s96j Review

Hey guys,
got my s96j on Monday! I love it. Here are some impressions.

Ordering and shipping:
I ordered from GentechPC and got a great price. These guys are great and answered my questions quickly. I wanted to change my hard drive from a Hitachi to a seagate so i called and it was no problem. It came really quick after they got the shipment in and built it. I am adding GentechPC to my list of reputable dealers, which includes Geared2play.

Build and Appearence:
This thing is much nicer than expected. I cant believe the people who have said anything negative about the build quality. I have used a lot of laptops and this is pretty darn solid. Granted, my z70va was slightly stronger (I guess because of the "carbon fiber chassis") but i am very happy with the build quality of the s96j. I was using a Dell laptop from my company for a week while I waited for my new lappy and I was appalled with the build quality.

Screen:
One word, GORGEOUs! i really didnt know what to expect in terms of the 1280 x 800 resolution and the glossy screen but I am quite pleased. My two concerns were that I was used to the high resolution of my z70va and I didnt know if the lower res would be good and I also had seen a lot of glossy screens that appear blurry to me. Thankfully, both these issues were not problems at all for me. The res is great! Perfect for the 15.4 in widescreen and enough for doing programming. The glossy is great, plenty of brightness. Thankfully, the screen looks razor sharp to me. DVDs look really good as long as you use a good player like VLC Media Player.

Keyboard and touchpad:
Excellent. I have used some horrible keyboards (Toshibas, sonys) and some great keyboards (IBM, Acer Ferrari) and this is in the upper half. Quite responsive and well spaced. I quickly grew accustomed to the control key-function key switch on my z70va so it was an easy transfer for me.
The touchpad is perfectly responsive to me. It’s the same as the z70va, which I loved. And I can be quite picky about touchpads. I hate Apple touchpads, for comparison. The buttons are really loud when you click them. If you plan on using this in class, it can be a little distracting when you click, so you should use an external mouse.

Speakers and audio output:
Decent quality speakers, not very loud. Definitely softer than z70va. However, I always had a problem with low sound output from the z70va and this is worlds better. I can listen to my headphones comfortably on low volume.

Noise and heat:
Very little noise. The optical drive is much quieter than the z70va. The heat is also lower. I leave it on all day and the palmrests have yet to get uncomfortable. You can also comfortable put it on your lap, unlike the z70va, which often got scolding hot on the bottom. The fans are placed well so that they are not totally blocked when it is in your lap, also.

Performance:
It’s very fast. The 7200rpm hard drive I have allows me to do a lot of video editing that I couldn’t do with the Pentium M and 5400rpm hard drive. Check other places for benchmarks. Im lazy.

Conclusion:
This is an amazing deal for an incredibly well built and well specced machine. It will perform much better than most $2000 main stream notebooks for around $1200 with top of the line specs. My z70va cost 1800 and this blows it out of the water.