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Sager 3790 vs (Uniwill) Xplorer S4-3200 - Page 2

post #21 of 142
12/11/04 at 2:32pm
So what ever happened to the actual review?
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post #22 of 142
12/13/04 at 3:15pm
Would have liked to see this review. Too bad it never happened!

I heard the 3790 only gets 2 hours on the 6 cell. This from speaking with Sager directly
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post #23 of 142
12/13/04 at 3:33pm
i know it takes Cyberpower a while to ship sometimes, is that whats holding up this review? please get it out!! i'd really like to hear what some people have to say about this lappy..

thanks
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post #24 of 142
12/13/04 at 9:21pm
Thread Starter 
Hi Everyone.. This experience has been a nightmare so far! I received the Sager 3790 on Monday, and got it going fairly easily with Windows XP. The hardest part was manually assigning the WiFi card new drivers from the Device Manager.

As I was installing the OS, I noticed the screen had multiple vertical lines of lit pixels... In other words, from the time that I turned the machine on, to the time the OS loaded and I told it to shut down, multiple, vertical, 1px-wide lines would run from top to bottom. I realized these lines appear and disappear according to how I adjust the tilt of the screen. When I push the screen or pull it towards me, I get random lines. After speaking with Sager within 1 hour of launching my complaint with their reseller (Discount Laptops--Outstanding company), I got a tech on the phone that believes it's an LCD issue. One thing I did notice is that the display blooms in a pinkish hue when you look at the screen off-axis from about 5-20+ degrees. I have had two other Sager laptops, and I've never experienced colored hues as side effects to looking at the screen. I am hoping the screen is just faulty and will get a new one promptly.

Now.. Regarding the XPlorer... I have been waiting for the arrival of it since 12/11/04, and CyberShop.com claims they do not know why the laptop did not ship out yet from their warehouse. I cannot get over this! I was hoping to have my review done already.... *sigh*

For those interested, I did play a few games of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, and thought I'd test the battery out in the meantime with the game pinning the 2GHz processor at 100%.

TEST: Battery
I ended up switching to battery with full brightness and no power management, and with the game running on full, I started at 11:50pm, and the laptop shut down at 1:20am. So basically, I got 1.5 hours out of the battery with the CPU running constantly at 100%.

TEST: Heat
The unit is unlike older Sagers in that all heat is now vented out the sides instead of pushed out the bottom. It appears there are two intakes that cool the graphics card and processor. When the unit is on a table and has slight clearance underneath from its built in stub legs, the unit operates with no real notice of excess heat. I know a lot of people talked about their left hands getting toasted, but this does a good job with that. However! If you sit the unit on your lap, or on any surface that can inhibit air flow and act as an insulator against the body, the unit starts cooking! When I played RCT3 on my lap for a bit, my left leg started burning up to the point I could not keep the unit on my lap any longer. In addition, that heat rose straight out the top and to my left hand! lol So if you're not on a table, you will experience significant heat.

TEST: Noise
The unit is remarkably quiet. I have an older 5620P (2GHz, 512, 40gb, ATI 7500) and the fan is fairly loud, because there's two of them pushing air out the bottom. With the 3790, the heat quietly blows out the side, and unless you are in a completlely silent room, it is difficult to notice the fan. I did notice that it turns on randomly, and I understand you can train the fan, but I didn't see any utilities in the BIOS editor that would allow me to "learn" fan styles.

TEST: Screen
The screen is very nice, compared to my 5620, which is also an SXGA screen. Over time, the screens fade in intensity, so when I sat the 3790 next to the 5620, the 3790 looked almost 50% brighter. The native mode that looks the best is 1680X1050. At that resolution, the text tends to be very small, but it is crisp. Any less of a resolution and you'll see anti-aliased screens as the card tries to average the display into the odd number of pixels.

Test: Heft
The unit was surprisingly slim to me, considering the amount of power it has. It is fairly light, weighing in at about 5-6 pounds.

I will do more formalized testing between the two units, but since you all have been so patient, I thought I'd throw out there what I could. I didn't go through the hassle of installing benchmark software yet because I've been preoccupied with this delivery nightmare... If any of you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know.

I really love the 3790 so far, but I also am dying to see how the Xplorer does with battery and an extra 128megs of video ram. I am wondering if the extra ram would truly matter if my processor is already pinned at 100%. I would think at this point the CPU is the bottleneck. Can any of you give any insight into this?

Thanks for your interest! More to come as the units re-arrive.
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post #25 of 142
12/14/04 at 12:36am
Thanks for the update Tycoon. Get a lap board for that heat. Both your laptop and your legs will appreciate it. Get a Laptop Desk 2.0, a piece of plywood or laminate, or even a baking sheet (really!).

Bummer about the screen. Keep us posted on everything.
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post #26 of 142
12/14/04 at 2:23am
or an xplorer, i got mine today and it dosn't get that hot, i ran C&C generals as fast as the computer would let me, it warmed up enough to notice but still very cool (it ran fast... the computer had me in 10-15 min, and i'm normaly fairly good at it) . i used it on battery installing stuff mainly off the internet but some from cd work as well i'm not sure of exact time but i would say about 2 hours 20 min, with brightness on high, not cpu/gpu throttling, not great but then again it only has a six cell battery.
It is almost silent with no cd and normal internet/office work (i had to put my ear to the laptop to hear it), my hard drive sometimes "clicks" when it starts to load but other hard dives would be different, same with the cd drive, it noisy for the first 5 sec ten fairly quite.
I have the 1200 x 800 screen it is good i would have preferedto have smaller text (my eyes can take it, more windows with less scrolling would have been my choice if i could have got it. but you would not be disipointed with the screen.

