Well heroiuu, if you try to define gaming laptop in terms of components specification AND bling, you should buy this:



It is a Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S. Available in UK.

The specifications are:
Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz, 3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB)
NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS (GDDR3, 512MB dedicated memory)
4096MB DDR3 1066MHz of RAM
built-in Harman Kardon® stereo speaker system with 2 x bass reflex speakers, 2 x tweeter speakers and 1 x subwoofer technology
more.....

The laptop specification is a bit less powerful than threadstarter's Sager NP8660. So if you were given a choice only to choose between these two laptop, which one would you take? The Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S with fiery red bling bling at the cost of RM7k+ (£1199.99 incl. VAT) OR Sager NP8660 with a more powerful specification and at a lower price of RM6.1k but without a bling bling?

If you choose the Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S which cares only about the outer appearance of the laptop, then you are a fool because you are wasting your money. I know probably you ask why I bought this laptop instead of Sager? The answer is because I prefer a 17" laptop with a dedicated numpad as I frequently use it (I can add a normal keyboard but for me, its a bit redundant.) and I didn't really know about Sager until I came across this post.

Oh and if you are so rich and are willing to spend up to RM10k on a gaming laptop with blings (as in this topic), I can't understand why you cannot afford to study abroad like threadstarter and I did. In UK, you can get a better gaming laptop than in Malaysia.

Don't think that you being a MMU student doing whatever course (I presume that it will be a course related to computing since MMU is famous for that) is that great thinking that whatever gaming pheripal must have the bling factor so that you can show around how cool your laptop are with all the blings to others in your campus colleague. Maybe your mind is a bit redundant causing you to enter MMU (I apologise to MMU students and ex who might get offended but I merely comment towards heroiuu ).

Off-topic:
corad, I believe that you study in University of Cambridge since your sig shows that the ISP belongs to the University of Cambridge. If yes, what course are you studying?

Also, for those who are curious what is the 3dMark06 score for Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S, the score is 8303 (on Windows XP Professional SP3) but this is due to the fact that I cannot get a WHQL certified driver for my graphic card for Windows XP. It seems that as of the time of writing, NVIDIA haven't release GeForce 9M series driver for both XP (if they still support which I hope they will) and Vista. Toshiba website only listed WHQL certified Vista driver but none for XP.

This post has been edited by SFX: Oct 28 2008, 08:22 AM

Well, I haven't test any games yet on the Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S as I just have the laptop for about 2 weeks only and I'm busy with my studies. I will run Call of Duty 4 and the yet to release (as of writing) Need for Speed: Undercover and I believe these two is a good way to benchmark the laptop (NFSUC because I'm a fan of NFS series and NFS ProStreet really do stress my desktop bought on 2006). Might benchmark other games but I'll just wait and see.

No, I have no regrets on buying a Toshiba instead of Sager for the following reason:

1. Sager is available in the US but I'm not quite sure if there is a local retailer available in the UK because I prefer to buy a laptop through a shop rather than online. You may think why I didn't buy online at this age of technology. Simple, I just don't really trust online transaction despite leaps and bounds of improvement towards a safer environment of online transaction. I might change my mind in the future but not at the present time.
2. As threadstarter mentioned before, warranty issue will be a huge setback. If anything (God's forbid) happen to the laptop, it will be hard to make a warranty claim. The laptop have to be send back all the way to the US for repair and the whole process of sending and getting it back could take weeks.
   As for Toshiba, there is regional warranty and international warranty. Therefore, the process will be faster.

Regarding the question about battery life, I have no idea at all because from the day I receive my laptop, I straight away remove the battery. The battery life is very ambiguous as it depends on the style of usage. Generally, the battery life will last for a mere an hour plus (+10% according to my estimate).

Why did you ask about battery life as you know that higher end laptops generally consumes a lot of power. If you are thinking of buying a gaming laptop and lug it around you, I suggest you to buy extra battery pack (and I mean 6-9 packs fully charge every time you lug your laptop around) so that you could game in Mamak stall until the 1st battery pack depleted, switch off, change battery pack, switch on and continue gaming and the whole process repeats itself until all your battery packs fully depleted. Alternatively, buy a fuel-based generator and bring it along as a source of power (just don't forget the fuel as well )

Back to corad, do you mind if you could post your benchmark?

corad, I think you should compile a list of Sager notebook user.

Not bad I must say for you to promote the laptop for the Malaysian market.

Well, I for one never knew about this brand before until this thread was created. This thread came out only after I bought my Toshiba laptop. Regret a bit but on the plus side, warranty support is available locally (UK) and international. Unlike Sager, as mentioned by corad, if anything went wrong, you have to send it back to the US.

Damn it N1-C. You already mentioned Eurocom and I Google it up. Wide selection of individual components for customisation. It may have a more powerful configuration at a lower price than my current laptop.

Anyway I decided to configure one of them to match almost of my laptop specification but the price was higher than the same specification of mine.

Therefore, I present to you:

Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S vs. Eurocom M570TU Montebello showdown
(both of them are 17" laptops for a fair comparison in terms of screen size)

Here is the specification break down.

Toshiba Qosmio X300-11S
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS, 512 MB, GDDR3
Memory: 4 GB (2 x 2GB), DDR3-1066 CL7 memory
Harddisk drive: 320GB, 5400 rpm SATA
Display: Toshiba TruBrite® WXGA+ TFT High Brightness display (1440 x 900)
Keyboard: English UK keyboard
Operating System: Pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
Wireless module: Intel WiFi Link 5100
Bluetooth: Internal Bluetooth + EDR module
Speaker: built-in Harman Kardon® stereo speaker system with 2 x bass reflex speakers, 2 x tweeter speakers and 1 x subwoofer technology
Card reader: 5-in-1 Bridge Media slot (supports SD™ Cards up to 16 GB, Memory Stick® up to 256 MB, Memory Stick Pro™ up to 4 GB, MultiMedia Card™ up to 2 GB and xD-Picture Card™ up to 2 GB)
Webcam: 1.3 Megapixel
Biometric Security Device: Yes
Optical Drive: 8x DVD Super Multi (Double Layer)
Price: GBP 1099

Eurocom M570TU Montebello
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS, 512 MB, GDDR3 <- This one beats mine
Memory: 4 GB (2 x 2GB), DDR3-1066 CL5 memory <- This one beats mine although same capacity but with a lower timing. Mine was 7-7-7-12
Harddisk drive: 160GB, 5400 rpm SATA <- I beat this one in terms of capacity but not the rotation speed
Display: WXGA+ Glossy Surface display (1440 x 900)
Keyboard: English UK keyboard
Operating System: None by default
Wireless module: Intel WiFi Link 5300 <- This one beats mine but hey, in real life, it doesn't matters as the speed will never reach the theoretical speed limit. Also, I'm not fancy in using wireless technology, with some exception like mobile phone for example
Bluetooth: Internal Bluetooth + EDR module
Speaker: ???
Card reader: 7-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD/Mini-SD/MS/MS Pro/MS Duo<- This one beats mine but again, do you really utilise all the card slots available? Not for me unless you have multiple devices with different type of memory cards
Webcam: 2.0 Megapixel <- This one beats mine
Biometric Security Device: Yes
Optical Drive: 8x Multi DVD +-RW/-RAM Burner, SATA, Dual-layer, Tray-based
Price: GBP 1260

Conclusion: I still like my Toshiba laptop. The only problem that I have is to find Windows XP driver for my laptop but it is easily obtain via the net. Eurocom might have almost the same specification as mine but in this case it is a bit more expensive than mine. It might be more cheaper for other models.

corad, I hope you don't mine if I was a bit off-topic.