I am going to let you guys in on a little secret of the industry, pretty much like the "sister company" knowledge that I educated the person who more than likely told Jimmy. This isn't some, "This person doesn't know anything.", because I have learned that in this industry there are alot of assumptions made, that aren't always correct. Until you get into it, and uncover these things, NOT MANY PEOPLE DO KNOW the inner workings of the beast. My writing style at times can be interpreted as advesarial or agressive, so I am going to preface this post with the statement, I am no trying to say this person or that person is bad, or wrong or not knowledgable. I am simply going to try to impart the things I myself personally know.
You DO NOT want to deal with a distributor as a one-off small purchaser.
You can think you are going to get these great deals and save a few bucks, but just consider this.
I put together an Assassin X2 for review. This is an
expensive machine.
In installing the software I found a "weak pixel", it wasn't dead, but it was not 100%. That machine went back no questions asked. Unfortunately "saving a buck" doesn't give you the purchasing power that would allow you yourself to do something like that.
Where do you think that machine will go? I'll speculate that gets marked to NOT send out to anyone who upgrades to the $250 "dead pixel warranty" from one of these distributors, but it may be a "tough luck" situation. Once you start to add the extra pprotection the "attractive price" starts to fade away. Not only that, these "dead pixel guarantees" everyone else is offering, in most cases is 4-7 DEAD pixels and a certain number have to be "in the field" of the screen. Not what you would probably assume with a "dead pixel" policy. Check the wording and make sure you are getting what you think you are.
You look at support, I'll tell you what the support is with these distributors, it's a simple formula.
1. Do a virus scan. 2. Reinstall Windows, that should fix it. 3. It's "other" software, not our problem.
Now that's when you can contact them.
I built an OEM install of Windows for the Executioner, the benefit being the drivers would install
with the OS should you need to reinstall it (clutch if you have a RAID setup because it has the RAID driver built in-F6 floppy stuff). Then common programs like Acrobat 8, Open Office, things like that would automaticaly install on the first log in to Windows without having to download them or whatever. This was like "
amazing" to a second tier distributor. I am not kidding. What do youthink their level of support knowledge is?
To buy from a reseller "down the line" instead of a distributor is generally good advice. In
this industry though, the reseller is NOT building the machine, so there is little "extra benefit" added by going with them. Sad but true, the system you are buying from a reseller is still being built & shipped by the distributor. Components are all "cheapest is best", and "whatever we can get our hands on". They
may have better pricing, because I agree with Jimmy's comments that distributors are interested in "distributing", and want their resellers to do all the work, but at the end of the day Peter got robbed to pay Paul.
Looking for a deal is a great thing
almost all the time. That is until you are spending 3 grand on your gaming notebook and want the best. Then I would say that like all good things, "You get what you pay for." Many, many people have argued up and down that, "These are all the same systems." and, "All resellers are alike, offering the same thing." They are not. I can speak of my company because I of course have intimate knowledge of it. K|N is NOT a Sager, it is NOT Pro-Star, and you can't getthe K|N quality components, quality construction, superior support let alone the mod's and tweaks from these other guys, be they distributor, reseller or not. That said, whoever you go with, make sure that you are getting what you pay for.
So after I read this post I realized not everyone reading it will know who I am or maybe have never even heard of KillerNotebooks. To just give a little background so you can judge for yourself if the things I say are coming from experience, or just the ramblings of another internet forum hammerhead; we are about the
only company actually building their own notebooks (the only one I know of).
I know for a fact we are the only company modifying notebooks and actually improving them. This is something that really sets us apart, and
does make a big difference. You can see that in this independent review
TechWareLabs review.
We all know that heat is a computers worst nightmare. Heat deteriorates the useful life of computer systems. Overheating is your computer's biggest enemy; too much heat can fry its delicate circuitry and chips and send you shopping for a brand new system. Just as you need to keep your car engine cool to prevent damage, you must do the same for the delicate mechanisms beneath the hood of your PC. This unfortunately is very tough to do when you are speaking of a notebook computer, as space is very limited and being able to acquire such diverse items to help aid in dissipating heat can be quite daunting.
The people at KillerNotebooks have really done a fantastic job in providing you with this solution, so that you only have to be concerned with providing adequate airflow, keeping your notebook out of direct sunlight, and at least once a month cleaning the fans and cooling grills with compressed air to push out any sucked in lint or hair that could pose a problem to their cooling solution for such a high-end notebook. They provided whatever was necessary to keep the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and the Nvidia 7950 GTX Video GPU quite cool.
Easily seen above are the vast amounts of 100% copper finned heatsinks placed to provide more surface area for the heat to be drawn into. Underneath this array of copper heatsinks they have also gone out of their way to remove all traces of thermal tape and after lapping the interface surfaces, they added Arctic Silver 5 to provide the best heat transfer possible, thus increasing the life of your KillerNotebook. I was very impressed with the work they have done here and that contributed to this very fast systems cool temperature numbers and general temperature 'feel'. The Executioner maintained a 32 deg. C temperature, while the office maintained a 26 deg. C ambient temperature during normal average use. While playing games such as Battlefield2142 (First Person Shooter) and LockOn Flaming Cliffs (Graphic Intensive Flight Simulator), with all of the graphics turned to max and also while setting the Nvidia 7950 GTX to use 8xS Antialiasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering settings, the Executioner performed like a champ. Average temperatures recorded with MobMeter during actual gaming ranged from 46 deg C to 51 deg C. Let me state that this is quite cool for a high-end gaming laptop, especially one that houses the Nvidia 7950 GTX wtih 512MB of ram on it.
Battlefield 2142 is graphically very intensive and requires a good video card and sub system to play at medium to high settings without overheating the system or causing stutter and unplayable framerates and that would be the requirements for a desktop system to play the game. Notebooks are generally less powerful than their larger sibling the desktop and as such do not usually play graphically intensive games as well. The Executioner breaks the trend and delivered amazing results.
Gameplay in Battlefield 2142 was ultra smooth as even with the highest settings and running a resolution of 1600x1200 with 4x Antialiasing in the game menu (max) while having the Nvidia 7950 GTX using 8xS Antialiasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering the Executioner provided 33-35 frames per second on average. This is amazing as we had everything maxed out graphic wise.
I would also like to add that Tom's Hardware Forums is one of the
very few places you can actually
find people with vast amounts of real-world experience trying to help forum members. Other forums and review sites are too blinded by the quest for advertising dollars and, "What can you do for us." to have the foresight to know that it is their
members that are the key, and a more knowledgeable member of your community is good for everyone.
/www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=5724
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