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Ratmyr's Biohazard EX7 (Hypersonic) Review - Page 2

post #21 of 60
4/15/05 at 11:35am
ratmyr;

I am torn between Hypersonic and Boxx for the workstation version of the Fusion EX7. The only reason I am leaning away from Boxx, even though they have a great reputation building workstation PC's, is that they offer only a 1 year warranty of their mobile units.

From Hypersonic I can get the 3 year ADP and 3 Year Extended Warranty, at a cost of course, but I am unfamiliar with Hypersonic. I realize this is a Clevo D900T unit, but I know nothing abiut their customer support after the sale. The unit I have configured is over $6,500 and I wouldn't hestiate if I knew they had a good reputation for tech support and customer service. I've heard that their tech support personnel are the same people who build the machines, may not be available when you call, so leave a message or send an e-mail.
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post #22 of 60
4/15/05 at 12:51pm
Thread Starter 
I tell you - if you are going to invest a lot of money into something, then the warranty needs to be there for it. That definitely makes a difference. It was one of the things I looked at when I bought my first laptop from Dell and I continue to do so even until today. One thing when it is a desktop that I can replace parts - but a laptop.... no way.

I have dealt with technical support twice that I remember (right off). Once was about a noisy DVD drive which they mailed out a quick replacement and the other time was due to an artifacting video card that I had to mail the system in for. Both times, it was really good service. Customer service, I have dealt with many times - on recommendations, questions and the sort. The hardest thing for me is being out of the states and having to deal with either time zone differences or mailing delays.

When you are looking at a system, start talking with one of the reps there and build some communication with them and test them out.

I do believe you are right though that the tech support are the same as the ones who build your systems - but that should not warrant non-availability of personnel. Ask about that when you talk with you.

In any case, whatever system you go with, good luck and let me know how it goes. Even with my new system, I love reading the reviews and seeing pictures of everyone else's systems. Just too cool.

Take care.
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post #23 of 60
4/16/05 at 12:22am
ratmyr;

I guess I have been spoiled by Dell since I have owned 3 Inspirons and have had incredible luck with their tech support and service. Yesterday morning I broke the letter 'O' on the keyboard of my 2 year old Inspiron 8500, called Dell service/tech support after lunch and received a call today at 2:00 PM from the secretary that I had a package from Dell in the Lobby.

I don't expect this from Hypersonic, Boxx or any other reseller of the Clevo unit, but I do expect to be able to speak to someone 24/7. My laptop is the source of incredible profits for my company and ANY downtime is costly. It would be a disservice to my company for me to spend almost $7,000 for this unit and then select a company that doesn't provide adequate service and tech support after the sale.

Here is the configuration I would order from Hypersonic:

FUSION EX7: Mobile Workstation
Fusion EX7 in Silver with Graphite Accents
Logitech diNovo™ Media Desktop Bluetooth Cordless Keyboard and Mouse
3.60GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 660 (with EM64T)
Intel® 915P+ICH6 LGA-775 Mobile Motherboard (EX7)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
Nvidia Quadro FX Go 1400 PCI-Express 256MB DDR3
Built-in TV Tuner with Remote Control for EX7
Built-in ATA Hardware RAID Controller
60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive w/ 8MB Cache
60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive w/ 8MB Cache
8X DVD ± R/W Drive Dual Layer w/ DVD
8X DVD ± R/W Drive Dual Layer w/ DVD
7 in 1 Flash Media Card Reader Bay
17" WSXGA+ 1680x1050 Wide-Screen Display w/ Super Clear Glossy Surface
Guaranteed No Dead or Partially-Lit Pixels
PCMCIA Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS Notebook
Plantronics DSP-500 Digitally-Enhanced Headphone/Microphone Set
Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Internal 802.11b+g 54Mbps Wireless Mini PCI Network Adapter & Bluetooth
Integrated V.92 56K Fax/Data Modem
MS Windows XP Professional CD & Manual SP2
External USB 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Targus Platinum Deluxe Case for 17" Laptops
110V/220V Autoswitch AC Adapter for Aviator EX7
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition
3 Year Accidental Damage Protection (System and LCD)
3 Year Platinum Warranty with 24/7 Toll-Free Tech Support
$6,870 cost including shipping

