Sager 9860 review - Page 3

i must be missing something but in the review i cant seem to find anything that mentions bluetooth. does this have built in bluetooth?

The bluetooth is not available yet, it will be available in December. All people that ordered the notebook with the internal wireless will have the option to upgrade to the Wireless/Bluetooth combo card for $49.00.

Guess I'll bite the bullet and pay $50 for the tv tuner

Maybe I'll hook it up for some PVR action.

Great review.. I'll be placing my order later this week.

Question, can we order some of the accessories at a later date seperately? Like can I order the tv tuner a few weeks down the road?

Is it going to be something that will be easy to upgrade yourself or am I going to have to send the computer in to get the upgrade.

i just priced one out I don't beleive i had to pay an extra 50 for the tv card it was already in the default config.

Sager has already stated that the TV tuner will not be user upgradeable. I will have to agree with them... it was a pain to remove and put back in... but me+screw driver=The win

well just placed my order, I am wondering how long this is going to take though.

A question on the TV tuner video input: Have you play-tested a console like PS2 or Xbox through the video input port? Is there any display lag or is it playable?

Thanks, I appreciate it. I've heard some video-inputs are perfectly playable, while others have a slight delay that makes it tough to play.

wow, the 9860 looks sweet. I'll probably get one around sometime next summer and hopefully a config will come out under $2500. On anandtech.com, they had an article with the Sager comparing GeForce Go 6800 and ATI's M28. It looked like the M28 beat out the Nvidia card. Any timetable as to when M28 will come out for sager?

In your review, you list the gpu at 250/600 stock. Is that 600 actual mhz, or 600 effective mhz (doubled).

edit:

Also, with the dj panel, can it read mp3s off of burned dvds as well as cdr without powering up? This would come in handy if i were to say back up my entire mp3 collection to a couple of dvds.

I'm interested in the Sager 9860 primarily for video editing using AVID Xpress Pro, After Effects, and Boris Red.

Could Luke or anybody comment on the following quote from the ExtremeTech review of the Geforce Go 6800?
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http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1714978,00.asp

"it's been widely reported on the web that nVidia's video processing engine is currently disabled in the current ForceWare drivers for the GeForce Go 6800. nVidia has been able to resolve the issues on the 6600 GT and 6200, but has yet to release a driver that fixes the video acceleration issues for the 6800. As it turns out, the mobile version of the 6800 has the same problem currently with video acceleration, so the review unit we received had video hardware acceleration disabled."

"nVidia's PureVideo Technology has a long list of features that include support for WMV and WMV-HD, as well as acceleration of high-definition MPEG-2 decoding."

"Given that the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra debuted over six months ago, it's surprising and disappointing that nVidia has yet to enable these features in its high-end GPUs. So far, nVidia hasn't provided a firm arrival date for a driver to address these issues in desktop and mobile versions of the GeForce Go 6800 GPU."
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Is this correct information?
How would this affect someone like me who is intent on using the 9860 as a portable video workstation rather than just as a gaming platform?

I didn't see the option in the Bios pictures... I'm guessing that it can't boot from the PCMCIA slot?

congrats to sager..this looks to me like great news...having the mention of sager on the nvidia website like that....even better...if you click on the link of their 'featured partners'....sager appears OVER Alienware!!!!!!!!!! nice...

let's see...i'm a little confused how the speed of the core clock on , my 8790 for instance...is set at over 400...but this one is set at 250, yet the 9860 seems to double my 8790's output! (grrr....hehehehe)...
i guess it must have more to do with the pipelines and architecture...etc...

i'm mostly impressed on the temperature tests you guys did.....nice that it does not get as hot as a lot of people (including myself) were thinking it was going to get....

and on a side note..eat your heart out dell fans who knocked sager for skipping the mr9800!

HDD Tests - Was Test Biased?

The tests and the results are as I would expect when unequal drives are compared. A more comprehensive test would be to test dual 60 GB 5,400rpm SATA drives to dual 60 GB 7,200rpms PATA drives. The increased arial density of the 80 GB drives reduces the transfer rate associated with the drive (regardless of the spindle speeds - rpm). So - is the SATA RAID-0 really faster than the PATA RAID-0 WHEN BOTH DRIVE SIZES ARE THE SAME? I still think that the 5,400rpm units would be slower if the test were not biased by using a mismatched configuration.

How about another test on this comparing "Apples to Apples".

Surface Temperatures - No 8790 Comparisons?

Too bad that the 8790 was not included as one of the "base line" units to be compared. I'd really like to see how much the temperature changed when compared to the unit that is in front of me. Maybe this test could include other new modules.