Sager NP9860 Review

system specs;
p4 3.6 with HT
1 gig ram
2x 5400 rpm sata 80 gig drives on a raid 0 setup
wsxga screen 1680 x 1050
Nvidia 6800 GDDR 3 256
this is my 2nd laptop that i have purchased. my only other one to compare the sager to is my 17" toshiba satellite laptop.

when i decided that i wanted to spend $3,000+ dollars for a powerful laptop, the only brand that i knew was the Alienware area 51 systems. the big problem was that i did not want the childish alien look of the laptops. if they offered a normal looking clevo-based laptop i probably would have never discovered sager and the other clevo clones. i was very impressed at what alienware offered in their systems, like the raid setup. i never had a raid hdd setup so i knew this was one of the requirements when i was going to pull the trigger. i do have a scsi 15,000 rpm drive on one of my desktops so i have something good to compare the performance of the raid setup that i chose later on in this review.

i want to write this review for the ones that are very new to the clevo-based 9860 systems. my goal here is to provide the an accurate, in-depth, and non-biased review of the 9860 while at the same time provide a sense of what to expect if you are deciding to purchase one. i think the best thing to do,besides providing pictures and even some mpeg video of the laptop, would be to bullet-point the review instead of ver long story-like paragraphs. i will not overclock the system for benchmarks as i believe that should not be one of the factors in deciding to purchase an expensive laptop....even ones that are labeled as desktop replacements (DTR) like this one.

i will write as much as i can today and will continue this tomorrow hopefully with pictures and videos as well an extended review because i won't have time to cover everything. this will be a lenghty review. this review is designed for the ones that want as much research in a single oppinionated thread as possible.



1) the ordering process; i ordered the 9860 from PCTORQUE.COM on thursday 3/24/05 and it arrived monday 3/28/05 via ups next day air. i was very surprised at how fast it came, despite me paying over $100 for next day air. ordering from the website was not a very pleasant experience. i think pctorque was having some website issues because the day i was filling out the ordering and credit card information and clicking through the conformation pages the website said that it experience a problem and to contact pctorque if this continues. well, i tried a total of 3 or 4 times before giving up for the day. i got a little worried because i was toward the end of the online ordering process and all my payment info and selecions were made before the troubles hit. so i was hoping that i did not place an order for a 9860 4 times and get charged $12,000 dollars. i contaced pctorque and they said that my attempts to order did not register, so that was a good thing. the next day (thursday) i tried ordering again and this time everything went smooth.

2) Shipping; the laptop was packaged in a small box, that weighed a ton! after opening it up in excitement i figured out part of the reason was that i ordered 2 AC adapters and those are not small at all. there did not appear to be any damage to the box from shipping and the contents were fairly packaged. there was a small rectangle box within the shipping box that included some accessories. the 2 ac adapters were stuffed inside with the free carrying case that is provided to you. there was a disclaimer on the box that said the box left Sager in good condition and that any vissible damages were a result of the shipper and not to open before inspecting the shipping box.

3) first impressions; damn, this thing is big! i knew it was going to be, but even the reviews that had pictures in them did not do it justice. it is one big machine and the term "huge" came to mind every time i was inspecting it for the first 2 days. i kept saying it's a healthy baby boy to my fellow co-workers lol. the stainless steel look on the cover seems to be of nice quality, plastic i bet, but real nice and rich looking. the fan gaurds underneath have stiff plastic so they won't bend and touch the spinning fans if you grabbed the laptop from the underside. my toshba has flimsy fan gaurds and one to many times they bent and rubbed the spinning fans, freaking me out. the screen opens and closes very smoothly with a hydralic-like feel to it, very nice. when you gently lower the lid it lowers itself very slowly toward the end of the run giving it a rich-looking operation. my toshiba had a flimsy opertion with the screen lid. over time it actually developed a stiff point and felt like it was going to break if i closed it slowly. the case itself does not have too many loud creaking noises if you lift the laptop from an un-even point / location. it feels and sounds firm. the protective plastic on the laptop seemed excessive. there were alot of peelings and tearings to get them all off. but, that was not a big deal.