Anyone know if dead pixles can get better by themselves, cause i had one that was green/white all the time, but then it recovered, could it have been dead or just retarted?
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post #27 of 142
12/14/04 at 5:06pm
I agree with MrMsyvc about lap desks. I have this one from Targus:

http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=PA243U

and it's great. It's lightweight, folds up for portability, has enough space for a mouse if I want one, and has grooves underneath where the laptop sits to improve airflow. My old beater of a laptop gets really hot. But I can work just fine for hours with this.

Tycoon - I can't wait to hear about your review. I was just about set to buy the 3790 and now you've intrigued me with the Uniwill. I hope you get it soon!
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post #28 of 142
12/14/04 at 8:07pm
Thread Starter 
Good news, CyberPower claimed that the chips for the Xplorer were in demand and not available. My chip just came in this morning and they will upgrade my shipping for free and have it to me on Friday... Cool!

Alisa, do you have any questions that you want to know about between the two? Let me know by Friday...

Thanks,
Steve
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post #29 of 142
12/14/04 at 10:00pm

anxiously waiting comparison

I was decided on the 3790 but I stumbled upon a Bathalion 101 ML series which seems the same as the Uniwill you are talking about (see link). As for the Cyberpower website, it seems that they took this model off cause I can only see the 3000. Can anyone confirm if these are the same models. Because at ibuypower it seems substantially cheaper.


http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=134

The Uniwill model amazingly seem to be nicer and thinner than the 3790 which I already thought was super attractive.

My question would be battery. What type does this model use. I would have gotten the 3790 from discount laptops which offers a free 6 cell when getting the 12 cell (5 hrs)

Tyc00n, great news about them shipping your xplorer. hope to hear from you soon.
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post #30 of 142
12/15/04 at 12:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by urrutiaale
As for the Cyberpower website, it seems that they took this model off cause I can only see the 3000. Can anyone confirm if these are the same models. Because at ibuypower it seems substantially cheaper.


http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=134

.
I think the 3200 is the 3000. Smilepak's link on page 1 as well as those I Googled redirect to the S4-3000. If you config the Battalion to the same specs it's "only" about $100 cheaper.
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post #31 of 142
12/16/04 at 10:14am
Assuming the Aussie version is the same as the US, it appears that the Uniwill is clocked well below some of the other lappies with the same GPU.

398 core, 216 memory are the figures that were given.

This would explain the benchmarks.

Cheers

Steve
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post #32 of 142
12/16/04 at 9:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMsyvc
I think the 3200 is the 3000. Smilepak's link on page 1 as well as those I Googled redirect to the S4-3000. If you config the Battalion to the same specs it's "only" about $100 cheaper.
Yup. The S4-3000 is the S4-3200. It is call S4-3000 on one page, but S4-3200 on another. Strange. hehehe

This page it is called S4-3000
http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/home_notebook.asp

This page it is called S4-3200
http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/high...s43200.asp?v=d

At least it used to hehe But the URL still calls it 3200 eheh see above.

Exact Same Lappy between the two.

RJTECH.COM and IBUYPOWER.COM both sales this laptop.
EKM.COM also now carry them as well.

See clicky http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=54083
for more details
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post #33 of 142
12/16/04 at 9:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by smilepak
Nice thread Smiley. Uda INFO man. I subscribed.
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post #34 of 142
12/16/04 at 11:01pm
Buying from RJTech has been interesting...
I'd have gotten a system quicker if I bought from Alienware....
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post #35 of 142
12/17/04 at 3:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sfdoddsy
Assuming the Aussie version is the same as the US, it appears that the Uniwill is clocked well below some of the other lappies with the same GPU.

398 core, 216 memory are the figures that were given.

This would explain the benchmarks.

Cheers

Steve

Could the GPU in the Xplorer S4-3200/Uniwill 259IA3 be overclocked to match the other laptops with tha same GPU? If it is the same hardware, it should be able to, although the cooling design may not allow this adjustment.


^_^_^
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post #36 of 142
12/17/04 at 3:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack_Burton
Could the GPU in the Xplorer S4-3200/Uniwill 259IA3 be overclocked to match the other laptops with tha same GPU? If it is the same hardware, it should be able to, although the cooling design may not allow this adjustment.


^_^_^


I'd assume it can be OC'ed to match....
I'll know more on Saturday when mine actually gets here...
I intend to destroy it's warranty within' minutes of it being here though...
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post #37 of 142
12/17/04 at 4:30am
Quote:
I intend to destroy it's warranty within' minutes of it being here though...
That's the spirit! I'll be there waiting to hear about the goodness inside! i'm still super curious about this laptop!
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post #38 of 142
12/17/04 at 5:05am
let us know how it performs overclocked, i'm not game enough to try.
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post #39 of 142
12/17/04 at 1:49pm
Originally Posted by Dartm in the General thread:
Does over clocking void warranty?

REPLY:
Of course, But even though people do it we have never rejected a warranty claim due to the possibility that the machine has been overclocked.


That was from the Australian distributor. Now if that's not an encouragement to OC away I don't know what is!

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post #40 of 142
12/18/04 at 10:08pm
So Anxious

I waiting to hear from you few before I make this very choice..

Spare no details
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