Sager NP2096 Owners Lounge

Yeah there really are very few, if any, issues with this notebook.

 

i recently purchased a sager 2096 and am quite happy with it.

the only real complaint i have about this machine is the touchpad. the way it is positioned makes it very very uncomfortable to type without moving the cursor

does anybody here have suggestions/tweaks i can implement to make this a more pleasant experience?

it is really really annoying not being able to type fluidly without losing my place or having to arch up my wrists to a ridiculously high position to avoid the touchpad

please please please any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

thank you

 

kooftspc,
you can download the ALPS touchpad driver from Compal's website which will allow you to disable touchpad while typing.

 

You can download the ALPS touchpad driver from the Compal site. Click drivers, then JHL90 on the left hand side and find the appropriate driver. Make sure to uninstall the current Synaptics drivers, then install ALPS, then restart

 

btw since my original post here (few posts up) i decided it'd be a good time for a real review of my recently purchased 2096


the laptop is fast and works just fine with vista ultimate x64. the video card is very good for those who do casual gaming. i think from the available specs though its pretty obvious that this is a fairly powerful machine and i dont feel the need to go into detail of its capabilities.

as far as the general aesthetics of the laptop are concerned...it looks good but it's definitely nothing flashy and as most of you already know its very basic in appearance.

one thing that i noticed right off the bat was that there is no volume knob. this really isnt a big deal for me because i can just use the hotkey. some people may be bothered by this though.

as i've mentioned before i dont like the layout of the touchpad too much. its placed directly where my palms would rest when typing and it just gets in the way too **** often....luckily some nice people suggested a fix for this and it did work for me...maybe it will work for other prospective buyers of this machine but its still something to keep in mind. i end up moving the cursor way too often when im typing. the other annoying thing with the touchpad is the fact that the left and right click buttons are separated by that **** fingerprint scanner. there is obviously no fix for this so take it into consideration.

the battery life is decent but since this is only my second laptop i really dont have a whole lot to compare it to. the 9-cell battery protrudes from the back end of the laptop. i orginally thought it would sit flush with the rear but it doesnt. it really nothing to me but others may want to take note.

the keyboard works fine but i would have liked something with the directional arrows a bit separated. after having used the laptop for a couple weeks though ive gotten used to it. the keys are very flat and when carefully inspecting it i noticed that it was not perfectly even. some parts of the keyboard are curved in and some parts stick out a bit more--kind of a wavy effect.

i wish id opted for the no-glare screen because the gloss is insanely terrible when im using it outside at school.

 

I don't think there is an option for a no-glare screen on the NP2096, at least not that I have ever seen.

What I am wondering, is would it be possible to swap out the standard LCD for an LED-backlit non-glare LCD? I have seen LED backlit LCD's side-by-side next to standard LCD's, and I definitely think the LED screens look better. You get a brighter picture which doesn't dim over time like ccfl backlights, and they also use less power and produce less heat. I found a Phillips non-glare 1440x900 LED-backlit display on eBay for $230, and I'm curious if a swap could be done? Or would there be issues with the LCD inverter? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180249733147

 

Hey again guys! Just a quick question. Is there a way to delete the personal safe off of the desktop?? I'm trying to clean it up and I don't want any icon's on it at all, but I can't seem to get rid of this one. lol

 

Hey guys, haven't posted in a while, been too busy with my baby (2096 ofcorse, not my girlfriend)

After practically filling up my 320GB HD I bought an external, backed it all up and formatted it because Vista 64bit gave me A BUNCH OF PROBLEMS. Some of which are: Media Player not opening, not shutting off when i click the button, some programs not opening at all, Explorer crashing, and I even got the BSOD a few times just from booting from an "unexpected shutdown" because it wouldn't log off Windows... So I installed the 32Bit instead, hoping that would give me less problems, but no luck, same exact problems....

Now my question,

Are you guys having problems with Vista on this laptop at all? I practically have problems every day. It sucks!! but i don't have XP to install, and it still retails for over $100 :S

Have you guys found any ways to fix these problems or any alternatives?
( I am posting here because I figured I want to hear from people with the same exact computer and OS as mine for best results)

@Pandabear - personal safe appears when you install the fingerprint software, if you enter the fingerprint software exe, there is an option under applications where you can check or uncheck the option "Show on my desktop" But I don't think you can have the fingerprint software installed and not have the safe there too.

 

i too have had bsod problems with vista x64...i havent had them recently though so i just stopped worrying about it. i really wish id been able to pinpoint what was causing them. i think it may have been the nvidia audio driver...on my final install i only installed the gfx driver and not the nvidia audio one and havent had a bsod since then

ps....how the hell did you get the intel turbo memory to work with your system? i just gave up on it

 

I've had similar issues. Not exactly, but close. I've pinpointed the exact time these issues occur on my laptop - it only seems to happen if the system is on battery power and has been in sleep mode for quite some time. Immediately after recovery from sleep mode, a lot of the time certain apps just won't open and then all of a sudden the entire system stops being responsive and I have to manually shutdown (even restart doesn't work). I've done a clean Vista install but still same issue. I've been in contact with someone at Microsoft but she doesn't know what the hell she's doing. I'm almost certain this is a BIOS issue as HP users have reported similar problems in the past which have been fixed with a BIOS update. However, Sager has let me know that they doubt it's a BIOS issue because more people would have reported it to them. So get reporting people!

