Scoob's Z71V review

I just received this machine on Friday, April 15th, and it's now set up pretty well. I ordered this less than a week ago from ISTNC. Here are the specs:

Pentium M 760 2.0Ghz 533mhz FSB
2.0GB PC-4200 DDR2 dual-channel
Hitachi 7200rpm 60GB PATA HD
Dual-Layer PATA DVD-RW
Intel A/B/G internal wireless
Modular bay battery module
GeForce Go 6600 PCIe 128mb
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 PCMCIA
Sennheiser PX-100
Arctic Silver 5

Total cost was around $2250, since I took advantage of ISTNC's $75 student discount.

This machine is very quiet and cool most of the time. I can use it on my lap and it feels very comfortable. The only thing that is noisy is the optical drive, which is expected. The chassis construction is extremely solid for plastic. The LCD is beautiful: I have no dead pixels. I don't see the "sparkle" that some people mention. There is the typical pixel shinyness that all LCDs I have ever seen have, even this Samsung 193P, which is a high-end LCD. I've been having some problems with the "hot-swap" bay: Bad things happen when I try to remove the module without first at least putting the machine in standby mode. I'm not sure if that's what hot-swap means. I had hoped it was more convenient than that. The performance is awesome. I can play HL2 flawlessly at maximum detail 1680x1050.

Stats:

Boot time (WinXP splash screen to useable desktop): approx. 25 seconds (I have a lot of programs running in the tray, such as NVidia and Creative drivers as well as Power4Gear, the Intel wireless tool, and AVG Antivirus).

VGA clock: overclocked to 310Mhz core and 600Mhz memory. stable

3DMark2005 score: 2247


Pictures will come later upon request

I want to comment more on the display and audio of this machine. The LCD is very responsive and pretty vibrant. The colors are really good when watching a DVD. ALS works flawlessly and unnoticeably. Also, the built-in speakers are weak, but the sound I get when watching a DVD is amazing (with the extra hardware). The Audigy2 decodes in hardware the digital signals and sends them through the PX-100s. They sound better than anything else I've ever heard. You just have to set your audio mode to S/PDIF passthrough.

you need the Audigy2 ZS Notebook to decode these signals. Once you have the drivers set up, you'll also need DVD software. I use the nVidia DVD Decoder CODEC. Once you start a DVD an icon appears on the taskbar and you can enter into the properties of the CODEC and change the audio settings to use Receiver through an SPDIF cable. It will now be sent digitally straight into your Audigy2, where it's decoded on-the-fly.

update: 310/600 causes occasional temporary freezing in some of my games. now running 300/600 without any problems

also, i dont like power4gear