*** Official Clevo W230ST/Sager NP7330 Owner's Lounge ***

Did you get one or were you told that ?
I thought every machine should support at least one mSATA, the 2nd beeing an option most adopted.

edit: ok, that's confirmed.
There is still potential for 2 disks so RAID is still an option, no problem there.

 

Sager blocked the port, Mythlogic did not.

It was because data drops occurred sometimes when using that port.

I'm not sure that this is the reason for the blockage on this model.

 

I don't have one, I was told by the PC Specialist support team. At that time you couldn't select any mSATA drives.

What's confirmed?

 

Any luck with getting any Nvidia drivers on this thing other than the stock ones that came on the disk?

 

I checked tonight and now PC Specialist to have an option for 1 mSATA drive - this was not the case when I checked yesterday!
PWN PCS are offering the option of fitting an mSATA drive too.

 

I only need about 400GB storage, and I'm interested primarily in speed and reliability, with weight a secondary concern. Price is tertiary. Do I go with a pair of M4 mSATAs or just do a 2.5" 840 Pro and call it a day?

 

Or get a 960GB Crucial M500. Then space will definitely not be a concern.

 

Hah yeah ok I said price is tertiary, but it's not irrelevant

 

Anyone having minor keystoke issues at the bottom/corner of the spacebar?

Also, normally at what point does backlight bleeding become unacceptable?
Here is a picture of mine.


So far I'm liking the laptop, but would like it more without these quirks.

 

I could have sworn someone answered this already, but I can't find it.

I think I'll be fine with just one drive on this thing - at least for now. I think a 240/256GB SSD would be enough for me. I've never gotten an SSD before - would I be better off putting the primary (and likely only drive) in the SATA or the mSATA slot? Purely from a value standpoint. Is mSATA better than SATA?

I've done a little bit of rudimentary research, and it seems like doing the Samsung PM841 mSATA would be the best bet, since it has lower power draw than the M4. Or does that matter either?

 

If you can find the drive you want as an mSATA, I'd go with that. It leaves the SATA slot open for a larger HD or SSD down the road should you want or need one.

Look at the pricing on the M5M? Since it's supports DEVSLP, it should have lower idle power draw than either of those two.

 

Plextor M5M mSATA is the popular one right now, and performs better than the rest.

 

There is no difference between mSATA or SATA now as far as performance. They are all SATA III 6Gbps. Just 2.5" SATA drives tend to be cheaper, and older mSATA drives were slower. But not any more.

 

Definitely put your SSD in the mSATA slot. No doubt.

The reason is because you want to keep your 2.5" SATA drive bay open and unused for future expandability. If/when you decide that you need more storage capacity, you can always put a large, inexpensive mechanical HDD in the 2.5" SATA drive bay for bulk storage of media content (photos, music, videos, pr0n). That type of content uses a lot of storage space, and doesn't benefit from SSD speeds, so it is ideal to put on slow high-capacity mechanical HDD storage. Currently the highest-capacity drives you can find in a 2.5" size are 1TB drives. But I'm sure that at some point in the near future (12 months), we will begin to see 1.5TB and 2.0TB drives coming out.

A 256GB mSATA drive will have about a +$50 price premium over an equivalent 256GB 2.5" SATA SSD. However, that price premium is absolutely worth it, just for the sole reason of being able to keep your 2.5" SATA drive bay free. If you're looking for an mSATA drive, I'd follow Rinx7's recommendation to get a Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD, and just call it a day. Fast, reliable, and used by many people on these forums.

 

Cool, thanks guys. So it sounds like I should order my system sans HD, then pick up an M5M and install it myself (since none of the resellers offer it), and install Windows using an external optical/boot disk. Suppose that's what I'll do, then, just as soon as I can pick out a processor.

 

Just make a Windows USB flash drive from another PC if you can.

Although I wonder when OEM's will start to ship data on 1GB or 2GB flash drives. They sure are cheap enough and they could write protect them too so you couldn't destroy the data on it and have your drivers on it like on DVD. So many machines don't ship with optical drives any more.

 

Who wants to report on Natural Selection 2 performance at 1080p?

 

Eh, considering "recommended" specs are Core 2 Duo 3GHz and GTX 450 or better, I'm sure it will run spectacular. But I'll give it a whirl.

 

Wingnut, care to try COH 2? I'm interested to see how your undervolted 4800MQ does...

 

You would think so.. but i've found performance to be anything but.. It really does seem to fly all over the place. On my current lappy (it's IGP w/ i5 Ivy Bridge LOL I know) I get about 15 fps at 1366 x 768 on low.

 

What do you expect out of an IGP? It says GT 450 or better.

 

True, but google seems to correlate that performance is all over the place Just curious to see how this beast performs with it.

 

I just contacted their live chat and this is what I got:
"Sorry, i forgot it was the 13" verison you was looking at. Yes this has an option for 2 mSATA. To get a second you will need to contact us once you have placed the order and we can add the second mSATA."