4) cooling system; i was surprised to later discover that the fans operate at one speed, no matter how "hot" the laptop runs. even at this constant speed, they are very quiet. there are 2 exhuast vents. one is located on the left fron underneath the palm rest. the other vent is located at the back, to the right. the heat output from these main vents can be considered hot to the touch when the system is being stressed. the exhaust can get hot, but not hot enough to burn you. just hot enough to make it uncomfortable to keep your skin at the vent for very long. the left side palm rest does not get this hot though. there are 4 intake fans on the underside of the laptop all spinning together when the laptop is powered on. one little problem that i noticed the first time i turned on the laptop was that the biggest fan was not spinning after i exited hibernation. it was trying to spin and was making a clicking noise. i got a little irritated and thought that i had one of those with the defecitve fans! so i shut her down and booted her back up after a few minutes hoping that the problem would go away by itself. i haven't noticed this happen anymore and i believe that it was a "fluke" incident. but the fan issue crept up again. when i exited hibernation the fans did not turn on at all and the computer froze while trying to exit the state of hibernation. this may have been a software conflict with hibernation crashing, but i still thought that the fans would turn on. another point of exiting hibernation is, that the fans will not turn on right away. they can take a minute to start up, which seems normal since it does this every time.

5) video card; the video card has an intake fan underneath, whic is part of the 4 fans i mentioned earlier. i had some driver issues in that it was losing it's native resolution and i could not get it back without a BSOD every time i was into the settings menu of the video card. i re-installed the display drivers and the problem went away. this happened one more time and re-installing the drivers fixed it again. it must be a software issue, maybe one of the programs i installed did this? not sure. but i was surprised to find out that nvidia's drivers from their website will not work with the 9860! instead, the drivers are provided from Sager. but other than the driver issues, it is like any other nvidia card, the latest and greatest for now. you get what you pay for and this card plays DOOM 3 and world of warcraft at full settings with no problems. the 256 megs of ram that it has is a real nice bonus for me since i do alot od CAD drawings and renderings.

6) the screen; i was hesitant on buying the 9860 because it did not currently have a wuxga option. after using the wsxga i feel kind of glad i did not get a wuxga screen. the text is small enough on the native 1680 x 1050 resolution of the sager. i can't imagine looking at a wuxga (1900 x 1200) all day long. i think it is just perfect with the wsxga. it is a real nice upgrade from my toshiba's wxga 1440 x 900 resolution. the viewing angle is exceptional! it is much better than my toshiba. the brightness is extremely good and white actually looks like white on the sager, unlike my toshiba where white looked greyish when i was comparing them side by side. the brightness is so good that in a low lit room, a pure white screen on the sager will hurt my eyes for a second while i adjust. the glossy surface is a real plus. it makes viewing games and photos absolutely beautiful! i was affraid at first about getting the glossy surface because of the glare, but this is not a big deal at all when you start using it. the pros far outweigh the cons when it comes to the glossy surface for me. my CAD renderings look stunning compared to my toshiba. but, all is not perfect. there is one lit green pixel to the left hand side of the screen. i noticed this right away at the first time i booted her and and said, "ah shit". but, to tell you the truth, the lit pixel is not a big deal. i hardly notice it and it is better than having 4 shit pixels. otherwise there are no dead or other lit pixels anywhere. yes, the one lit pixel sucks, but it doesn't warrant abusing Sager's return policy because i paid for next day air shipping and i would have had to pay even more for shipping charges if i took advantage of the 30 day money back gaurantee. my toshiba had no shit pixels so this is the first time i experience one on a laptop.

7) keyboard & touch pad; the keyboard has a nice feel to it. like pctorque's review, it does not have much of keyboard flex like my toshiba has. most of the keys are postioned the same as you would find on a full size keyboard. the one thing i cation you is that, it is not a full keybaord. although it is advertised as a "full" keyboard, it is not. if you want to see a full keyboard on a laptop check out the 17" from gateway MX675XL or the M680XL, now thats a laptop with a keyboard. this is something i wish clevo would implement. the mouse pad has a scroll function which is nice. but i do accidentally hit the scroll pad and have to learn to adjust to it. the touch pad seems pretty big, but the actually functionality points start about 3 cm away from the border. the very edges seem to be dead space, and or funtion iradically like acting as a scroll up down, left or right relavent on what edge you touch. i was more efficent with the toshiba's touch pad than the sagers. the touch pad has a rough feel to it which seems to conflict the operation when my fingers get sweaty or wet.


