery time on here... Glad Sager put in one of the macho batteries that could power a regular laptop for like 4 hours prolly, lol.

In any case, I just installed the new 6218 drivers on here for the M9... I will run a benchmark with the card clocked at the default speeds. The 3dmark was 6990, but I was dumb and I turned up the detail from halfway between fuzzy and sharp to all the way sharp when I installed the new drivers, lol, so I don't know how much you can compare that to the first benchmarks with the other drivers... I will turn it back to the same settings as with the first benchmarks tomorrow and get those results. I will probably also turn the clock speeds on the graphics card up a bit after the benchmarks and the battery tests just to see if the extra heat it handled well. So far, all heat is handled gracefully :-) Good night everyone!

Alrighty, time for the next battery test. For this one, all settings are set to default from the factory (the bios is set to take the processor to half speed, etc). The brightness of the screen is on its max, just as with the first test, and I'm playing The Matrix in divx format off of a cd... One main difference besides the processor speed and the hard drive shutting down earlier is that I have the newest 6218 drivers on here for the M9, I don't know if that will make any difference, but I thought I'd mention it for the sake of thoroughness. There are no peripherals attached and the speakers are at half volume. Here we go! Alrighty, it shut off after about 1:45 or so... I guess having the screen on full brightness takes the battery down a lot. I will have to run a test later with the screen on a lower brightness. The next battery test will not be a movie, it will be just general computing. The battery recharge time while the computer was off was around 2:45, which is excellent considering that the battery is so large and it only takes about an hour more to charge it than the battery lasts. To compare, my lappy has a MUCH smaller battery and it takes about an hour and a half to fully charge while the lappy is off, and it lasts about 1:45 playing a movie if you keep it running at its ac settings, which is basically how I ran the 8886 yesterday. The movie obviously showed no difference with the different processor speed... and actually now that I think about it, I have no way of knowing if that change actually occurred, because the difference in times could have been caused by the simple change in drivers... I expected it to last 2 hours. Hmm... I will get sisoft sandra on here and run a quick processor benchmark to see if it is indeed at half speed. Blah, I will have to download that... Maybe I'll just run the 3dmark on battery and see if there's a difference... I figure even if the processor doesn't have much bearing, it should still drop 300 or so points, eh? In any case, I'm very happy with the charge time while the computer was off... Now to see if the processor was actually running half of the time, lol. The thing about this type of power conserving system is that windows will still report a 2.8 Ghz processor, lol, cuz the processor is still at that speed. It's just running half as often. Hopefully I'll be able to tell from 3dmark... Nope, lol, can't. I got the same score as yesterday night, and when I put it on ac power and set that fuzzy-sharp slider back to half I got about 50 points higher. I will have to find a way to benchmark the processor, hopefully sandra isn't a big download, I can't remember if it is or not. I'll keep everyone posted on this.

Alrighty, well now I'm going to try something unorthodox (I suppose it is unorthodox, I've never read about it being done). I figure it is a great way to test several components at once. I am going to plug my playstation2 into the 8886 and play it. :-) I have an s-video to RCA video adaptor which I will use to get the PS2 plugged into the svideo in on the 8886. I will use the splitted from Adam to plug the audio into the audio line in on the 8886. Well blah, lol, my s-video adaptor doesn't fit into the port on the sager, it is specially made for my lappy. I guess I'll have to hold off on that test til I can borrow a friend's adaptor. I will do it at that point. I suppose one gripe I have is that I don't get an svideo to RCA adaptor with the 8886, and being that it has both in and out ports, it would be nice to have one for those times where the inputting or outputting system is still on RCA. However, Dell charges extra to get these cables, so I suppose it is fair that I should find my own :-) Nevermind that.

I suppose I should hold off on the next battery test until I verify the processor speed. I will get that done within the next day if I can download something for it and then I'll start up on audio and video input and output tests. :-) I'll prolly get on now and post this and look for something to download for my predicament.