Sager NP2096 Owners Lounge

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np2098-custom-laptop-built-compal-khlb2-p-2581.html?wconfigure=yes

if i were you i would look for the new sager 2098 with DDR3 and 16" LED screen.

here is latest gpu driver from nvidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_win7_x64_185.85_whql.html

 

DDR3 & LED screens are overrated, the 2096 has WSXGA+, 9-cell, but the 2098 has 4650.

 

The new technology is always better.....

may be Compal start to introduce ATI GPU to their units after Nvidia defective GPU reported from different vendors.

 

That's what they want you to believe so they don't have to pay for WSXGA+ panels and 9 cell batteries genius.

There aren't any problems with the NB9P series.

 

@ ARom


Give me one reason to not buy Clevo 860TU and looking for compal!!!!!

860tu price fall by only 100$ than 6 months ago and compal jhl90 by 200$

 

I don't think you can really compare those two models...they are quite different. Pricing is quite different, as well it should be considering the difference in the components, from the video card to the ports, audio system, touchpad, and WiFi support.

 

@ARom...if you will simply look at the post just above mine above (1257), from icehell that I have now quoted here (1256), you will see the comment was about comparing the Clevo 860TU to the Compal.

I would recommend that you reconsider your rather lengthy reply that is totally out of context.

 

Thank you

 

Hi Paladin,

What are your general impressions on this new machine, especially build quality? Do you know what the battery life is like other than "2+ hours" I'm running an '06 HGL30 that I bought from you guys and am starting the search for something new and refreshing.

Thanks,
HCGT

 

Build quality is excellent. The LED screen is very nice displaying vibrant colors.

One thing I really like is the palm rest finish...NO fingerprints.

The weakest part is the touchpad which is just a P/S 2 type with two buttons and a lock out button...but no scroll feature and no programmability.

I haven't done a battery test yet but I will tomorrow. I would estimate it at about 2+ hours.

 

Wow really?? You'd think in this day and age, a scrolling touchpad would be standard at minimum. That's practically useless.

What about chasis flex? Keyboard flex?

Look forward to the results of the battery test.

Thanks!!
- HCGT

 

Pick up the laptop with one hand on the corner...solid.

There is some screen flex, but I have never really understood why that would matter.

Keyboard has very light flex, but no weak spots and the tactile feel of it is excellent. It is also very quiet.

At two hours on battery with light computing I put in a DVD movie and got another 1:53 with the battery at 2%. Total 3:53. I would have to rate the battery life at over 4 hours for normal computing and over 3:40 for DVD viewing...amazing on a 6 cell battery IMHO

 

Oh, and it only weighs 5.9 pounds including the battery.

 

WOW! Thanks!! I'll be getting back to you in the near future. I'm torn on whether or not I should wait for Windows 7...

 

Why wait, Windows 7 Release Candidate is available now.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

 

Hey all. I bought my 2096 and threw xp on it. I just wanted to run some temps by you guys. The gpu temp seems a little high for idling am i right/what should I do or is it meant to handle it. Everything look normal?

GPU: 60
Core 0: 34
Core 1: 34
Core: 59

 

its perfect idle temp.

for the gpu its normal

try to make cpu idle temp. high and you will note that fan will work same time gpu temp. will decrease.

 

Have any other NP2096 owners had their 2096s flat out die on them yet? I've had mine since August and just last week I got off of work and went to take it out of sleep mode only to find that it wouldn't come out, so I powered it off then went to power it back on and it wouldn't post(It just turned on the power LED and I heard the fan and disk drives running). I let it sit without the power cord/battery in it for a day then went to retry and it didn't work, even though it has done this once before and that worked then. I also tried removing the memory modules which still did nothing. I'm really just wondering if this is a common problem. Tomorrow I'm going to call tech support and see if I can find any answers since I need it fixed before my next semester of classes. If anyone has had a similar issue and found a quick fix and could let me know that would be awesome instead of me having to send it in for repairs and wait several months, especially since I lost my warranty .

 

Willwf, welcome to the forum.

1. There is no reason to expect returning it to Sager for warranty repair will take several months, they rarely take more than 5 business days to make any repairs.
2. You can't "lose" your warranty. The warranty is controlled by your serial number and the original ship date...there is nothing for you to lose.

 

Thanks for the welcome and the info.

I didn't know if I still needed all the papers that had come with it when I originally received it. I had gotten it during Hurricane Ike(Two days after it hit Houston) from old reliable UPS, and at some point during cleanup the box had gotten thrown out.

On the time it takes for repairs, is that 5 business days including shipping?

 

Nope, they don't come with warranty papers. Just call the support team from which ever vendor you bought it.

No, repair time does not include shipping time.

 

Has someone who is running Windows 7 Release Candidate also problems with the DVD-RW drive in the Sager NP2096?(I have an JHL90, but the Sager is based on that one).