It is painful not to continue with Dell, but as you can see from the unit above that the Dell M70 falls short. Dell began pulling the P4 from their notesbooks several weeks ago and offer only the P M processor and Intel has told me that I need the P4 for 3d modelling applications (even if I have to add auxillary cooling fans). After weeks of research, every road led to this Clevo unit and there are many resellers of this laptop out there. The field narrows considerably once you begin speaking WORKSTATION capable. One minute it's Boxx, the next minute it's Hypersonic and it's all about the service after the sale with Hypersonic and the 1 year warranty with Boxx.
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post #24 of 60
4/18/05 at 5:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rookwood
ratmyr;

I guess I have been spoiled by Dell since I have owned 3 Inspirons and have had incredible luck with their tech support and service. Yesterday morning I broke the letter 'O' on the keyboard of my 2 year old Inspiron 8500, called Dell service/tech support after lunch and received a call today at 2:00 PM from the secretary that I had a package from Dell in the Lobby.

I don't expect this from Hypersonic, Boxx or any other reseller of the Clevo unit, but I do expect to be able to speak to someone 24/7. My laptop is the source of incredible profits for my company and ANY downtime is costly. It would be a disservice to my company for me to spend almost $7,000 for this unit and then select a company that doesn't provide adequate service and tech support after the sale.

Here is the configuration I would order from Hypersonic:

FUSION EX7: Mobile Workstation
Fusion EX7 in Silver with Graphite Accents
Logitech diNovo™ Media Desktop Bluetooth Cordless Keyboard and Mouse
3.60GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 660 (with EM64T)
Intel® 915P+ICH6 LGA-775 Mobile Motherboard (EX7)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
1024MB PC4200 DDR2-533 SODIMM (Corsair or Crucial)
Nvidia Quadro FX Go 1400 PCI-Express 256MB DDR3
Built-in TV Tuner with Remote Control for EX7
Built-in ATA Hardware RAID Controller
60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive w/ 8MB Cache
60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive w/ 8MB Cache
8X DVD ± R/W Drive Dual Layer w/ DVD
8X DVD ± R/W Drive Dual Layer w/ DVD
7 in 1 Flash Media Card Reader Bay
17" WSXGA+ 1680x1050 Wide-Screen Display w/ Super Clear Glossy Surface
Guaranteed No Dead or Partially-Lit Pixels
PCMCIA Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS Notebook
Plantronics DSP-500 Digitally-Enhanced Headphone/Microphone Set
Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Internal 802.11b+g 54Mbps Wireless Mini PCI Network Adapter & Bluetooth
Integrated V.92 56K Fax/Data Modem
MS Windows XP Professional CD & Manual SP2
External USB 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Targus Platinum Deluxe Case for 17" Laptops
110V/220V Autoswitch AC Adapter for Aviator EX7
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition
3 Year Accidental Damage Protection (System and LCD)
3 Year Platinum Warranty with 24/7 Toll-Free Tech Support
$6,870 cost including shipping

It is painful not to continue with Dell, but as you can see from the unit above that the Dell M70 falls short. Dell began pulling the P4 from their notesbooks several weeks ago and offer only the P M processor and Intel has told me that I need the P4 for 3d modelling applications (even if I have to add auxillary cooling fans). After weeks of research, every road led to this Clevo unit and there are many resellers of this laptop out there. The field narrows considerably once you begin speaking WORKSTATION capable. One minute it's Boxx, the next minute it's Hypersonic and it's all about the service after the sale with Hypersonic and the 1 year warranty with Boxx.
Rookwood, do not go with 4 GB's of RAM, your mobo/chipset can only read 2.8 at max, so you're wasting your money. Go with only 2 Gigs.
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post #25 of 60
4/21/05 at 6:22pm
The 64bit processors hav 2mb of cache vs the 5xx series with 1mb of cache. The 64bit (6xx series) also opererate slightly cooler than the 5xx series. Another great site to download nvidia drivers is www.laptopvideo2go.com
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post #26 of 60
4/21/05 at 8:03pm
Both the 5xx and 6xx series P4 processors support Hyper- Threading Technology. However, only the 6xx series has SpeedStep Technology, therefore allowing the unit to run cooler when warranted.