8) battery life; the battery life is about an hour and takes forever to charge. basically, if you need the battery charged the next morning, leave it plugged in overnight or when the computer idles because it won't charge if there is any activity going on. this laptop is not portable by any means simply because of the battery life of one hour. i purchased 2 ac adapters so i can leave on at work and one at home because if i am without an adapter, forget about using the laptop. the battery is screwed in on the underside of the laptop which is a negative because you cannot easily remove it without a tool. if you will always have the laptop plugged in, you may want to just remove the battery.

9) sound system; the sound system is excellent when it comes to sound quality, but quite poor when it comes to sound volume. the standard sound card can handle external surround sound speakers up to 8.1 surround which is nice if you are an audiofile. the subwoofer adds a nice effect, but don't confuse it with a real subwoofer that you will find in car speakers or stereo setups. it produces bass for it's size, but it is a nice little touch. there is no analog volume control which i miss dearly because my toshiba had it. i don't understand how a laptop that costs this much does not have an analog volume control. you are at the mercy of windows it seems to be able to regulate volume. if you have a fatal system crash and the computer freezes you wont be able to adjust volume. if you are comming from the luxery of a laptop that has an analog volume control, get ready for a rude awakening. just make sure that you disable the sleep mode button because it is right next to the volume controls. the built-in mic needs to be tweaked through the settings to bring the gain up in order to be used for video conferancing. i use msn messenger and it works ok, but not great. the mic is the basic necesities for sound input. it just takes some tweaking to get it working.

10) general; the front lcd is a clock in military time format. i prefer non-military time myself but it is not a big deal. it is nice to have this feature and you will use it quite often to keep track of time. you will also use it to find out if the computer shut of or went into hibernation when you execute these options while closing the lid at the same time. the only real negative is that the led is just too bright. it is a very bright dark neon blue and hurts my eyes when i look at it. the card reader light stays on all the time which is normal. windows also assigns drives for each card reader slot which is stupid but you will get used to the fact that there are 6 or more drive letters. the card reader is not of great quality, but it does the job. my toshiba had a better card reader system, but only supported SD cards where the sager will support all of the brands. the laptop has 4 usb slots which are located to the left side. the problem that i am having with the usb slots is that they are all very close to eachother and i run into the problem where i can't fit all the usb devices in all 4 slots because of the space limitations. there is no physical wifi switch, you can turn it on through the fn feature. it would be nice to see a wifi switch in the future brands.

continued tomorrow....hopefully

here are some pics in regards to my review.

here is my 3dmark03 score. i did not overclock any part of the system.


here is my 3dmark05 socre. again, stock settings.


the 3dmark scores were on par with other stock benchmarks that i have read in this forum. the drivers were whatever was supplied by sager, which can be found on their website.

here are misc. pics of the sager laptop. the notebook was a tad dirty so it may appear to have scratches and such, but it does not. i know some others posted other objects like dvd covers and such next to the laptop to help show it's true size, so i decided to pull out the old tape measure instead.













here you can see the nice solid fan gaurds that prevent objects from bending the grills and make contact witht the spinning fans.




because of my excitement, i did not bother to inspect the box for any damages. but i recomend that you do, and so does sager.



these pics show the free carrying case that comes with the sager. it is just big enough to fit the sager and a few parts. it is nicely paded in the interior to protect the computer.



below are a few pics of the ac adapter. the damn thing is huge. i don't know why it has to be so big.










these last 4 pics show how i use the sager when i am at home gaming. i hook up the laptop to my 21" monitor and also hook up a usb mouse and my favorite keyboard. the keyboard has an analog volume control with a mute feature which works great. this is one way to overcome the annoyance of using a product that does not have an analog volume control, like the sager.


as you can see, the lid of the laptop is down and i simply use the 21" monitor and also hook up external speakers to add to the experience.


