WSXGA 1680x1050
2x512MB DDR2 533MHz
3.4GHz P4 with 800MHz FSB
1x60GB 7200RPM HDD
8xDVD+/-RW+DL
My unit was bought from PCTorque, I had a fairly decent buying experience with them and would recommend anyone to buy their laptop from them. Their prices were lower than everyone else’s and Luke is very helpful. The unit arrived packaged very well, it was behind my original estimate date, but a lot of backorder problems were occurring at this time, so it wasn’t something I didn’t know was going to happen.
The monitor was WSXGA with a glossy finish. It sported a native resolution of 1680x1050. I found text to be very readable and sharp at this resolution. I personally was not impressed with the monitor. It looked nice, but just didn’t do it for me. To top it off I had one stuck blue pixel, which really was a nuisance. Nothing I could not have lived with though. Watching DVDs on this screen was enjoyable, they looked much sharper than any picture tube TV I have seen. During gaming I never saw a hint of ghosting at any resolution. Overall I liked the monitor, but I still love the Qosmio G15 monitor the most.
The P4 3.4GHz processor I had in this seems to perform well. The bottom where the processor resides did get very warm during heavy use. I personally did not notice any real difference between this processor and the 2.4GHz P4-M I had in my old Toshiba. I realize it did many things faster, but really the extra money spent on processors is wasted in my opinion. I am not a heavy number cruncher on my laptop, so maybe this is why I didn’t notice any real benefit out of such a powerhouse of a processor. Given the chance to buy again, I would either get a 3.0GHz or one of the EMT64 processors. Only people who do heavy computations need this processor in my opinion.
The battery life on this unit was a joke. 1 hour maybe, even less if you wanted to do anything. I would notice the meter in the taskbar consistently drop at least 1% every minute. If you unplugged it you were immediately at 98% battery life. Don’t think you were going to continue playing your game at 90FPS either. 40 or 50 tops. It killed my EQ2 experience trying to play on battery life. It also seemed the battery never stayed fully charged, even when keeping it plugged in. It was as though the AC adapter didn’t give enough juice so it used the battery at the same time. The AC adapter was at least 2lbs. The upside was though, that is uses a standard PC power supply cable. That was really nice when moving the laptop from the living room to my bedroom, as you didn’t need to reach behind anything to plug it in. You could just leave an extra power cable. Another battery problem was that it was screwed in. In all fairness you could undo the screws with a coin or similar object, but still a hassle none the less.
In my unit I opted for the DVD+/-RW+DL drive. I did not get the NEC I got the crappy Toshiba drive. I never tested a DL disk so I cannot comment on those. The drive worked ok, but never great. I would burn a DVD and pretty much had to just burn a DVD. Otherwise it would dip down in to .9x and take 1 hour to burn. The drive had mixed results; some disk would play fine some wouldn’t. Every disk I made had skip spots. They all skipped somewhere, no matter what media I used. I never saw it get up to the 8x it advertised either, 4x at the most, and I was using 8x certified media. The same media would burn at 8x in my old desktop all day long.
I ordered my unit with 2x512MB DDR2 533. I personally wished I had of got 2GB, I think my EQ2 gaming experience would have been much better. One thing I really loved about this laptop was that it has 4 slots for ram. This was great because you could order 2x512 now, then if you needed it later do the same. Saving yourself tons of money because you don’t have to throw the others out and get 2x1024MB. I think that ram dramatically improves system performance. I would be embarrassed to order this machine with any less than 1GB of ram. Anything less is a bottleneck for a system of this power.
This 9860 had a ton of HDD options. It had 1 hard drive bay, which could hold 1 or 2 HDD at a time. You could configure your drives to be SATA or PATA. Then decide if you wanted RAID or non RAID. If you wanted RAID, you have the option of RAID0 (striping, for performance) or RAID1 (mirroring, for backup security). I personally just went with a single 60GB 7200RPM HDD. The hard drive was fairly quite and quick. It would load Windows XP relatively fast. The initial boot screen with the scrolling bar would only stay up long enough to make 3 passes. I did however think the computer was sluggish to get to that point, probably just a bios check and had nothing to do with the HDD or any of the other hardware. I did notice slow downs do to the HDD under heavy use. This occurred frequently when downloading from a news server. If I ran newsleecher at full speed, 500KBps I could forget about zoning in EQ2. Clicking from screen to screen while surfing the internet, also suffered these slowdowns. Overall I expected the HDD to be faster, but maybe my expectations were really high. It did better than my old Toshiba ever did when downloading at full speed. I think with another gigabyte of ram I would have been able to play EQ2 and been able to zone, while downloading.
