Smart Bay

[Zatara214]

Could I get one for my NP8660? I NEVER use a DVD drive (except for install, which I did already), and another hard drive would do me much better. I'm just not sure if that's an Alienware feature only or not.

[Anewbus]

Could I get one for my NP8660? I NEVER use a DVD drive (except for install, which I did already), and another hard drive would do me much better. I'm just not sure if that's an Alienware feature only or not.

I believe for the moment it's only available through Alienware, but who wants their garbage with their terrible customer service.

It's an interesting idea that could be good......here comes the "but".
It's in its infancy, they haven't worked all the bugs out yet.
Here's a review on just such the machine:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3396&p=13

One heavy annoyance to point out is that the thing has to be rebooted several times on occasion when swaping one thing for another. (Not just once like one would expect).

Personally, I don't think its worth it especailly at this stage. I think we may see it in the future and I would wait for that time when the kinks are worked out and offered by good resellers like XoticPC.

By the way, The Alienware machine is flimsy as usual, but the bay itself is also flimsy which alone would turn me off of it. Did you know they also get their machines from Dell and put their own lids on which are very flimsy and makes one also concerned about the screen. (That's what I like about my Force3298 (Compal), the lid is solid and requires two hands to open it. Solid lid = solid screen.

You'll read all this in the review link.

Nobody beats XoticPC hands down, end of story, period!:XPCS::notworthy Ok, that sounds a bit over the top....then again....NOT!:D

[Zatara214]

I believe for the moment it's only available through Alienware, but who wants their garbage with their terrible customer service.

It's an interesting idea that could be good......here comes the "but".
It's in its infancy, they haven't worked all the bugs out yet.
Here's a review on just such the machine:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3396&p=13

One heavy annoyance to point out is that the thing has to be rebooted several times on occasion when swaping one thing for another. (Not just once like one would expect).

Personally, I don't think its worth it especailly at this stage. I think we may see it in the future and I would wait for that time when the kinks are worked out and offered by good resellers like XoticPC.

By the way, The Alienware machine is flimsy as usual, but the bay itself is also flimsy which alone would turn me off of it. Did you know they also get their machines from Dell and put their own lids on which are very flimsy and makes one also concerned about the screen. (That's what I like about my Force3298 (Compal), the lid is solid and requires two hands to open it. Solid lid = solid screen.

You'll read all this in the review link.

Nobody beats XoticPC hands down, end of story, period!:XPCS::notworthy Ok, that sounds a bit over the top....then again....NOT!:D

Lol yes yes I know the whole Clevo/Compal>Del>Alienware line, and their low quality parts, etc. I wouldn't really be swapping very often, all things considered I haven't ever used an optical drive if it wasn't for an OS install... but anyway thanks for the heads up. I'll wait a year or so until its more developed, but its good to know that it's at least possible to do it. Now my next question, could I enable RAID in such a setup? That is, I have a 320 5400 RPM drive now, so if I got another would that even work?

[Anewbus]

The Sager NP8660 is a Clevo though.

If they get it all worked out and XoticPC offers them in the future I'd be interested as well. As for RAID, I'm not sure you could do that given that the HDD would be a swap drive. Not sure, it might be possible. I think I'll ask one of the techs here at my work. I'll let you know.