Yup, targetting to get one by the 3rd quarter of next year coz my current laptop is only like 3 months old.

Thanks and yes I'm based in Malaysia, Labuan Federal Territory. About the arrival time, I don't know as its not here yet. Hope you get yours soon!

And Corad I just noticed you're also in Sarawak! I travel back and forth from Labuan to Miri to study, are you by any chances are oil platform workers or also a student?

Hey, jz asking, I'm interested in NP2096, Which shipment method is the best ah?

Are you buying through XoticPC? I'm afraid there's only 2 options for international shipping which are the UPS and USPS. In both cases, they are expensive.

I personally would not recommend you if you're going after the NP2096 as you can get other brand with similar specification and most importantly, can buy it locally which save you from paying the huge amount of shipping fees.

Yeah. XoticPC.
What brand u recommend if I take local de? model, spec n price list~

I'm sure there's plenty of brand out there with the 9600M GT. A few that I remember are;

HP DV5T, Acer 5930G, MSI GX630 and BenQ Joybook S42.

I think there's more but i couldn't remember them all, try google them and be sure to look carefully at their specifications as there's various version of the same notebook which in some cases, doesn't come with 9600M GT

i'm a student

International USPS. It gives you tracking.

Hey corad. Just wondering, how would one go about obtaining the 7% student discount you mentioned from XoticPC? There doesn't seem to be any information on the website itself. Maybe I'm blind lol, but do you think you could enlighten me? Cheers haha. =p

There's a 7% student discount? @@"

well they seem to have redrawn it for now
and let me clarify : student discount = for university students only. It helps if your uni is known in the states

Not for the moment.

Oh.
Hahaha. Getting my hopes too high for now. xD

haha, who knows ... if we get enough users maybe we can get clevo / sager / xoticpc to set up a base here

I've been thinking of that too.
IMO sager's notebooks are quite the value for money and has hell lot of good specs.

Oh bummer. Yeah, figures that they would withdraw it - the $400 off is already a rather massive discount.

And I am only too aware of the uni student prereq lol, 2009 will be my final year (which means that it will be the last year for me to scrimp up some savings on this baby ).

I hv asked about this long time ago(may be 2,3 months ago) and they mention dat there is no student discount..

Definitely,it's still seem a bit unbelievable for me.

Who do i need to contact if i want to get it in Australia?

According to this, you can get it here. Else, your best bet is international vendor. Its pretty confusing for me but I believe its the chiliGREEN Mobilitas CU MH Serie but hey, I can be very wrong.

[EDIT]

Guess I'll update a little bit .


Shipping


It was shipped last Friday (19 December) and arrived this morning (26 December), took around 4 business days to arrive (Holiday @ 20,21,24 and 25 December). Pretty impressive I'll say as I live in Labuan ATM, an island that even not every Malaysian know . Thus I'm really risking the notebook to be stolen as it require plenty of transit in order to arrive at my place.


The Beast


Under construction!

Pretty much everything is the same with corad's 8660 so I'll not mention them but I'll add a few details that he didn't mention or I want to emphasize .

My Sager NP8660 came with the following specifications:

# Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 (2.53GHz/6MB L2 Cache/1066MHz FSB)

# Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

# 15.4-inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050 Glossy Display)

# 4GB DDR3-1066 RAM

# Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS

# 320GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive

# Dual-layer 8X DVD burner

# 7-in-1 memory card reader (Standard)

# Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5300 + Bluetooth (Standard)

# 8-cell Li-ion battery (Standard)

The configuration's price came out to be $1,980.74. ATM of my purchase, the exchange rate was 3.59 thus I'm paying RM7110.86 in total (My dad told me he need to pay the charges of Pos Malaysia when the machine arrived but I'm not sure as ATM I'm too happy to remember lol, thought this will be helpful reference for anyone who need).

The reason I bought this notebook is because most of the gaming notebook out there exist in the form of 17" but I need a notebook that's able to satisfy my gaming needs with a relatively portable size. Hence, I came across the Alienware m15x and the Sager NP8660. In the end I got myself the Sager NP8660, I must say that this.notebook.is.rock.solid overall in term of built quality.

One thing that I'm disappointed is with the built quality of the lid. The inner lid is weak IMO, when pressure is applied, it will flex. Plus what ever the reason is, I can move my screen slightly around within the inner lid, that said the construction within is not tight. However, nothing is affecting the screen itself, its just that I've paid for 7k and there's such flaw but I can live with that.


The Beast - Silent Mode


There's a dedicated button on top of the keyboard to enable silent mode. When pressed, an icon will showed at the top left part of the screen to indicate its been turn on/off.

The name basically says it all, when Silent Mode is turned on, the fan will be stop spinning and create virtually no sound at all except of the sound the electronic parts give out (You need to pay real close attention to notice this). This mode especially help for people who constantly work in library as it will not disturb the people around. Note that you should never run any game or any resources intensive program under this mode.

Ok, after running my notebook on battery for an hour with silent mode turned on, I notice virtually no difference from the normal mode in term of battery life. This however, make sense as the fan doesn't need to kick in even when running on battery in normal mode.

The Design

Under construction!

The design is overall business-like, clean and professional feel with its brushed aluminum surface. The notebook itself is covered in black with silver trim, glossy part can be found at the outer edge of the inside lid and a thin strip surrounding the keyboard.

On top of the screen, there's the 2.0MP webcam.

