yay. gt627-18us has arrived

Inside the big cardboard shipping box is a smaller cardboard MSI shipping box, inside of that is the black G Series box and that ugly MSI backpack.

That's all for now, have to eat, and then spend a few global epochs taking off the stickers. I can't really answer the q's folks have anyway, the latest pc game I own is Titan Quest. (lol) But I can and will run 3dmark06 tonight.

 

first thing first, we want pictures ! then questions come later :]

 

can't wait for pics, or even a good review with performance, build quality, and battery life

 

Congrats cuib! Let us know if the specs match as advertised (there were some problems with the GT725 UK versions...)

 

I'd rather embed pix than give links to an upload site, could someone tell me the code to do that here?

 

In the reply menu (not quick reply), there should be a button labelled "Manage Attachments". Just click there and you can upload

 

My cam sucks, my photo skills suck, my room lighting sucks. But I'll toss out a few prelims. Something came up so I don't think I'm even going to be able to turn this thing on til tomorrow. Anyway.

Anand has pix and frosty has a youtube up that shows the chassis, I just wanted to highlight a coupla things. The pix at bottom, in order:

1. Funky touchpad buttons, is plane level smooth with palmrest with grooves describing an S as you see in the pic. Scroll bars are not really obvious.

2. Mic is right next to the stickers (the little white dot) in the super fuzzy pic.

3. Despite the numpad, the keyboard seems comfortably large; it's shown next to an MS Digital media kb 3000.

4. Last pic shows real world size comparison.

I can take any pix folks want to see, but for the unit itself, check out anand or frosty's vid.

Feel of the rig is stellar, especially how smoothly the unit closes with its magnets (no plastic little thing!) Solid, clean lines, has heft without being heavy. I thought the red accents would look terrible in real life, like Mass Effect colossus armor, but it's not bad at all, it doesn't necessarily scream "I'm a laptop for gamers."

But the touchbar across the top just look cheap, and seems completely out of place with the rest of the rig. It already looks like it might crack or warp in not too much time.

Have not turned it on yet though lol.

 

Thanks for the pics. If you could, give a mini review of the laptop when you get a chance. I've been looking for one(first laptop) and I'm torn between this one and the 725. The more info I get the further away I get from settling on an asus x5 Thanks.

 

Wow very nice cuib. I find it weird though that the keyboard on the GT627 looks so similar to the GT725. I would figure they would use the extra space to increase the size of right shift button and stuff, but instead they just shoved the power button to the left of the keyboard (rather than along the top as seen with the GT627)

 

Any chance of some 3DMark06 & Vantage action? And possibly a bench of Far Cry 2 @ 1680x1050(since that's what they've used so far in the 725 thread)?

 

Awesome, thanks for the pics. I think I can help you out though.

You strike me as a person who understands the value of having a second \ key and a really tiny shift key. You also seem to need a full-sized zero on your numberpad. Having unnecessarily complicated layouts is the dream, right?

Well, I've got the solution, just pop that keyboard off, ship it over to me and I'll send you one of the better ones from the MSI-1651!

 

Discs included
-MSI Office One 7.2 (what is this?)
-Blu-Ray & DVD Solution (what is this?)
-MSI Driver, Utilities, Manual
-2 blank MSI branded DVD-Rs that are marked says "reserved for Recover Disc usage". (I was actually bemoaning the fact that image backup is an Ultimate feature, since I don't trust System Restore, so this might be useful I suppose.)

Oh and the blurb explaining MSI Backup is like a paragraph, but the insert is a folded up gigantic wall poster, because it's in every language on the planet + esperanto and ebonics. I mention it just to say, I didn't know MSI had this global a reach. Seriously it's every freakin language.

Oh btw the red accents are metal, not plastic. I was surprised by that. I'm not terribly thrilled about the metal red abutting up to the brushed aluminum though, some bit of plastic in between might have been good.

I plan to, but I'm not much of a techhead so I doubt my take will be very useful. But at the least I do want to post a review of some sort so folks can ask q's to someone who has it.

I'm definitely doing 3dmark06 tonight, tho it might be late. I don't have any current games, I was thinking I'll just go grab whatever just to see how it handles in real life. FC2 might be a good choice, hear it's good, and it will be refreshing to have mouse aim for a change.