Unless I am missing something, I am under the understanding that a notebook with the 660 P4 and WindowsXP 64 (when released) will read 4 GB RAM. I believe it was Hypersonic who told me they expected WindowsXP 64 at the end of this month. If true, where am I going wrong with the unit I configured?

RAM is probably the least important item. Yesterday we had a custom built workstation delivered with dual Xeons. ATIFireGL, 500GB RAID setup, dual monitors and truly maxed out. When I loaded AutoDesk's REVIT and began 3d solid modelling and rendering, the processor ran at 100% usage thruout the rendering process.
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post #27 of 60
4/21/05 at 8:34pm
Although the Enhanced Speedstep is disabled on the 9860 you can enable it with a program form RightMark called RMCLOCK or RightMark CPU Utility. Using this utility my temps when browsing the web went form 39C to 34 - 35C using the utility.

Unfortunately it didn't provide anymore battery life and needed to be disabled when running on battery power due to the 9860's throttleing when on battery. Running 3dmark my scores were the same using the utility vs not using it.

Only one CPU fan would run when browsing the web form boot up with the utility. The fans also stayed quiter using the utility untill i loaded a game when every fan was on turbo to keep the system cool.
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post #28 of 60
4/26/05 at 12:53pm
Thread Starter 
I had been looking hard at the 6xx series processor but weighing the additional money cost and the fact that I would have lowered my processor down to a 3.4 to make it happen, I decided to just let this pass. Maybe in the future I can look at the upgrade.

One issue that I had mentioned earlier that I am having is there does appear to be some light leakage. I have spoken with Hypersonic tech support on this and they want to go ahead and swap the screen. I am game for this, but I decided that I want to wait until I move back to the states this summer so that this can be a speedier transit (APO = at least one week each way). Plus, I told them I would like to do this in conjunction with any possible motherboard upgrades to handle the newer cards (ULTRA). So will see how that goes.

Terrell - your idle is 39c? My idle while surfing is more like 45c. This is the one thing that bothers me the most. Now... I don't have A/C here, so maybe that is the difference, but then again, it is not warm. But on my GX7/8790, I was keeping it at about 34c (kept fans on turbo). I might have to look at this utility. I would love to keep the system much cooler. And I have found (using two different notebook coolers) that the coolers don't seem to work well. They were great for the GX7, however, the EX7 seems to work better without a cooler. Go figure.

One item that I have done - I purchased a second GB of memory (always my plan to purchase it after I got the system to lower the cost). RAM has been just installed and working great.

Still absolutely loving the system and I took it to work a couple times to rub it in. Just need to find time to give the DVD burner a good test. Even picked up some dual layer media to backup my MP3s. Strange. I ripped all my CDs to MP3 and I will end up burning it to a couple dual layer DVDs.
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post #29 of 60
4/27/05 at 12:10pm
The temps were posted in a room with an temp of 70F and I was also using my modified iLap stand.

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...ight=ilap+9860

Althouth a thick book works almost as well with the iLap I can actually use the 9860 on my lap or in bed with out catching fire!
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post #30 of 60
4/27/05 at 3:21pm
Thread Starter 
Get this. I installed the RMCLOCK and my temps have dropped from an idle surfing of 45-46c to 39-40c. I don't have the capability of running speedstepping (I have the 5xx series), but there is a definite cooling difference. Will have to keep watching it.

As for battery life - this hasn't been a concern for me. I do everything with AC.
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post #31 of 60
5/3/05 at 11:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by canman93
I am virtually ready to order my new laptop.

Here are the specs:

HyperSense™ Advanced Remote Diagnostics
what's that? I didn't get an option for that when I ordered my CQ6/...
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post #32 of 60
5/5/05 at 12:33pm
Thread Starter 
Ok. Got hooked on some pixel crap in the last day and it gave a good test to the beast. I know, that sounds bad.

