I purchased my Mitac 8050 from RJTech about a month ago and did not want to post a review until I've used it extensively. Since there are many other Mitac 8050 reviews out there, I will mention a few of the points that I think are more important.
The Bad
1. The touchpad is poorly placed. It it located a bit to the right of the space bar. I use my mouse normally, but if I use the touchpad and type, the lower part of my thumb will hit the touchpad and the mouse pointer will "click." I know the Synaptics program has a sensitivity option to try to help this. It does help but it's not enough.
2. The heat is noticeably hot (with no programs running to help). The left side of the keyboard (where the CPU and GPU are located) is where my palm starts to notice it. Below the laptop is even worse. It is too hot to put on mylap and if I touch it with my bare skin, I can only handle a few seconds. To fix this, I first installed SpeedswitchXP. It throttles the CPU to around 598 mhz when I run most of the programs on my computer. Also I have removed the blue mesh and replaced it with Artic Silver. The AS helps to a point where you can actually notice it. After these two things, it is "better" but not to a point where I'd be comfortable.
3. The fan is loud to a point where in a quiet room it would be annoying. It only comes on for about 10-15 seconds and then stops. Sometimes I think to myself that I would rather have it on for a longer time and dissipate more heat instead of it coming on only for a short period time with shorter intervals. I noticed that there was still considerable heat after the SpeedswitchXP and the AS, so I determined that the heat was coming from the GPU. I wanted a laptop that could handle video games, but I do not play on a usual basis, so I underclocked the GPU/Ram through Radlinker. Normally, under normal web usage, etc. the fan would turn on after around 25-30 minutes. After I underclocked the settings to around 200mhz/168 mhz, this pushes that limit to around 40 minutes. I was excited. I could not underclock the RAM on my video card to anything lower than 168 or else artifacts will start appearing and dance across my screen. However, I proceeded to underclock my GPU to 81 mhz. This allowed my laptop to be on for around 1 hour until the fan first turns on. I will try lower settings later. Some people may disagree with what I do. However, since I play games about 2 times a week, this would suffice at least for me. It drastically helps in terms of heat and fan noise. I also set it to boot at these settings, so when I want to play a game all I have to do is set the current usage to the normal settings (and it will still boot at my underclocked settings the next time).
4. Already noted by most people, the battery life is short. I can probably get about 3 hours or so doing just regular things like web surfing, etc.
The Good
1. The wide screen is fantastic. View angles are great (as expected), even the vertical viewing angles are not that bad. Great colors. I love watching movies on it.
2. The sound is pretty good for a laptop (in the case where I'm not using headphones).
3. It looks really nice, although recently released laptops now look very similar to this design, which takes away from it being more unique.
4. It is pretty thin and light. For me the ~6 lbs. is not a problem at all, whereas more than that might be a too heavy.
5. Games run smooth!
Overall, I like the laptop even though it has a few issues. A lot of the initial issues that caused me a headache has been fixed or ameliorated. It is strange because I am a scientist but I do not feel a need to quantify here. For games, as long as it runs well I do not need to know what the FPS is. For heat, it's either hot, warm, etc. I did not monitor the CPU temperature. I do not measure the decibal level from the fan as well (loud is loud), although these would help other people understand (becaues my loud may not be that loud to someone else), but this is simply a review of my own opinions and how I personally feel about this laptop. Feel free to ask any questions and I hope this helps others.
The Bad
1. The touchpad is poorly placed. It it located a bit to the right of the space bar. I use my mouse normally, but if I use the touchpad and type, the lower part of my thumb will hit the touchpad and the mouse pointer will "click." I know the Synaptics program has a sensitivity option to try to help this. It does help but it's not enough.
2. The heat is noticeably hot (with no programs running to help). The left side of the keyboard (where the CPU and GPU are located) is where my palm starts to notice it. Below the laptop is even worse. It is too hot to put on mylap and if I touch it with my bare skin, I can only handle a few seconds. To fix this, I first installed SpeedswitchXP. It throttles the CPU to around 598 mhz when I run most of the programs on my computer. Also I have removed the blue mesh and replaced it with Artic Silver. The AS helps to a point where you can actually notice it. After these two things, it is "better" but not to a point where I'd be comfortable.
3. The fan is loud to a point where in a quiet room it would be annoying. It only comes on for about 10-15 seconds and then stops. Sometimes I think to myself that I would rather have it on for a longer time and dissipate more heat instead of it coming on only for a short period time with shorter intervals. I noticed that there was still considerable heat after the SpeedswitchXP and the AS, so I determined that the heat was coming from the GPU. I wanted a laptop that could handle video games, but I do not play on a usual basis, so I underclocked the GPU/Ram through Radlinker. Normally, under normal web usage, etc. the fan would turn on after around 25-30 minutes. After I underclocked the settings to around 200mhz/168 mhz, this pushes that limit to around 40 minutes. I was excited. I could not underclock the RAM on my video card to anything lower than 168 or else artifacts will start appearing and dance across my screen. However, I proceeded to underclock my GPU to 81 mhz. This allowed my laptop to be on for around 1 hour until the fan first turns on. I will try lower settings later. Some people may disagree with what I do. However, since I play games about 2 times a week, this would suffice at least for me. It drastically helps in terms of heat and fan noise. I also set it to boot at these settings, so when I want to play a game all I have to do is set the current usage to the normal settings (and it will still boot at my underclocked settings the next time).
4. Already noted by most people, the battery life is short. I can probably get about 3 hours or so doing just regular things like web surfing, etc.
The Good
1. The wide screen is fantastic. View angles are great (as expected), even the vertical viewing angles are not that bad. Great colors. I love watching movies on it.
2. The sound is pretty good for a laptop (in the case where I'm not using headphones).
3. It looks really nice, although recently released laptops now look very similar to this design, which takes away from it being more unique.
4. It is pretty thin and light. For me the ~6 lbs. is not a problem at all, whereas more than that might be a too heavy.
5. Games run smooth!
Overall, I like the laptop even though it has a few issues. A lot of the initial issues that caused me a headache has been fixed or ameliorated. It is strange because I am a scientist but I do not feel a need to quantify here. For games, as long as it runs well I do not need to know what the FPS is. For heat, it's either hot, warm, etc. I did not monitor the CPU temperature. I do not measure the decibal level from the fan as well (loud is loud), although these would help other people understand (becaues my loud may not be that loud to someone else), but this is simply a review of my own opinions and how I personally feel about this laptop. Feel free to ask any questions and I hope this helps others.