 

Oh, did you get a mouse with it? The guys in England that got the highend GT725 there got the backpack and a mouse... (I need one, and if I end up ordering this one, I'll also need to order 4 or 5 from newegg or somewhere too... OTOH if it came with a mouse I'll just save the $20 or so and use that one...)

 

Pic 1: stickers successfully removed. Only one minor blemish where tweezer hit aluminum.

Pic 2: cutter, I got the bag, no mouse. But not being in England means I won't be stabbed tomorrow by chavvy youth so it's a fair trade.

 

The pic is super fuzzy, but I think you can see what I mean.

The red metal accent, where it meets the kb depression, seems rather crude. There's basically a canal there, and the red metal part simply folds over a little into the canal.

This is the sort of stuff you never ever saw in a Mac or Sony, and which you don't see in Dells anymore. I'd be more worried about it if the rig as a whole didn't feel so sturdy and well built.

 

What O/S did it come with? Is it the 32-bit vista? Seems MSI only ships the G series with Vista 32-bit when it has 4GB RAM. Kinda dumb seeing you wont get to use all 4GB in 32-bit

 

Fits perfectly on the Cooler Master Notepal Infinite. (Note: this is the $25 reg edition, not the much more expensive widescreen version.)

32 bit Vista. My vendor was willing to install 64 if I really wanted it, but eco mode and turbo mode don't currently work with 64 bit. I hear some vendors flat out refuse to ship this with 64 bit.

 

Gosh darn, that laptop looks nice. Any word on MSI planning for a 64-bit version of their eco/turbo mode software?

 

i hope they come out with a patch for that though. would be nice to utilize all 4gigs without hacking the system

 

So I booted up, it seems to be going through a "recovery" sequence. Not sure what this is about, but with splash screens (of people looking really happy), there are two lines:

"Please don't press any key when recovery procedure is running"

and

"Wait for your system booting for the first time" (sort of worried a bit about Q&A now lol)

But here's the deal: hdd is running non stop, and I can't hear it *at all*. There's a faint hum from the fan (not the cooler, which is off), not loud enough to drown out hdd. On my Dell you can hear the hdd from across the room.

Unrelated: the vent (right side, toward the rear) spews out a *lot* of air. That might bother people.

Also unrelated: USB ports are on the sides (1 on left side, 1 on right side, 1 usb/esata on right side). They are all sort of toward the front. Extremely awkward placement for cooler and kb/m hookups. I would really have liked one usb in the back. Oh well, guess I'll plug a hub into the cooler usb.

 

Guy with the GT725, said it took quite a while for that to bootup the first time... It's probably actually installing the OS. AFAIK you should still have a c. 10GB maybe hidden partition with the OEM Vista on it, which is why tghey ship those two black disks for you to back it up onto.

 

Hopefully it just takes getting used to, but as it stands, this kb is unusable.

It's like it's on a trampoline, press any key, the whole kb flexes down from where you press. You probably think I'm exaggerating. It even makes a noise like you're punching a taut sheet of rubber.

Oh and one of my keys (left ->) is warped in half and hanging off the keyboard lol.

Anyway with this kb, this is a desktop with a battery. Seriously. I would not recommend anyone buying this before trying this kb.

 

The old keyboard on the GX620/MS-1651 flexed quite a bit too, but really only if you were pushing the keys pretty hard. The biggest problem was with the keys around the middle of the keyboard. I don't think that MSI does a good job of putting in supports for their nb keyboards.

Have any problems with the keyboarard/hw keys/powerbutton/trackpad stopping responding to input yet the machine keeps running normally? (Happened to my MS-1651 but apparently the Dec '08 BIOS/embedded controller firmware update fixed it, so I guess it shouldn't happen with yours. (Of course that kb is also slightly different than the one on the 620/1651 and the mb was revised since the 620/1651...)

 

cuib you have the Coolmaster notebook cooler?

 

I should be clear about something.

1. The screen looks great.

2. Rig runs SUPER quiet.

3. Other than a few questionable accents I dislike, the whole thing feels sturdy, it feels lighter than spec'd, and looks clean.

4. Performance, from what I have seen, is great; shut down and boot are superfast, 3dmark06 of 8595 with Nov 08 drivers is in line with what you expect from the specs.

My problem is the keyboard (and related arrangement), and the problem is I hate this style of keyboard, not that the kb is defective. Comparing it to my Dell, the Dell kb rests on a rigid plane; this kb rests on a rubber mat. I guess the theory here is less impact while you type? Hopefully I'll get used to it. But that is what has me on a rant about this rig, and NOTHING else.