So no problem with the mSATA slots. However they don't offer an option to remove 2GB RAM and 250GB HDD. I want to buy just the barebone to save some extra coins, and they don't have the French keyboard (yet) either .

 

You could wait for Schenker (mysn, XMG, Germany). They normaly have French Keyboard.
The W230ST is not listed yet, but someone said in a german forum that it will be avaible on week 32.
They dont have the option to get the barebone without RAM or HDD in their online Shop but you can order via phone or email and i´m pretty sure they can give you a price without RAM and HDD.

 

i'm planning to order w230st and have decided to go for 1600x900 screen - i went to one of the sony shops to see how FULL HD looks on 13.3 and while the quality is super awesome the text is just too small for me.. hopefully the HD+ will be ok.

I torn between 4700 and 4702 cpu - my question is if PREMA bios comes out I will be able to modify the 4700 frequences at startup? I've never underclocked or undervolted CPU and i'm not sure if its difficult. Can someone advise me on which cpu I should go for ? I will be playing BF3 and BF4 and GTA5 when they come out so I assume the 4700 would be best but i'm concerned about the temperatures... also how much of a FPS drop will I see in 4702 cpu ?

 

With full XTU control you would have TDP controls anyway.

 

That's a wise choice. 1600 x 900 is the sweetspot for 13 ~ 14 inch. I've gone to Sony shop as well and took a look at FHD on a 13 inch laptop. There is no way for me to use such a screen for a long period. The text is just too small. Great screen, yes. I just did not find it practical.

But I can't seem to find a way to downgrade the screen in Canada except for DIY medthod, so I am leaning toward Lenovo Y410p instead.

 

who are you ordering from? looking at one of the uk dealers

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-13/

there is only the one screen choice, 1920 x 1080

 

Why don't you just set the desktop to 1600x900? Sure it's not Ideal, but I don't think it's too noticeable.
I prefer to have the choice and not be stuck at the lower res. Plus there are a lot of optimizations... zooms, the scale (or whatever the name) for win8 and mac, partially for win7.
And you don't lose the desktop space.
Frankly, it's a matter of taste at the end. I just think that if you're going to change a high quality panel just for the text, then it should be for something unfixable.

 

The problem with 1600x900 or 1366x768 screen is not the resolution, it's just that those screens tend to be of low quality tn panel with low color gamut, low contrast ratio and higher black cdm levels with bad viewing angles. You should go with the FHD since it is a high quality IPS panel with better srgb coverage plus you can always downscale to 1600x900 or 1366x768 or you can always increase the size of the text/icons from 100% to 125% staying at FHD.

 

thanks for a reply, i thought I was alone in that matter

I will be ordering from bluemobility (Poland)

yes im affraid of these issues on 1600x900 but full HD means extra $, yes I'm aware i can increase the size of text/icons but what about text within the programs itself - like photoshop ? The function button text can't be changed as eaisly as in browser. May I ask whats SRGB coverage ? Also doesn't downscaling to 1600x900 change the quality of displayed things on the screen ? I just downscaled my 1366x768 to 1280x 720 and everything looks blured out ... Need some more convincing to go for FullHD screen also i'm a bit worried about bright spots some users reported on their displays..

 

sRGB is a colorspace (all the possible colors), it's smaller than the Adobe RGB. Usually, crappy panels can't represent all the standard sRGB colors.
If you change the panel, well, you're going to have a completely different panel, so forget everything that's been said about the chi mei panel. Actually, I think it isn't even confirmed yet that the 1600x900 panel is IPS.
As I understand the text scaling applies to everything, even apps? It works ok for Mac and win8. In win 7 some apps seem not to be compatible.

 

See this post here for running 1080p screen at 1080p, 900p, 768p: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...np7330-clevo-w230st-review-2.html#post9297443

 

You have a couple of options with scaling, one is to get windows to run at 1920x1080 and ask programs to render themselves a bit bigger, most of the time that's fine but some programs ignore that request. The other option is to tell windows to run at 1600x900, which will make everything just a little bit blurred yes but on the other hand the resolutions you're dealing with are much bigger than 1366x768, like double the number of pixels so the effect should be less noticeable, it also helps that the screen is small.

Assuming here you're using a laptop and it's got a 15" display (yeah big guesses I know, but we've got practically no information about your setup to go on here), to simulate how sharp the new screen is at native resolution, measure the distance from your eyes to your display... now sit twice as far away, so if there's currently 25 inches between your eyeballs and the display, sit 50 inches away. That's roughly how sharp the 1080p monitor will appear (very very roughly, I'm waving a measuring tape and some maths around here in an attempt to work out a way to convince you)

The point I'm trying to get across here is don't be afraid, just get the 1080p display unless you really can't afford it (in which case save up some more). It really is pretty fantastic, and even if you want to run things at a lower resolution they'll look *far, far* better due to having a greater colour range, brightness, etc. etc. though things will be ever so slightly (not noticeably) more blurry.