The networking on this laptop was nothing special. It comes with a 10/100/1000 nic, but unless you have gigabit a Ethernet router you will not see the speed boost. Even if you did, you might not ever notice the speed increase except with VERY large files. Connecting to a wired LAN was easy, just plug in the RJ45 cable and you are on. The wireless worked well, I cannot say it had more or less signal strength than others just that it worked well. I wasn’t really that found of how you turned the WIFI antenna on, you had to hold down the FN (function) + F11. Nothing major, just not a one handed operation (I preferred the slider switch of my last 2 laptops.) When you did this, it turned an LED on the monitor on, it glowed yellow when it was on, and was off when the WIFI was off. The Bluetooth networking in my laptop never functioned properly. It was supposed to be version 1.2, but I never got the drivers to install. It was as though the card was not present or not functioning. Tech support was pretty crummy on this end. While the PCTorque crew tried to help, I quickly found that if the problem required any maintenance you were back to dealing with Sager. Who, by the way is worthless on the phone. The Bluetooth card turned on and off in the same manor as the WIFI, only difference was the light was orange (same LED) and you hit F12 instead of F11.
I had my unit equipped with an mrx800. This is a 256MB 256bit card. It is a beast. When you order you get the option of 3 cards, at least with Sager, the mrx800, 6800go, or a workstation card. I think it is 1400 or something like that. My x800 card screamed, stock 3dmark03 was just under 8736. Over clocked was right at 10,000. I loved this video card. Here is where the problem comes in though. The video card however got entirely too hot. It gave my arm a mild 2nd degree burn. This was on non-over clocked speeds. The problem may have been slightly me, while I was playing my arms natural resting position was with my arm hanging off the side. This placed my arm right over the 7-1 card reader, and blew hot air which cooked my arm. This video card played every game I tried, except EQ2 at max settings. I could play EQ2 on “Extreme Quality”, highest of the presets, in non city or dungeon zones. Think Antonica or The Thundering Steppes. City zones raped this machine. I got lag on balanced in Qeynos Harbor. I think 2GB of ram would have cleared this right up though. I really loved this video card, shame it got so hot. Even bigger shame Toshiba can’t offer something like this in their Qosmio line.
Random Thoughts
I liked my Sager laptop, after using it though, I understand now why every time I tell someone I have a Sager they have never heard of it. The fine fit and finish of these things is junk. I am not talking about the manufacturing, as it seems fine, just the little details that make a G15 so much more user friendly. A great example would be, this unit does not come with a user manual. In fact I had not one SHRED of documentation come with my unit. You wouldn’t know if a display port was for input or output, without trying it first. Crazy, I was shocked.