here is a neat feature, i think this is called dual view monitor. i don't know if you can tell from the pics, but the sager's screen is brighter, has more vivid colors, and clearer than the 21" monitor. i wanted to find a way for one screen to show the game being played, and the other screen to show my desktop so can mult-task. but i coul'd not figure this out. maybe somoene knows how.




i also want to add that when i game on the sager, the cpu temp will hit 67C! and the GPU fan will kick into overtime spewing very hot air. the air is hot enough to burn someone with VERY sensitive skin or skin that is recovering from an existing wound of some sort. the hot air heats up my keyboard nicely. you cannot have this laptop on your lap and expect to game simply because of the heat issues.

i quickly want to say thanks to my buddy that supplied the hosting for the pictures. he is a dj and spins some good music. here is his website djtaso.com

i will continue the review when i get some more spare time.
feel free to comment if i am in-accurate with some of my review.

it is a 4 prong connector that only goes in one way.

i am a kitchen designer. i use a CAD based program that i do my designs in and also create renderings with it. the program is not written for the quadro card or other workstation cards, which dissapoints me but i don't have much of a choice because the software company that wrights the program has a stronghold on the american kitchen design market. that is why i did not go with the quadro card because it won't help me out that much.

the 6800 does a much better job than the 5200 i was using with my toshiba. i can force AA in the properties of the 6800 and the CAD program looks much better.

i don't have any experience in other CAD software so i can't really give you an honest answer.

here is a rendering that i did using the software for my clients, which helps me close sales.



i really wanted to purchase the 6800 AND the quadro when i ordered the sager so i can flip flop between cards when i used the CAD software, but i could not fork out the extra cash needed. i guess i will never know if a workstation card increases performance in the CAD sofware that i use

i contacted nvidia and told them to go after the software company and try to sell them the idea of workstation cards and the quadro so their programmers can start implementing support for the cards. it was all i could do

before i answer the fps in css question, i want to quickly post this.

today i figured out how to activate dual view mode!

i can have one monitor show one application while to other one shows something esle.

here is one example, playing counterstrike on 21" monitor and world of warcraft on the laptop screen, at the same time lol.



this pic below shows counterstrike on the 21" monitor and my CAD program on the laptop. the game was running while a perspective was being rendered.



although this is a really cool feature, it does take some finesse to get it right. while i was running CSS and WoW at the same time, i was using up 1.04 gig of ram. the games ran choppy because they were both run in full screen mode. even though they were choppy, they were both playable for the most part. just don't expect a constant 60 fps using this method.

ok my fps on CSS using the video stress test was 55.70 fps with max settings including; 6x AA, 15x AF, and wsxga resolution.

well, i have shitty news. this morning out of the blue the laptop did not start up. it was working fine last night, though.

had to issue an rma after tech support by sager failed.

when i try to power on the laptop, it makes a high pitch squeel near the front panel dj display. it sounds like an electrical leak in a transistor or something. i just pray that my raid satas are not damaged along with my work! the screen does not turn on, nor any activity occurs besides the fans activating when it hits 60c or so. no beeps, no cd rom drive initializing, no nothing. if i unplug the laptop while it's still on, or power it by battery, the battery lights keep flashing orange at odd intervals. i tried booting this thing up 100 times at work in hopes of trying to salvage my CAD work to no avail. i don't understand it!

one thing that came out of this is, that i noticed the large cpu fan would not spin 30% of the time. it keeps getting stuck and making a chirping noise while all the other fans are working.

the dj panel works, but not the computer

to top it off, sager does not have a replacement to ship me! i have no idea how long this will take now. the only thing i can do is ship the laptop back to them and wait. my only guess is that no 9860's are available because of the motherboard revision. so i am guessing that i will be getting a replacement with the new motherboards that are comming out. i hope this won't take long.

it is not pct's fault, they are simply a reseller. its the fault of supply and demand, i guess.

anyway, i am getting my new system in tomorrow! so that means i was without the rig for 1.5 weeks from the time of death. sager is also shipped the replacement system using 2 day air at no charge to me. so i only had to pay for one way shipping.

i will finish up my review very soon, maybe this weekend as i now understand a great deal more on the 9860.

you can use a litte program called FRAPS that measures fps and can also record. google FRAPS and you will easily find it.