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View Full Version : Finally made up our minds :)


RaderCad
06-10-2008, 02:46 PM
Well we went out and ordered the NP9262.
It was confirmed this morning.

The specs.

Warranty: 3 Year Labor* 1 Year Parts Warranty

- Operating System: ~Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Installed
- AC Adapter: Full Range Auto Switching AC Adaptor
- Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (12 Cell)
- Case: Basic Black Business Case - Incl
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio
- Camera: Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
- Wireless Network: Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 496 a/g/n
- Bluetooth: Internal Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR
- Memory Card Reader: Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/
- Raid: HDD Raid Settings - OFF
- Secondary Hard Drive: ~ 160GB 5400RPM (Serial-ATA 150)
- Primary Hard Drive: ~ 250GB 5400RPM (Serial-ATA 150)
- Optical Drive: ~Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +
- Exterior Finish: Standard Finish
- Ram: ~ 4,096MB DDR2 800 (2 SODIMMS) D
- Video Card: 512MB PCI-Express nVidia GeForce M8800 GTX
- Processor: ~Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz w
- Dead Pixel Policy: Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- Arctic Silver: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
- Display: 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear

end specs.

Ok some of you may wonder about some of our choices.

We did a lot of research to get where we are now, notice we are at XoticPC, and here are our decisions.

The CPU: Not much software out there at this time supports multi-cores. Some video rendering programs and a couple of games, not much else. The dual core CPU will actually beat out the Quads in over 80 percent of the software tests due to a higher clock speed. Also 65 watts vs 95 watts is a consideration.

The two slower hard drives.
There is not much of a difference between the 7200 rpm drives and the 5400 drives laptop drives. Maybe as much as 10 percent as tested in real life. And the heat factor is a lot better for the drives that are below 320 GB, and below 7200 rpm.
As far as not going to raid? That is a question I am still asking myself, two 5400 rpm drives would be a lot faster than one 7200. However, when a VISTA update crashed this little lappy, three days ago, we were thankful that we had Kubuntu installed on another partition so we could rescue the data on the Vista partition prior to re-installing Vista. We lost no important data and I saved all of my wife's 17.8 GB of pictures. Because of this I became a HERO with her. So the smaller drive will have a new install of Kubuntu.

One GPU vs SLI: Lets face it since I want to play all the games I missed in the last five plus years I won't get around to playing the ones that can benefit from SLI until the next series of GPU's come out. LOL

robamb2002
06-10-2008, 03:05 PM
...I saved all of my wife's 17.8 GB of pictures. Because of this I became a HERO with her...


LOL I went through a similar situation where we thought we might loose the first year and a half of my first sons life! we now store our pix on a minimum of 2 seperate drives :) It is good to be a hero every once in a while :)

RaderCad
06-17-2008, 10:37 PM
Shipped today from XoticPc to my cousins hobby farm in Paso Robles, CA.


YEA!

OregonCoastGamer
06-17-2008, 10:43 PM
Congrads! Enjoy ;).

RaderCad
06-27-2008, 02:35 PM
We got the beast and what a beast. Quick and cool. Cool? Yes that is right, it runs cooler than the $500 throwaway under-clocked Toshiba in every way. Nice for us. :)

Having a heck of a time getting 3DMark06 to complete without hanging gota try compatibility mode next. :(

I have got Quake 4 and all of the Orange Box installed and updated thought steam, got the Lost Coast for free. Had to go in and set up and start every game so they would work in Steam off line mode but now I got them in the beast ready to go.

The wife is happy with the 'developing' of her raw digitial pictures on this beast as it just fly's through it. Even the writes to the new .75 Terabyte drive is 5 times faster than the Toshiba.

Kubuntu was even easier to get up and going on this beast. Only driver I had to go out and look for was the sound card. ;)

Will post more later.....

:)

xpcdude
06-28-2008, 12:55 PM
Congrats on purchasing the fastest laptop yet :)

RaderCad
06-28-2008, 02:17 PM
Got it to run in compatibility mode, all settings standard, no Over Clocking.

Overall score 9544.

Drivers are 7.15.11.7490

Seems OK but could be a little quicker considering the posts on this web site. :(

Not going to mess with any other drivers yet. ;)