🚀 go-pugleaf

I've had this notebook about a week now and I thought I would post my
thoughts on it to anyone wondering about this model...

This notebook will not make you forget about your athlon 1.2 with a geforce
2 ultra, But it is currently the best notebook you can get for gaming. My
expectations were not that high, but I must say I am VERY pleased with this
purchase. Before this I was the owner of an inspiron 7000(400 mhz notebook)
And even when I got it two years ago I was not happy with it. But this
laptop is great, here is why...

Geforce2go - Need I say more? It is obvious nvidia is the king of the 3d
market, and that title is well deserved. I've longed for the day to run
Quake 3 arena at 1024x768 on a laptop with the ability to stay above 30fps
and now that day is here. Avg fps on this game is 55 fps, never dropping
below 40. While I did have to run the game at 16 bit to maintain this
framerate, it really isnt as noticable on an LCD as it would be on a CRT
monitor. Other games run on this were MDK2, Undying, Star Trek: Elite Force,
Blade of Darkness, Crimson Skies and No One Lives Forever, all of them ran
flawlessly and only needed to patch MDK2 due to the Windows:ME bug, had
nothing to do with the video driver.

I find most people have different definitions of what is an acceptable
framerate, here is where I fall. I prefer ultra smooth gameplay over a sharp
picture anyday, which is why I am running all my games at 800x600. Again,
the only limitation here in my opinion is the LCD monitor which can not
produce as sharp an image as a regular monitor, and when downing the res
from 1024x768 to 800x600 while noticable does not really make all that much
difference. I've tried the dell I-8000 with an ati/32 meg, and trust me, it
does not hold a candle to the geforce 2 even at 16 megs.

Sound: Again, while its no Klipsch setup, it is the best sound I've heard on
a notebook ever. I played JP, the lost world dvd and it sounded great, the
mini built-in subwoofer packs quite a punch for a laptop.

LCD Display: Pretty standard fare, but its as expected. Nothing special
though. Then again I'm not an expert by any means...

Weight: 7.5 lbs is not a problem for me. I used to lug around my 11 pound
dell and that killed me. Plus I feel the design of the dell is horrible,
with the 15' display screen overlapping the base of the unit by a quarter
inch or so, while the toshiba does overlap its not as much, I alsl feel the
design of the toshiba is better.

Inputs: What surprised me is that there were no serial inputs on the
notebook, which was a problem for my sprint pcs dialer. This was quickly
fixed by ordering a pda to serial converter from IOGEAR, I got mine at this
link: http://www.provantage.com/fp_56138.htm - This worked out very well.
Other standard ports are on the unit, video/2 usb/ps2/printer and 2 pcmcia
ports. The laptop also includes a built in modem and rj-45 lan port, very
cool.

The laptop ships standard with 128 megs of ram but I decided to go to 256
megs, this is a personal preference, I tend to leave windows open all the
time so a person like me needs the extra memory, you may not. Extra battery
and power supply was easily ordered from CDW.COM(Best in the biz!)

The "pencil erasor" trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard is great, but
we all know your toast if you try to use it in games such as Q3A. I picked
up the targus usb optical mini-mouse from staples, its very cool and is
shaped just like the explorer mouse optical from microsoft, except smaller.
But rest assured, I loaded up Q3A on a lan with about 10 players, and I was
at the top of the scoreboard. Bottom line, if you can play a game just as
well on a notebook as your desktop you are in good shape. Here is the link
for this mouse: -


http://www.targus.com/default_product.asp?title=TARGUS+OPTICAL+USB%2DPS%2F2+
MINI+MOUSE&sku=PAUM003U

This part has nothing to do with the notebook itself, but I feel if you want
to carry the best gamepad with your notebook that fits all games(driving,
flight sim, space shooters, etc) the one to get is the logitech wingman
rumblepad, small enough to fit in a notebook carrier(at least one that will
fit this model) and it even has a throttle control on it. Great gamepad for
games like NFS and Crimson Skies. Link below:

http://www.logitech.com/cf/products/productoverview.cfm/76


BTW the notebook handles presentations well also, no skipping at all with
huge powerpoint presentations with movies either. After all I dont ONLY play
games on it. :)

There you have it, I know this sounded like an advert but if I sound like a
salesperson so be it, this notebook is THAT GOOD. The huge sale point is the
geforce2go chipset, plus an 850mhz p3 processor, you got the fastest and
best looking laptop on the block. Any questions, just fire away...

Chris Bender
ch...@atgsource.com