 

Amaracuracuf, thanks for the info! I will give that a try as soon as I get a chance! I'm not sure what could be causing your problem! I haven't had any issues like that with mine. Mind you, I haven't had alot of time to fool around with it tho. lol The only thing I had an issue with was installing WoW so I deleted that and I haven't tried to put it back yet. Good luck, I hope it gets worked out!

 

Got my toy today and have been busy updating drivers and running undervolting stress tests So far Im REALLY digging this rig and am glad I decided on it!!

 

vista 64x or 32x both work fine with me...
32x is faster x2 and of coarse most programs designed for 32x .....
i had that issue of delayed closing my explorer but after i ran antivirus like kaspersky or avira ....was explorer virus and its very common......

 

can anybody tell me what the updated bios does?

 

Hello, everyone
I have bought a HP dv5t couple days ago and I had to return it because the computer was very laggy. I am glad I did because I found sager. I have so many questions and I hope one of you experts could answer me in your spare time!!! where did you guys purchase it from? is it Xoptic? or powernotebooks.com? On the customize section it says that I need to get vista 64 in order for my ram to be recognized as 4G. If i get window XP instead how much RAM would I have with the option of 4G RAM? I have read some of the posts and I can see that vista 64 is causing problems. is it better for me to get windows XP? Thank you very much for your time

 

you can still use XP but you have to install the x64 edition

 

I'm not really sure because the description is really vague but I updated my BIOS to 1.09 yesterday and it works just fine. You should email Sager if you want to update the BIOS because they'll send you a copy of it through email and it's always better getting it directly from them rather than Compal.

I purchased mine from XoticPC. I believe that if you choose XP, you will be limited to 3.2-3.5GB RAM if you have 4GB but I am not positive about this. I am currently using Vista 64-bit and it's running fine. There is one issue that I've had so far and that's the sleep mode recovery issue that I mentioned above but besides that, there have been no major issue so I'd recommend going with Vista 64-bit.

 

are there any precautions to take with these 9-cell batteries?

on my last laptop the battery life went from 2 hours to about 20 minutes. im just wondering if there is a way to preserve the "out of box" battery life

 

hey kooftspc,
where did you purchase your np2096?

 

I have issues with Vista 64 bit. I cannot run debut video software even with clean reinstall and windows media center crashes right after startup. That could be because I tried to install a Netflix adddon and didn't do it right. The computer runs smooth but Vista is the issue. I have no issues with crashing when I run UBUNTU from the second partition. I reccomend either "downgrading" to xp, waiting for the possibly improved windows 7 that looks promising, or go the linux route. Only go to linux if you have background with it or if you know someone who wont hate to help you. Alot of linux is command line stuff.

 

I run Debut just fine...

 

xoticpc.com

 

Did this BIOS upgrade eliminate the problem with programs freezing after returning from hibernate/sleep mode? I came across the same issue yesterday!

 

I actually just upgraded to 1.10 BIOS which just came out yesterday and so far so good! I haven't extensively tested it just yet though, the problem seems to occur only if the notebook has been in sleep/hibernate for a while (2+ hours I'd say). So far I've only tested about 30 minute increments and it's worked fine. I'll have an update on this in a few hours.

 

hmmm, my cd tray just started popping open at random times recently? just wanted to see if that happened to anyone else

 

My notebook was in sleep mode for like 4 hours and upon recovery, I didn't experience any crashing/freezing! Looks promising so far.

 

I can run Debut but once I try to record video, it crashes and says that there is an error with "lame.exe" even with fresh installs.

 

Thanks for your input Sphinx, I am thinking that I will Install Ubuntu and attempt to have 1 of those virtual machines and try to install my games on a "virtual" vista... so I can have them simultaneously.

Thats my only problem, I would just use Ubuntu, but I want to play games.... so I guess this is the best option???Any other way you guys can think of to use another OS (Other than Vista) and still play all games?? Dual booting is annoying...

 

I've just ordered my 2096 a few days ago and it should be coming in tmr, but be4 ordering that, I havent' had a chance to have a peek at this site. Since I didn't do much research, I just had the system out of my senses. I had T9400 because the power issue from P9500 wasn't that much of a deal for me, I also had 4gb turbo rams because I simply want to try them out. One of the "regretful" thing, is that the screen was WXGA and not WSXGA+. I wonder if that would be an great issue in terms of graphics on the screen?

 

WSXGA+ is definitely worth it, the screen is so beautiful. WXGA was way too low for me so I can't even imagine what that would look like.

 

what games do you want to play?

some games work well with wine (WoW, diablo, starcraft, apparently source games although i havent gotten them to work) but i mean if you want to run stuff like new CoD, crysis:wh, fallout, grid, while they *might* work on wine (i havent looked) i doubt it would do well. also wine fullscreen support is crappy.

if youre not a hardcore gamer there are native linux games and freeware thats pretty good, but i myself dual-boot, mostly for tf2.

