Hey all,
I finally decided on a laptop and picked up the Uniwill 259IA based Civic Panoramic in Melbourne, Australia for quite a nice price.
The basic specs are on Uniwill's site, but here are the specifics for mine:
* Dothan 1.7
* WXGA 1280x800 screen
* Samsung 60GB 5400 rpm hard disk
* 512MB Samsung DDR333
* Intel Pro Wireless
* QSI SDW-082S burner
* Standard 6-cell battery
PERFORMANCE
* Very impressed with the performance of the Dothan 1.7, which you can overclock by 10% in the BIOS by activating the high performance option. Everything gets overclocked 10%. I really like the overclocking feature.
* This thing feels quicker than my AMD XP 3200+ desktop machine and disk usage doesn't seem to slow it down as much as my desktop.
* Laptop boots quickly, probably within 20 secs from post to when Windows has finished loading.
GAME PERFORMANCE
* I bought this notebook as a semi-DTR for when I travel overseas. At standard clocks it produces 2904 3DMarks in 3DMark03 with the latest Omegas.
* I have tinkered with overclocking a bit and results so far are good. At a modest 420/230 it produces 3090 3DMarks. Overclocking to 435/250 (highest I have tried so far) produced 3285 3DMarks with no artefacting or lock ups. I played a couple of games for a while and it was stable but I haven't played extensively enough at these settings to call it fully stable. Nonetheless I am very impressed.
SCREEN
* Brilliant, fantastic viewing angles and WXGA is perfect for my needs. Any more and I'd be squinting to read it. I would not want to go back to 4:3 again!!
* No dead pixels.
* Games look good at 1024x768 as well, stretching is not noticeable.
BATTERY
* Seems like I will get about 2:45 in Portable/Laptop mode with internet usage, wireless off, screen on about 65% and a couple of USB devices plugged in. I have been browsing the internet, installing things over the network and burning a couple of DVDs.
HEAT AND NOISE
* Hardly any heat at all, only slightly warm on the right palm rest and up the side, even when the laptop is flat out.
* Fan noise is audible but certaintly not annoying. On battery the fan does not come on much at all, during gaming it comes on when CPU load increases.
* I chose this over the AMD based 258KA and Sager 3790 (Clevo M37EW in Australia) because I was worried about the heat being ridiculous as some people had said.
KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD
* The touchpad is reasonably responsive, but like all touchpads, is a real pain in the arse to use. I promptly bought an optical mouse. I also disabled it because the screen was scrolling while I was typing.
* Keyboard is fantastic. Excellent travel, and it is easy to go straight from a desktop keyboard to this. The only things I don't like about it is the lack of control key on the right, and the small function keys up the top (same as other laptops though). Some keyboards on this model are loose in places (upper right for example), but it doesn't effect functionality.
DVD BURNER
* The QSI burner is probably the weak link in this machine. For some reason it is only burning DVDs for me at 2x!! I am sure it was going full speed (4x on DVD-R and 8x on DVD+R, 4x on everything else) last night. Any ideas?
* It seems to read all of the discs I have put in it and everything I have burnt has worked both in this and my desktop.
SOUND
* I had reservations about the sound in the Clevo/Sager which was also in my preference list. I am glad to say that the built in speakers are quite good (very good by laptop standards), but sound from the headphone socket is loud and clear.
BUILD
* Feels very well built, LCD panel is a bit thin, but the hinges seem strong so far. Doesn't feel cheap at all.
* Port arrangement is good but a PS/2 port would be nice. I thought the USB ports being on the right would be a nuisance from a mouse point of view but it seems that this is not the case.
* Weight is about 3kg according to Uniwill's site.
Plenty of pictures on the forums already so I don't think I need to put any up.
Alex
I finally decided on a laptop and picked up the Uniwill 259IA based Civic Panoramic in Melbourne, Australia for quite a nice price.
The basic specs are on Uniwill's site, but here are the specifics for mine:
* Dothan 1.7
* WXGA 1280x800 screen
* Samsung 60GB 5400 rpm hard disk
* 512MB Samsung DDR333
* Intel Pro Wireless
* QSI SDW-082S burner
* Standard 6-cell battery
PERFORMANCE
* Very impressed with the performance of the Dothan 1.7, which you can overclock by 10% in the BIOS by activating the high performance option. Everything gets overclocked 10%. I really like the overclocking feature.
* This thing feels quicker than my AMD XP 3200+ desktop machine and disk usage doesn't seem to slow it down as much as my desktop.
* Laptop boots quickly, probably within 20 secs from post to when Windows has finished loading.
GAME PERFORMANCE
* I bought this notebook as a semi-DTR for when I travel overseas. At standard clocks it produces 2904 3DMarks in 3DMark03 with the latest Omegas.
* I have tinkered with overclocking a bit and results so far are good. At a modest 420/230 it produces 3090 3DMarks. Overclocking to 435/250 (highest I have tried so far) produced 3285 3DMarks with no artefacting or lock ups. I played a couple of games for a while and it was stable but I haven't played extensively enough at these settings to call it fully stable. Nonetheless I am very impressed.
SCREEN
* Brilliant, fantastic viewing angles and WXGA is perfect for my needs. Any more and I'd be squinting to read it. I would not want to go back to 4:3 again!!
* No dead pixels.
* Games look good at 1024x768 as well, stretching is not noticeable.
BATTERY
* Seems like I will get about 2:45 in Portable/Laptop mode with internet usage, wireless off, screen on about 65% and a couple of USB devices plugged in. I have been browsing the internet, installing things over the network and burning a couple of DVDs.
HEAT AND NOISE
* Hardly any heat at all, only slightly warm on the right palm rest and up the side, even when the laptop is flat out.
* Fan noise is audible but certaintly not annoying. On battery the fan does not come on much at all, during gaming it comes on when CPU load increases.
* I chose this over the AMD based 258KA and Sager 3790 (Clevo M37EW in Australia) because I was worried about the heat being ridiculous as some people had said.
KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD
* The touchpad is reasonably responsive, but like all touchpads, is a real pain in the arse to use. I promptly bought an optical mouse. I also disabled it because the screen was scrolling while I was typing.
* Keyboard is fantastic. Excellent travel, and it is easy to go straight from a desktop keyboard to this. The only things I don't like about it is the lack of control key on the right, and the small function keys up the top (same as other laptops though). Some keyboards on this model are loose in places (upper right for example), but it doesn't effect functionality.
DVD BURNER
* The QSI burner is probably the weak link in this machine. For some reason it is only burning DVDs for me at 2x!! I am sure it was going full speed (4x on DVD-R and 8x on DVD+R, 4x on everything else) last night. Any ideas?
* It seems to read all of the discs I have put in it and everything I have burnt has worked both in this and my desktop.
SOUND
* I had reservations about the sound in the Clevo/Sager which was also in my preference list. I am glad to say that the built in speakers are quite good (very good by laptop standards), but sound from the headphone socket is loud and clear.
BUILD
* Feels very well built, LCD panel is a bit thin, but the hinges seem strong so far. Doesn't feel cheap at all.
* Port arrangement is good but a PS/2 port would be nice. I thought the USB ports being on the right would be a nuisance from a mouse point of view but it seems that this is not the case.
* Weight is about 3kg according to Uniwill's site.
Plenty of pictures on the forums already so I don't think I need to put any up.
Alex
)