My pre-release of Guild Wars arrived (hmm, a week after the release - that sucked) and I fired it up last night and was amazed. My 5-yearold son sat in a chair next to me as I continued to play and play the game. Since I was home sick last night and I knew I was going to be home on meds all day today, I decided to give the notebook a test.

I started playing Guildwars at 7am and ended at approximately 4pm. This was a non-stop (except pauses for more medicine) gaming session and the laptop seemed to get no louder or hotter than about 58c. I have the graphics cranked and I believe it is at the 1280x960 (I am one of those wusses that believe the standard 1680x1050 hurts my eyes after awhile - so I run the system at 1280x960).

This game is also quite nice in windowed mode but even nicer in full screen.
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post #33 of 60
5/7/05 at 12:20pm
what kind of laptop cooler is that? and how well does it sit on the 9860? like does it make the lappy unstable on it?
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post #34 of 60
5/23/05 at 10:46am
Thread Starter 
investinwaffles - I haven't blown off your request. I am actually trying to find out who the maker of it is. I didn't see a label on this one, but I have asked the place I bought it for the details and waiting on a response from them. Will let you know. This is my third one. I bought one red one before, but gave it away with the GX7. Then I ordered the one that is pictured above and then a blue one for my wife's laptop. Will find out for you.

To update my statement on GW, I believe a more realistic temperature (for average) is about 60-61c. I have been playing this game nonstop. I took two days off work last week and while at home, I was logging a good 12-15 hours a day in the game. True.... no life, but my wife and son went on a trip to Holland and my daughter was in school. So I had the house to myself. No slow downs or anything. Very awesome game and the system is handling it great!

I will restate what others have already said.... don't leave anything on the left side. I normally put my cell phone or other items there and they do get rather warm. Drinks are not a problem because I don't want condensation running near the computer (nor an accidental spillage). But it does get warm.
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post #35 of 60
5/29/05 at 11:42am
Thread Starter 
The cooler is called a Xper CoolPad2. It has a model number of NK-290. You can do a search on Google and find people selling it and the colors available. As mentioned before, I got mine from ebay. I always try to color coordinate, and thus how I found it.

Thanks.
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post #36 of 60
6/2/05 at 3:12pm
you have PM ratmyr.
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post #37 of 60
6/3/05 at 7:57am
Thread Starter 
Yup. Got it and responded.

I did get a couple questions from others (not ABS) about the table in the pictures. No.... I did not win this system in a poker game. Definitely would be a nice poker game winning, but not how I got it. I was just showing off my new table that I picked up a couple weeks prior to the computer. Haven't played poker on it, but it has been getting a lot of attention from Phase 10, Sorry (card game sorry) and UNO.

Did some good DL burning this past week. I was moving my MP3 collection to DL discs and it was nice to be able to store over 8gb of data on one disc. Slow as hell though. I believe it was burning at 2.4x. Reminded me of the old days of CD-R burning. But it worked quite well.

I ended up removing the notebook cooler from the setup. I don't think it was doing much good (unlike how it worked for the GX7). So instead, I took a couple red legos and stacked up the back end of it. Seems to be working quite well.

One note - do periodic cleaning of your vents. The system was getting kind of hot the other day and so I took some compressed air to the vents. Holy crap. There was things coming out of the vents that resembled creatures from early 80s movies. Ok, maybe not that bad, but it was definitely collecting some lint. So I did a good cleaning of the vents on the back and the fans underneath. Definitely made a difference.

I have to do some pimping of the system, but I don't want to void my warranty. So I am thinking of getting some red neon USB cables and just run them under the system. Give it a good glow. Prior to removing the cooler, I was going to replace the fans in the cooler with neon fans, but I couldn't find the right size.... so still looking. If anyone has some good external mods, let me know.
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post #38 of 60
6/13/05 at 7:28pm
not to be rude or anything but, how much did you pay for your lappy?
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post #39 of 60
6/14/05 at 12:35pm
Thread Starter 
I paid $4400, but keep in mind that it has been a couple months already - as I purchased this in February before leaving for a field exercise.
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post #40 of 60
6/15/05 at 12:48pm
what does Hypersense do? is it just system-monitoring software?
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