This unit comes standard with a 7-1 card reader. Works just as it should. I do not like how all the card slot show up as different drives in Windows explorer, regardless of whether a card is present, but this is no big deal. It affected nothing so it was just a minor annoyance. I had my unit equipped with a TV tuner. Never used it, so I cannot comment on that option, it was only about $50 so if you ever may use it, might as well get the thing. I must warn you in advance though, that the tuner isn’t MCE compatible. The remote is also huge, looks like a 1990s VCR remote. The units come with 4 speakers and a sub. They sound very nice. Clear as a bell no distortion. Too quite however, they were easily drowned out by an HP my father had bought. The speakers have a nice low thud sound too them, but they are definitely no substitute for a real set of speakers. Let me stress though, that they sound very nice and are super clear. I also hated how this unit did not have an analog sound control. The Toshibas I have had in the past have a rotary knob to turn the volume up or down. I do not understand what is wrong with people. Windows is buggy, give people the option to turn the sound up or down regardless of the state of Windows. This is the worst feature on any laptop. 1. Because it required 2 hands to change the volume FN+F3or F4. 2 Because the sleep function was right next to the volume down key. 3. Because games like Prince of Persia wouldn’t allow me to change the volume once I entered the game. 4. It was not a quick solution, and if Windows was locked up or not responding, there is no way to turn the volume down. I really hate non analog volume controls. Next thing was the DJ mode. This is about as worthless as a military only clock. DJ mode allows you to play music CDs or DVDs without loading windows. If it already plays MUSIC DVDs, why not let it play VIDEO DVDs. The DJ mode has these nifty buttons that turn the volume up and down, it also allows you to change tracks and such from the front panel. Here is a novel idea, allow Windows to use these buttons as well. The buttons are there, why not use them, and might have solved my accidentally hibernating the PC while I am in a raid group in EQ2 and the fight gets too loud. The web cam that comes with this unit is simply a web cam. I tried it once, seemed to work fine. If you need this cool, you got it, otherwise it is just icing. The unit is supposed to come with a built in microphone. I couldn’t get mine to work, although I did only try for about 15 minutes before giving up. Not a feature I ever needed, but cool to have. The 10 key on the side is a great thing, thought the keys were to closely spaced for me, still better than nothing.
With all the little gripes and complaints, I was truly sad to see this unit go. I loved all 13lbs of this laptop. It was a great fit for me, but unfortunately got too hot. I would not recommend Sager to my friends, quite simply because the final product is not ready for the prime time, but for power users, it was an honor to use such a laptop. I spent well over 40 hours per week on this unit and I loved every minute of it. I must say PCTorque carries fine products and has good customer service. I wish they were there instead of Sager, who in my opinion has rude CSRs and doesn’t care to help.
Highs
Powerful
Tons of features and options
A true DTR that puts many desktops to shame
Lows
Battery life
No DVD mode
Crummy performance on battery power
Heat
Attention to fine detail, what’s that?
2nd review ever guys, feedback is appreciated. Also if you have any questions, I can try and answer them and add them to this review.
Lonzo
2x512MB DDR2 533MHz
3.4GHz P4 with 800MHz FSB
1x60GB 7200RPM HDD
8xDVD+/-RW+DL
My unit was bought from PCTorque, I had a fairly decent buying experience with them and would recommend anyone to buy their laptop from them. Their prices were lower than everyone else’s and Luke is very helpful. The unit arrived packaged very well, it was behind my original estimate date, but a lot of backorder problems were occurring at this time, so it wasn’t something I didn’t know was going to happen.
The monitor was WSXGA with a glossy finish. It sported a native resolution of 1680x1050. I found text to be very readable and sharp at this resolution. I personally was not impressed with the monitor. It looked nice, but just didn’t do it for me. To top it off I had one stuck blue pixel, which really was a nuisance. Nothing I could not have lived with though. Watching DVDs on this screen was enjoyable, they looked much sharper than any picture tube TV I have seen. During gaming I never saw a hint of ghosting at any resolution. Overall I liked the monitor, but I still love the Qosmio G15 monitor the most.
The P4 3.4GHz processor I had in this seems to perform well. The bottom where the processor resides did get very warm during heavy use. I personally did not notice any real difference between this processor and the 2.4GHz P4-M I had in my old Toshiba. I realize it did many things faster, but really the extra money spent on processors is wasted in my opinion. I am not a heavy number cruncher on my laptop, so maybe this is why I didn’t notice any real benefit out of such a powerhouse of a processor. Given the chance to buy again, I would either get a 3.0GHz or one of the EMT64 processors. Only people who do heavy computations need this processor in my opinion.
The battery life on this unit was a joke. 1 hour maybe, even less if you wanted to do anything. I would notice the meter in the taskbar consistently drop at least 1% every minute. If you unplugged it you were immediately at 98% battery life. Don’t think you were going to continue playing your game at 90FPS either. 40 or 50 tops. It killed my EQ2 experience trying to play on battery life. It also seemed the battery never stayed fully charged, even when keeping it plugged in. It was as though the AC adapter didn’t give enough juice so it used the battery at the same time. The AC adapter was at least 2lbs. The upside was though, that is uses a standard PC power supply cable. That was really nice when moving the laptop from the living room to my bedroom, as you didn’t need to reach behind anything to plug it in. You could just leave an extra power cable. Another battery problem was that it was screwed in. In all fairness you could undo the screws with a coin or similar object, but still a hassle none the less.