//edit: also if you play fps, i havent heard of a way of turning off mouse acceleration in ubuntu; the solutions ive tried for the hell of it didnt completely get rid of it.

 

Quick Question. Has anyone used the 3.5-S/Pidf out to a receiver? Can anyone verify whether the output is 5.1 or not? Thanks in advance.

 

Thanks Vacarious, I play Timeshift, COD4, halflife 2, Black & White 2...etc
But it doesn't sound like these games will run like they're supposed to on a virtual OS. I might have to Dual Boot...

On another note, I just installed Crysis and as they say, its super graphic intensive. I tried putting "recommended settings" and it puts everything on at medium, scree res like 1024x???...

Its laggy though. Can't really play like that, and if you turn settings to "low" then it looks like crap... Any ideas???

 

Hi Amara,

Check out this Thread ... I think it has your answer ...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=307600

Post back if it worked for you!

G!

 

Hey guys,

I live in Toronto, Canada and was thinking about purchasing the sager NP2096 from the Sager website because it seems they're the only ones that ship to Canada.

There is a retailer called AET Solutions located in Quebec but I emailed them for a quote and even after the exchange rate it seems cheaper to order straight from Sager.

Are there any Canadians... or americans out there with the NP2096 who might be able to give any advice?

 

I believe you can order from xoticpc.com.

 

I bought mine when I was in Toronto in the summer. I ordered from PCTorque with the int'l expedited shipping. I think I had to pay the delivery guy $120 when he delivered the computer at my door.

 

I just ordered mine yesterday and is now on building stage =D
i got the 1680x1050 screen, P9500 and 500gb
I hope everything works OK because i am from Argentina and some friends are going to bring it here when they come here and receive the laptop in USA.
I read all 989msgs and looks pretty reliable.

neTed

 

@ neTed,

I'm Argentinian too! from Rosario, SantaFe. I guess us Argentinians do our research , I followed this thread and many others before making my decision. Congrats on you order, hope you receive it soon, its a SWEEETT computer.

@Gonwk

Thanks for that link! I read the whole thing, and they seem to have some good ideas, I'm going to try and see what works, I'l post again with my results

 

Get it form XoticPC ... I believe you will get it Cheaper and most likely faster since they are in Nebraska vs California.

XOTIC PC
http://www.xoticpc.com/

G!

 

Thanks! I thought i would be the only one to have one here
It would be nice to get in contact at least to have someone that writes in spanish.

I order it without an OS and still not sure what OS will i choose: XP or Vista both 32 or 64. Maybe XP64, as i have vista for about a year now and i hate it. And maybe dualboot with linux.
When my relatives receive it, what test can they do to check if everything is ok?

Thanks!

 

Yeah, i have vista 64 and I get aggravated EVERYDAY! I wish i had an XP that i could install, i think im going to dual boot linux soon though. I really couldn't tell you how to check your system w.o. an OS.. sorry

What do you plan on doing with your computer? gaming?

 

where do you bought it from to get it up to here? tenes mi mail/msn en el perfil por si te interesa =)
I am probably getting XP64 as i can see it worked fine for everyone and without any problem within 32 and 64 apps/drivers.
If im going to install ubuntu does anyone now if there is also any problem with the 64 version? it also recognizes 3.2gb of ram?

Does anyone else know if there is a way to make some tests/check ups to see if something is Wrong/OK?

I plan on gaming, but after burning my FX5200 long ago I lost my vice and games exhaust me pretty fast. I am also probably using dual monitors to extend my desk space with a 17" 1280x1024 and using it to play games on the native resolution.

regards,
neTed

 

Sorry q no mensione antes, pero yo vivo en Florida. I've heard dat Ubuntu 64 is great but I havent installed it yet. I can tell u this is an awesom gaming computer, and battery life is superb! If u install Ubuntu b4 I do, let me know how it runs!

 

Hey all, thinking of buying this laptop, it's perfect for my needs. Few questions:

1) How's the build quality?
2) Does it have a heating problem? (like what's going on in the dv5t)
3) Is the 9600m GT DDR2 or DDR3?

Thanks a lot.

 

have you checked out mr. president's review? it'll answer all your questions. you will be pleased

however,
3) DDR2, not GDDR3

 

Thanks, checking it out now.

 

Can I purchase any 2.5" SSD and just drop it in in place of the HDD? Or are the SATA/power plugs spaced differently?

 

The SATA plug in will be the same, but not all SSD drives are alike, stable, or suitable for every laptop. For example the OCZ SSD drives have proved to be quite UNstable.

Intel and Samsung make good SSD drives, but you may have to test the one you want to use to make sure it will work to your satisfaction. If you are going to buy one separately, make sure you have a good return policy.

 

Another 2 questions, if you guys don't mind:

1) Does it come with an OS pre-installed? On the site it says "VISTA Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition", so do you have to manually install the OS you want?

2) Can XP Professional recognize 4 gb RAM, or can it only go up to 3(like vista 32)?