On top of the keyboard, there 4 shortcut buttons which is the Default Email, Homepage, Silent Mode and Power Button.



And the bottom of the keyboard, is the keypad, fingerprint reader and mic.

The Screen

Under construction!

My NP8660 came with the WSXGA+ (1680x1050 Glossy Display) screen, different from corad's WUXGA (1920x1200 Matte Display).

The display is reflective but still viewable in office environment with lots of windows. I've yet to take it outdoor yet so I can't say anything about how the screen perform in outdoor environment.

The Heat

Under construction!

Note that Xotic PC's Sager NP8660 come pre-configured with Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound.

Below is the idle temperature with Notepal Infinite @ Max speed (Room temperature to be 29~30C).



And here's load temperature with Notepal Infinite @ Max speed (Room temperature to be 29~30C).



Although the HDD's temperature load at nearly 60c but its not that hot IMO when you touch the palm rest.

The cooling of the NP8660 is excellent as you can see from the pictures above it run cooler than my previous notebook with an 8600M GT (Topping at 80+) with only 5400RPM HDD (The palm rest of my previous notebook somehow feel hotter than my NP8660 although only topping at 50+).

Below is the inner component of the NP8660. I believe this picture is best posted under The Heat section for people to have better understanding of the cooling of the notebook itself. Note that the GPU is covered with a massive heatsink.

Picture source: www.xxodd.nl


The load temperatures show off the effectiveness of the single fan cooling solution and engineering skills of Clevo.

The Heat - Silent Mode

Under construction!

No more screen shot due to the image limitation... Orz

Anyway, after an hour running in silent mode, the temperature readings from HWMonitor are as the following;

ACPI Min @ 40C - Max @ 49C
CPU Min @ ~24.5 - Max @ ~38
GPU Min @ 35 - Max @ 44
HDD Min @ 34 - Max @ 54

ATM I'm doing internet surfing with my wireless turned on @ Balanced mode with brightness @ 40% and no other accessories are being plugged in.

The I/O Ports

Under construction!

Front Side: 1x Headphone-out, 1x microphone-in, 1x S/PDIF-out and 1x mini Firewire.



Back Side: 1x DVI-out, HDMI-out, 1x combined eSATA/USB, 1x USB, 1x power jack and 1x security lock slot.



Left Side: 1x Optical drive



Right Side: 1x 7-in-1 card reader, 1x ExpressCard/54 slot, 2x USB, 1x LAN jack and 1x phone jack.



The Performance

Under construction!

Please forgive me for not having any benchmarks as Streamyx is really slow ATM.

Different from corad's 9800M GT, my GTS perform 5~10% slower than his. In addition, its only 1~5 FPS lower in real world performance test.



You can check here if you want to find out more about the GT or GTS. Ranking at 10 and 11 respectively, losing only to the GTX, upcoming HD Radeon 4850 and all the other SLI/Xfire cards, it kicks all of the other ass out there .

One side note is that my P series CPU when compare to corad's T series CPU is it consume less voltage, run cooler, slightly longer battery life but slower in the same price range.


Conclusion


Under construction!

Pro(s):

# Unbeatable performance in the form of a 15.4" notebook.

# The touch pad surface is matte.

# IMO the right placement of the optical drive and hard drive in a notebook.

# No bloatware! (The Xotic PC version)

Con(s):

# No volume wheel or any multimedia shortcuts button (Play/Pause etc).

# The webcam is rubbish in low light environment (Or when it thinks its in low light environment).

# The speaker's sound is flat, mono-like and weak in volume.

# The size of the power brick can be troublesome.

# Relatively poor battery life, expect to be carrying the power brick around.

Subjective(s):

# No unnecessary flashy LED light(s).

# No touch sensitive button(s).

# The keyboard is pretty hard to press and feel cheap in plastic quality.

# The touch pad is relatively small.

To sum up, I'm happy with this machine , it deliver what I'm expecting from the 9800M GTS. At 7.1lbs/ 3.22kgs, it weight just as heavy as my previous 15.4" notebook but pack with a bigger punch. So no complaint carrying it around!

This post has been edited by N1-C: Feb 1 2009, 07:16 PM

Haha been meaning to ask if you had received your laptop. Good to know it arrived so promptly. I just placed an order for an NP8660(similar specs to yours), all the while worrying that something would go dreadfully wrong during shipping. Definitely reassuring to hear from you . Quick question though - who actually physically delivered the package to your address? Was wondering as the $223 shipping option that I chose means that the US Postal Service will be responsible for shipping. As they aren't a specialist shipping and logistics firm like Fed Ex or UPS, I'm kinda afraid that when the laptop reaches our shores the Pos Malaysia dudes will (mis)handle it lol. Please enlighten me!

This post has been edited by Ashikune: Dec 29 2008, 02:23 AM

thats a tough question since the prices of OEM laptops aren't regulated. from what i've seen xoticpc is still the cheapest. You'll have to check out clevo's wiki page and see which of their distributors in aust have it

Awesome !!

i added an owners list to the 2nd post great to hear it arrived without problems

i'm guessing your local courier company ? whichever has the best service to your area. Mine was delivered via DHL. I'm not in M'sia, but it should be the same

Did you overclock your lappy?

I am amazed that it can play crysis without lag at all

ENVYYYY you

BTW , how much you bought for your second one for the year end discount?

I am curious