In my unit I opted for the DVD+/-RW+DL drive. I did not get the NEC I got the crappy Toshiba drive. I never tested a DL disk so I cannot comment on those. The drive worked ok, but never great. I would burn a DVD and pretty much had to just burn a DVD. Otherwise it would dip down in to .9x and take 1 hour to burn. The drive had mixed results; some disk would play fine some wouldn’t. Every disk I made had skip spots. They all skipped somewhere, no matter what media I used. I never saw it get up to the 8x it advertised either, 4x at the most, and I was using 8x certified media. The same media would burn at 8x in my old desktop all day long.
I ordered my unit with 2x512MB DDR2 533. I personally wished I had of got 2GB, I think my EQ2 gaming experience would have been much better. One thing I really loved about this laptop was that it has 4 slots for ram. This was great because you could order 2x512 now, then if you needed it later do the same. Saving yourself tons of money because you don’t have to throw the others out and get 2x1024MB. I think that ram dramatically improves system performance. I would be embarrassed to order this machine with any less than 1GB of ram. Anything less is a bottleneck for a system of this power.
This 9860 had a ton of HDD options. It had 1 hard drive bay, which could hold 1 or 2 HDD at a time. You could configure your drives to be SATA or PATA. Then decide if you wanted RAID or non RAID. If you wanted RAID, you have the option of RAID0 (striping, for performance) or RAID1 (mirroring, for backup security). I personally just went with a single 60GB 7200RPM HDD. The hard drive was fairly quite and quick. It would load Windows XP relatively fast. The initial boot screen with the scrolling bar would only stay up long enough to make 3 passes. I did however think the computer was sluggish to get to that point, probably just a bios check and had nothing to do with the HDD or any of the other hardware. I did notice slow downs do to the HDD under heavy use. This occurred frequently when downloading from a news server. If I ran newsleecher at full speed, 500KBps I could forget about zoning in EQ2. Clicking from screen to screen while surfing the internet, also suffered these slowdowns. Overall I expected the HDD to be faster, but maybe my expectations were really high. It did better than my old Toshiba ever did when downloading at full speed. I think with another gigabyte of ram I would have been able to play EQ2 and been able to zone, while downloading.
The networking on this laptop was nothing special. It comes with a 10/100/1000 nic, but unless you have gigabit a Ethernet router you will not see the speed boost. Even if you did, you might not ever notice the speed increase except with VERY large files. Connecting to a wired LAN was easy, just plug in the RJ45 cable and you are on. The wireless worked well, I cannot say it had more or less signal strength than others just that it worked well. I wasn’t really that found of how you turned the WIFI antenna on, you had to hold down the FN (function) + F11. Nothing major, just not a one handed operation (I preferred the slider switch of my last 2 laptops.) When you did this, it turned an LED on the monitor on, it glowed yellow when it was on, and was off when the WIFI was off. The Bluetooth networking in my laptop never functioned properly. It was supposed to be version 1.2, but I never got the drivers to install. It was as though the card was not present or not functioning. Tech support was pretty crummy on this end. While the PCTorque crew tried to help, I quickly found that if the problem required any maintenance you were back to dealing with Sager. Who, by the way is worthless on the phone. The Bluetooth card turned on and off in the same manor as the WIFI, only difference was the light was orange (same LED) and you hit F12 instead of F11.
I had my unit equipped with an mrx800. This is a 256MB 256bit card. It is a beast. When you order you get the option of 3 cards, at least with Sager, the mrx800, 6800go, or a workstation card. I think it is 1400 or something like that. My x800 card screamed, stock 3dmark03 was just under 8736. Over clocked was right at 10,000. I loved this video card. Here is where the problem comes in though. The video card however got entirely too hot. It gave my arm a mild 2nd degree burn. This was on non-over clocked speeds. The problem may have been slightly me, while I was playing my arms natural resting position was with my arm hanging off the side. This placed my arm right over the 7-1 card reader, and blew hot air which cooked my arm. This video card played every game I tried, except EQ2 at max settings. I could play EQ2 on “Extreme Quality”, highest of the presets, in non city or dungeon zones. Think Antonica or The Thundering Steppes. City zones raped this machine. I got lag on balanced in Qeynos Harbor. I think 2GB of ram would have cleared this right up though. I really loved this video card, shame it got so hot. Even bigger shame Toshiba can’t offer something like this in their Qosmio line.