Back to helpful information: sRGB is a colour space, as in, it's a sub-set of all the colours that our eyes can possibly see. It's a bit tricky to tell on a bad monitor but have a look at this image from wikipedia http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Colorspace.png
The horseshoe shape at the very back is all the colours the human eye can see, the triangle labelled sRGB is all the colours a monitor that covers the sRGB range can display. Just for comparison, you'll see the aRGB triangle there covers a lot more vibrant green colours, this means that a monitor that covers aRGB will be able to display more vibrant greens.

For reference, bad LCD monitors tend to only be able to cover 40% of sRGB, so that bit in the middle of the shape with the really weak, near-white colours in it, this means the display will look washed out and dull.

As for bright spots, get the LCD replaced under warranty if it happens, better to have the chance of a good monitor than to have one that's permanently bad.

 

I found almost no information at all in this thread regarding battery life of the NP7330. I am very interested in picking up one of these units but I need to make sure I can get 4-5 hours of battery life out of it, since I will be commuting to and from my university every day.

I searched the thread but I found almost no information at all regarding battery life!

 

Try looking at HTWingnut's review, where he says it gets about 3 and a half hours, though this is likely to improve with newer bioses (iirc the W110ER went from 3 to 5 hours over its lifetime of a year) and less power intensive component choices (3 drives? 2 in RAID which probably limits power saving options?)

There's even some doubt about whether the GPU was fully turned off during this due to an odd bug in the soundblaster software

 

1080p looks fine to me here Can't wait to get that extra real estate over 1366 (ugh.. kill me now)

That said Win 8.1 has added support for high res scaling options, to fix these small text issues some users are experiencing: Hands-On with Windows 8.1: Desktop Display Scaling

 

The rep from HawkForce said you can PM user "HawkForce" for a NBR member discount of €50. Service has been fine so far but I'm having issues with PayPal, who does their credit card processing...

 

You won't come close to 5 hrs of battery life. I don't know what I did/changed but mine barely got 3 last night on balanced mode within Windows 7.

 

Thats odd, i didnt have a problem when i ordered. What exactly is your issue?

 

thanks a lot guys for detailed info on full HD screen, I think I'll go for it I was wondering which OS are you guys going for ? Win7 or 8 ? Are there same scalling options in win7 as in win8 that GuruGuni mentioned? I've had win8 for a while but took me quite a bit of time to disable most of the stuff that made it annoying (the new destkop lanuch) and return start button but in the end I installed win 7 on my w110er.

 

Well I talked to Mythologic today. They got their first batch of w230sts from Clevo yesterday and they all have the Chemei panel.

 

To the best of my knowledge, Chei Mei screens are the only ones shipping with this model up to now in the USA...

 

Consider bringing your AC adapter too (it's fairly small... consider that I've been carrying around my NP9130 + its power brick for the better part of a year... my back is hurting )

But HTWingNut's review said he got about 3.5 hrs of use. Then again he's got 3 drives + a 4800MQ. And I believe his test was a bit more strenuous than most. I'd say 4 hrs is achievable though.

 

I just got this laptop, and was testing it out, and I am confused about the audio. My clevo came "soundblaster compatible 3d audio". Does that mean sound blaster would only work if I had a sound blaster card. Atm whenever I click on the sound blaster application it gives me the message saying that the current audio device is disabled, or not supported, because honestly if the sound blaster does not work that would have been a mistake on my part for not upgrading, because currently the sound is average coming out the speakers and headphones.

 

nevermind!

 

Soundblaster is just software. There is no hardware for it. Did you install all the drivers first too? Audio drivers especially before Soundblaster drivers?

 

In my brief forray so far into ssds, I seem to recall mention of msata/USB interfaces, so perhaps maybe the pokey drives were using USB? I might be ENTIRELY WRONG, as until the 8250 I NEVER tried an ssd drive before(msata) as they were pricey(for cap) and I wasn't at all unhappy with desktop(or even my GT725s) hdd perf...

(Oh noes, I'm in another angst boat, pre-ordered the new nexus 7, and saying so long to my Samsung GT 7+... ...and I'm still in "order sent to factory" limbo hell on my 7330...)

[EDIT]
Yeah, Soundblaster, I got all excited briefly, and then realized that it was just their sw bloatware for my 8250, while it really had the dubious ALC9 < whatever it is, which is not really all that good and pretty old nowadays >
[/EDIT]

 

After reinstalling sound blaster cinema i am still getting the issue " There is no supported audio device availible". I am curious can anyone give me the link to the drivers for this laptop, i do not have an external dvd drive to use the cds, and cannot find working ones on the internet.

 

My unit arrived today, but I had to go out of town for work so I won't actually get my hands on it until Friday. I made my wife take some pictures of the unboxing and check if there were any dead pixels or screen bruises. I was nervous after a couple reports of damaged screens. According to her the screen looks great, as does the rest of the laptop.

I went through xotic, but it shipped directly from Sager. Its the 4700mq, the rest stock except for the Intel AC wireless card. I also picked up a crucial 256gb mSata I'll be installing this weekend.