Re the touchpad, I was trying to scroll all around the edges and nothing was happening. I didn't fiddle with any controls though.

Finally: I mentioned a busted key on this or another thread here. (Maybe I'll cut and paste this.) I broke that key on my own lol, I looked back at the pix I took when I got it, it was perfect when it arrived. IDIOT.

Anyway I don't want my own disappointment with this rig (kb is a rather big deal, I would have traded performance for better kb. I mean I do have to type more than I game...) to discourage others. It's a very personal reaction I'm having to this kb.

Edit to add, I do have the Cooler Master Notepal Infinite (4:3 ver.), and it's great. 3 fan settings, low is nice and quiet, high is a jet engine but pumps out the air like crazy.

 

don't worry you'll probably get used to the keyboard it's probably going to take a week or two

 

Does it look like the keyboard can easily be taken out like in a Dell laptop? If so, I'm sure many people would be curious to see what type of support there is under the KB.

I'm thinking that a slight modification by adding some support (i.e. double sided tape and/or making a "shim") would fix the problem. Something like this, while technically violating the warranty, could easily be removed before sending it in for any services needed. If done correctly, it shouldn't affect the laptop's cooling system either.

 

That's the hope. At least, it will definitely get better. if I ratchet down my banging style of kbing, it might even be more quiet than the Dell.

Gonna try to get used to it first, if all else fails, yeah, gonna have a soldering nutmonkey friend of mine to see if he can add some form of support. It's that give in the middle that's the problem, as you go to the edges it gets much better.

Again, I should have broadened my research to look at things like this; I have since learned that all this was explored when the 620 came out.

And it's likely my negative reaction is heightened atm from not being 100% satisfied with a new pc ootb.

I do absolutely hate that some of these barebones don't come with an OS disc though. I didn't even know about this until I opened the box. I want the disc, so going forward, I now know that I have to add $100-150 to the price tag of a barebones vs a major brand. Since you can restore to factory defaults anytime you want while saving your data, it's really not a huge deal, I just don't like it.

 

was that at 1680x1050 or at 1024x768?

 

@cuib
YOu didn't get a barebones, you got the MSI retail product as AFAIK there is NO barbeones equivalent of the 627 ATM.

As to the OS, IIRC, it's been mentioned that the MSI retail machines ship with 2 blank(black) DVDs, which you are supposed to use, apparently, to backup a hidden ~10GB partition which holds the OS.

Dunno how you do it on an MSI, but Sony's have an extremely cheesey program that does. (Looks like something some highschool kid cobbled together, but it works. Sony also didn't supply the blanks, you had to go buy some if you didn't have any laying around.)

keyboard: Yeah, it sounds like you must batter kbs pretty good, so you're likely going to have to take it a little easier on the MSI. I really only noticed th eflex myself when specifically looking for it, and got used to the various key sizes/layout pretty quickly on the MS-1651/GX620.

How are the temps? Have you run hwmonitor while running a demanding and recorded the values yet? (Stalker SoC (completely unoptimized?) would push the CPUs into the 70+C region (P8600) and the GPU to c. 92C.)

@ChinNoobonic
Probably 1280x1024 as most people only have the trial version, which IIRC forces you to use 1280x1024. Also just about every 3DMark06 bench is run at 1280x1024 anyways which makes it handy for direct comparisons.

That said nothing beats results from a set of apps and games, as those synthetic benchs are almost never a good indicator of "real world" "performance".

 

Anyone have an exact weight of this laptop ???

 

It is supposed to be 2.7 kg (with the 6 cell).

 

I hear the gt627-218US comes with a 9-cell battery. Do you have any pictures of it?

 

Try the rkcomputer.net site, IIRC they have a link to photos on their product pages for the 627 somewhere...

[EDIT]
meh, look like MSI stock marekting photos to me... no idea what battery's in that, but I'd guess a 6 cell since a 9 cell WILL stick out a little on that model as it's the same dimensions as the GX620/MS-1651. 9 cell also sticks out a little on the GT725 too IIRC.
[/EDIT]

 

Hows the battery under normal usage? does it get over 2 hours?

 

Looks like the newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152099
photos have the 9 cell in it, and you can see that it does stick out a little v. a GX620/630/1651 etc. with the 6cell...

Any game benchs on this yet?