When I enable my DVD-RW drive in the device manager (TSSTCorp SN-S083B) my whole laptop get's slow and has very very much harddisk activity (for about 5 minuts non-stop). This happens when I click on the "My Computer" icon and it display's my harddisk and the DVD-Drive. Reading/Burning from it also goes very sloooooooow.

I have to disable the DVD-drive in the Device Manager, otherwise my whole laptop slows down. Someone who knows what tis might be?

 

Hey guys. I was wondering what would the best laptop cooler for the jhl90 specifically?

 

This is a dumb question...

But can the ATI HD4650 512MB in the NP2098 handle any type of HD movie/video or whatever at 1680x1050 and anything that photoshop might throw at me? I'm planing on getting a P9700, so I know that I will be fine processor wise, but I just want to make sure that I won't be disappointed with the graphics

I'm not going to be using this PC for gaming. I'm using it mostly for video editing/ photoshop. I've been trying to learn about GPUs and CPUs, etc. but it's going pretty slowly...

 

No problem...it won't even break a sweat with any 2D work you throw at it...except maybe animation, but for that you need a processor farm.

 

Haha thanks... I figured that was the case, but I just wanted to be sure...

 

Hi there, I just got this laptop and have to say I think it is amazing, but I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me some things about the preinstalled software like watchdog and safety guard? Some of the names seem self explanatory, but like the two mentioned here I am unsure of how they work

 

Ok someone gave me a link to the Sager NP2096 and I'm in love with what I can do with it. Can someone tell me what things are/aren't worth upgrading?

Here is a bit about what I am looking for.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4926998

Display - Is it worth the upgrade?

Dead Pixel Policy - $200 for 30 days? ...

Processor - I definitely want to go at least 2.53

Ram - I don't plan on using Vista so stay at 4GB?

Intel Robson Turbo Memory - What the hell is this?

Optical Drive - Probably not unless the upgrade offered is a reasonable deal.

Hard Drive - I'd like to go up to 500GB. Is the difference between 7200/5400 RPM difference worth $50?

OS - Do most people still use XP?

 

I like XP and I think it's definitely worth it (XP Pro). Download the Windows 7 RC if you want to try the next gen OS. Video graphics drivers seem to work more stable with Vista than XP with the 8 series nvidia cards.

 

I am thinking of buying a laptop cooler for my np2096, when I play new games the laptop runs fine but it goes up to 95 degrees before slowing down the framerates to cool the gpu. it also idles at around 60-70 degrees celcius.

I was looking trying to find one where the vent matches up with the left vent at the bottom of my laptop. zalman looked good but I dont think it would work since it doesnt have any vents along the top where the fan of the laptop is at.

I was just wondering if anyone has already gotten a laptop cooler for their sager 2096 that worked well, saves me from taking measurements of my laptop and posting in the laptop cooler thread

 

Posted this a while back,

 

another question, I just installed the new nvidia notebook driver and I can't seem to adjust the fan speed in any software?

I couldn't do it before either but I just thought it was because I didn't update my driver properly..

 

How is the NC-1000 on the NP2096? Cools it also well?

 

Has anyone been able to get Win7 RC to recognize all of their devices because in device manager i have 5 unknown devices. Also i'm having trouble setting up the finger printer reader as there is no biometric sub category in the control panel.
See attachment

 

hey guys, new to the forum but I've had the NP2096 for a few months now. I'm in Iraq, and the computer is holding up just fine, although I didn't doubt this to begin with. One of my friend's has a Sager that's gone through 3 years in Iraq, it all depends on how well someone takes care of the computer and introduces it to a healthy blast of canned air. My one disappointment, which was kind of expected, is it tends to struggle playing raw MTS files. I have a 1080p camera to pretty much document every waking moment of my daughters life (well the wife does now) and I got used to my tower at home being able to play the files fine with no conversion. I wouldn't say it's the notebooks fault, who in their right mind doesn't convert raw footage when the intended use is to simply watch them (I'll edit when I get home). Anyway, I got a hundred and some-odd pages to go over to make sure I'm up to date. Just did a fresh install of vista x64 because i got sick of troubleshooting a registry experiment gone wrong. I noticed the download page for the NP2096 on sager's site had some stuff I don't recall being installed on the notebook from the factory. The uber useless combo of enterance guard/safety guard/smart watchdog. I was hoping one would be the fingerprint scanner, which has been surprisingly reliable considering dust storms and the fact I've had some bad experiences with biometrics and computers. Cheers.

