Shopping around at Malibal, Xotic, PowerNotebooks, LPC and Mythologic

As you can see from my title I shopped around a lot before deciding where to go.

When I started I was looking at the 18 inch model Clevo with 560m sli and contacted all of the companies in the title asking them what sort of deals I could get if I ordered through them.

My order was time sensitive since I will only be at my location until the 29th Jan and so this was also an important consideration as to whom I order from.

Through various discussions and advice I discovered that the 6990m is almost as powerful (if not more so in some tests) than the 560m sli option which opened my options regarding the base chassis and whether it was worth reducing my desired screen size.

I ended up on the phone with representatives for all the companies to discuss my options and found every one of them to be friendly, informative and have a genuine interest in what I was looking for.

I was offered great deals but in the end I opted for Malibal because they were able to offer the P180HM with just the one GPU, which at the moment no one else was able to do.

I was impressed with the amount of time all companies were able to offer me when discussing my needs, especially considering how much I flopped around regarding models, GPU's and hard drives... I probably would snapped if I were on the receiving end of such indecision!

The only company that were unable to offer me the time were PowerNotebooks, but they weren't to know I was trying to confirm my order by the end of Monday and I received an email response that evening apologising for the delay but that they had been swamped. Besides from what I can tell they too would have been unable to offer the single GPU in the P180HM, so I don't begrudge them at all for the delay and it was nice for them to apologise.

So major shout outs need to go to:
Donald Stratton at PowerNotebooks
Josh and Eric at Mythologic (your patience is outstanding!)
Larry at LPC
Michael S at Xotic
Matthew at Malibal (I feel like I'm robbing you guys with such a good offer!)

You are all a credit to your respective companies

So now it's the waiting game...

 

Hi, I'm glad everything worked out and you were able to get the notebook you wanted. The P180HM is a sexy beast - I'm sure you'll love it!

 

Oh I guess I should post what I ended up opting for...

Veda P180HM

Display: 18.4" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.2-3.1GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium; 64-bit
Wireless: Intel® 6300 Ultimate-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU

If anyone else has a similar build I'd love to hear your thoughts... not that it'll make any difference, but it will make me feel closer to the time I get to play with this bad boy

 

Just had a total blonde moment... Looked up my tracking details and it read...

Scheduled For Early Delivery On:
Wednesday, 01/25/2012, By End of Day
Originally Scheduled For Delivery On:
Monday, 01/30/2012, By End of Day

I read that as it not arriving to Monday (because I'm an eejit) and asked Malibal for help. Their reply? "It says it's scheduled to arrive on Wednesday the 25th... chillax matey. "

I love their style

 

Hello Ross-

That is fantastic you got what you were looking for! It was my pleasure to assist you. I hope you enjoy that. Looks like a fine build indeed.

Cheers!

 

Thanks Michael, you almost had me. As I said in the end it was an amazing offer from Malibal and the ability to have only one GPU in my preferred chassis that made the difference. Loved the service though and was very impressed

 

Okay so I received the laptop yesterday and was instantly in total awe of it's unbridled sexiness. I started taking all the photos of the unboxing as well as carefully checking the chassis and the all the basics... then I think I stared at the tramp stamp for a good three minutes straight, it was hypnotic.

Sadly she ended up being a bimbo, gorgeous on the outside but issues on the inside. I tried running 3DMark 11 and the display driver crashed. Concerned, I tried to run a game but this ended the same way. At this point I started installing all the numerous Windows downloads in case that was affecting the driver but this did nothing to help.

At this point I contacted Malibal and over the space of the next 3 hours 30-40 emails flow back and forth to try and identify the issue. We uninstall the anti-virus I had installed, wipe all the drivers, reinstalling them, trying different versions, all to no avail.

At midnight we cancel the efforts to try again this morning. We start by checking temperatures and when that appears normal I reinstall windows and wipe the hard drive. Eventually, after starting fresh with no extraneous software to get in the way of the drivers, we discover that the problem still exists.

It's at this point we I'm asked to check that the GPU and heatsink is screwed down properly as a final attempt to fix the issue, but that's not the source either. Therefore the only conclusion we can come up with is that the 6990m is most likely defective.

Naturally this is massively disappointing: I have a gorgeous but vacuous blonde in front of me, and as much as I love her she needs to go (I'm still talking about the laptop in case anyone is confused).

The issue I have is that I leave the US on Sunday to return to the UK, and with it being Thursday lunchtime sending a replacement would be nigh on impossible. However because I bought a laptop from Malibal the impossible is nothing! After a quick check I'm issued a paid label for UPS and informed that an order is being rushed and will be over-nighted to reach me on Saturday!

So not only did the reps at Malibal spend hours of their time to try and fix this issue, they're rushing a replacement order to me at absolutely no expense to myself. What more could I ask for? I was already hugely impressed with Malibal's customer service prior to all of this but now I find this kind of superb treatment unparalleled. Malibal are doing everything in their power to rectify the problem and keep their customer happy, and I am extremely grateful for it.

If there was a Nobel prize for customer service and/or general awesomeness then Malibal would need to build a mighty big trophy cabinet.

Suffice to say I'll update once I am in receipt of this new unit and hopefully there will be a happy ending

 

Most excellent.