Random Thoughts
I liked my Sager laptop, after using it though, I understand now why every time I tell someone I have a Sager they have never heard of it. The fine fit and finish of these things is junk. I am not talking about the manufacturing, as it seems fine, just the little details that make a G15 so much more user friendly. A great example would be, this unit does not come with a user manual. In fact I had not one SHRED of documentation come with my unit. You wouldn’t know if a display port was for input or output, without trying it first. Crazy, I was shocked.
This unit comes standard with a 7-1 card reader. Works just as it should. I do not like how all the card slot show up as different drives in Windows explorer, regardless of whether a card is present, but this is no big deal. It affected nothing so it was just a minor annoyance. I had my unit equipped with a TV tuner. Never used it, so I cannot comment on that option, it was only about $50 so if you ever may use it, might as well get the thing. I must warn you in advance though, that the tuner isn’t MCE compatible. The remote is also huge, looks like a 1990s VCR remote. The units come with 4 speakers and a sub. They sound very nice. Clear as a bell no distortion. Too quite however, they were easily drowned out by an HP my father had bought. The speakers have a nice low thud sound too them, but they are definitely no substitute for a real set of speakers. Let me stress though, that they sound very nice and are super clear. I also hated how this unit did not have an analog sound control. The Toshibas I have had in the past have a rotary knob to turn the volume up or down. I do not understand what is wrong with people. Windows is buggy, give people the option to turn the sound up or down regardless of the state of Windows. This is the worst feature on any laptop. 1. Because it required 2 hands to change the volume FN+F3or F4. 2 Because the sleep function was right next to the volume down key. 3. Because games like Prince of Persia wouldn’t allow me to change the volume once I entered the game. 4. It was not a quick solution, and if Windows was locked up or not responding, there is no way to turn the volume down. I really hate non analog volume controls. Next thing was the DJ mode. This is about as worthless as a military only clock. DJ mode allows you to play music CDs or DVDs without loading windows. If it already plays MUSIC DVDs, why not let it play VIDEO DVDs. The DJ mode has these nifty buttons that turn the volume up and down, it also allows you to change tracks and such from the front panel. Here is a novel idea, allow Windows to use these buttons as well. The buttons are there, why not use them, and might have solved my accidentally hibernating the PC while I am in a raid group in EQ2 and the fight gets too loud. The web cam that comes with this unit is simply a web cam. I tried it once, seemed to work fine. If you need this cool, you got it, otherwise it is just icing. The unit is supposed to come with a built in microphone. I couldn’t get mine to work, although I did only try for about 15 minutes before giving up. Not a feature I ever needed, but cool to have. The 10 key on the side is a great thing, thought the keys were to closely spaced for me, still better than nothing.
With all the little gripes and complaints, I was truly sad to see this unit go. I loved all 13lbs of this laptop. It was a great fit for me, but unfortunately got too hot. I would not recommend Sager to my friends, quite simply because the final product is not ready for the prime time, but for power users, it was an honor to use such a laptop. I spent well over 40 hours per week on this unit and I loved every minute of it. I must say PCTorque carries fine products and has good customer service. I wish they were there instead of Sager, who in my opinion has rude CSRs and doesn’t care to help.
Highs
Powerful
Tons of features and options
A true DTR that puts many desktops to shame
Lows
Battery life
No DVD mode
Crummy performance on battery power
Heat
Attention to fine detail, what’s that?
2nd review ever guys, feedback is appreciated. Also if you have any questions, I can try and answer them and add them to this review.
Lonzo
I seriously doubt you need anything more than this, unless I'm mistaken since I don't play EQ2.
Again, what kind of criteria is this?
I mean have you seen the GT2/GT3, or 911 Turbo? In person? These cars will eat up any car under $500,000 alive.
I dont like the I9300 that much, without a fullsize keyboard it looks a tad weird.