 

Well - I'm in the club now. Just got a JHL90 in the form of a PowerPro 12:15. Donald at PowerNotebooks was most helpful in helping me decide what I needed - I'm not too hip on specs and such. But I'm going to be using this for design/architecture work and I think it should perform admirably:

PowerPro P 12:15 - Gaming Laptop
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) Glossy LCD w/nVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT w/512MB
Intel® Core™2 Duo P9700 2.8GHz Processor w/6MB L2 Cache (25W) - 1066MHz FSB
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
4GB (2 SODIMMS) Crucial, Corsair or Kingston DDR2/800 Memory (64bit Vista needed to use >3GB)
320GB SATA II 3Gb/s WD or Seagate Hard Drive at 7,200 RPM
Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/Softwares
4-in-1 Memory Card Reader (MS/MSPRO/SD/MMC)
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5100 802.11a/g/n
Smart Li-ion Battery (9-Cell)
Windows Vista Business - 64-Bit w/Windows 7 Coupon

PS: Had a few people advise me that the nVidia GeForce 9800m GT would not work well for CAD, but a trip to autodesk.com revealed that it is in fact supported AND recommended for the most recent incarnations of AutoCAD....this might be useful for people wondering if a computer's card will work well for CAD rendering or not...

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/hc?siteID=123112&id=6711853&linkID=9240618

 

Congrats! Other then your bump in CPU speed, you have an identical system to me. Good link for CAD designers, welcome to the club.

Edit: Oh I sent Sager an email asking about the fingerprint reader software, they're going to be sending me a new disk. I'm wondering if there is some restriction on the fingerprint software that prevents them from hosting it on their servers? Either way, great customer service from these guys.

 

I'm having a bit of a problem with my brand new NP2096.

From what I can tell, every time it turns off the display for long periods of time (say, an hour or more), when I come back and turn the display back on, it will have switched from AC power to battery power, forcing me to disconnect and reconnect the AC adapter to switch it back.

It's happened to me three times now, and normally I'd think it's an issue with the AC adapter, but it's only done it after having the display shut off for a couple hours, as opposed to while I was using the laptop. And somehow, I can't see it being a coincidence that all three times were while the computer was idling...

The first time it did so was the day after I received it, when I'd left it on overnight to download a large file. I woke up in the morning to the low battery warning noise. The second time was this past Friday, after I forgot to close the lid before going out to see a movie. The third time was a couple hours ago after I left it on while watching some videos on the Xbox.

I run the laptop on the High Performance power plan and haven't changed any of the settings for it. None of my connections seem to be loose, and it occurred when I had it plugged into my power strip as well as in the wall. If need be, I can plug it into another nearby outlet or power strip, but all other computers that have used the outlet and power strip under my desk have not had this problem (two that were running Vista and one running XP), so I can't see that being the problem either.

Anyone have any ideas on what the problem is?

Other than this problem, I'm enjoying my NP2096 so far. (Not so much Vista, because it's already giving me troubles in trying to uninstall Microsoft Office, but the laptop itself is wonderful. )

 

it might be AC adaptor prob., contact your reseller and ask for repair.

 

I am planning to reformat and reinstall vista on my sager NP2096. can I do it with just the recovery disc? will windows office all be installed? I see the vista cdkey on the back of my computer but I dont think there is a CD key given for MS office...

 

Good news! I found a way to make use of the "WOW audio+video" buttons after uninstalling the useless WOW software. DL and install Microsoft IntelliType Pro v 6.2 .

I got mine on the driver cd for my keyboard, but I think this is it...
http://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/10343/

Now just push the buttons on the laptop and set them to open what ever program you want. The buttons will be recognized as the #3 and #4 shortcut keys.

Let me know if this works for you guys.

 

Hi all!

Ive read through almost 50+ pages here.. just wanted an exact answer.. which driver from laptop2go is currently the best to use right now? I really have no idea and I heard updating drivers can lower temps. Your recommendation is highly appreciated. Also did anyone try undervolting their comp? Any sucess in lowering temps?

also for those curious:

core:44
GPU: 65
HDD:37

 

I undervolted my p9700, it idles at around 38 and gets all the way up to the high 60s when gaming. I'm more worried about my GPU temps, idles at 65 too. Makes me abit jealous when I see all the M860TU owners with a 260M GTX that idles at 45.

 

Hello

Do I need to update my Sager N2096's bios with a Sager-specific BIOS or can I use the JHL90 BIOS v1.13? I'm currently running v1.0.

Thanks!
Newbie to the forums
Praeses

PS: is there a x64 version of the phoenix update software available?

 

Anybody mind replying to my post pretty please? Been a couple of days now...

 

email sager and they will send you the BIOS you need. Im not sure if it's the same one on the compal website, but you really can't go wrong with emailing support. They are fast too

How come my memory clock is 400MHz (800MHz effective)? Shouldn't it be 700MHz ? is my graphics card underclocked or something? Im scared to force it to 700MHz in Rivatuner right now lol. can someone confirm that it is indeed suppose to be 700MHz on this laptop?

 

it's DDR2 version, so we get only 400MHz. DDR3 version is 800MHz. On mine i have successfully pushed it to 520, but trying to go any further results in crashes. BTW, RivaTuner won't work, use Nvidia System Tools.

 

I've e-mailed them around 3 times in the past few months and they NEVER replied

 

Just use official Compal, it's the same

 

nTune for some reason gives me a blue screen / memory dump everytime I try to run it