Skyfire II Be Mine!!

J

jwonno

Active member
Finally got round to ordering one of these beauts:

Chassis & Display
SkyFire:17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
16GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (4 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670M - 1.5GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
320GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD3200BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5750H 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 4 in 1 Card Reader (SDXC/MMC/MS/XD)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ADVANCED-N 6230 (300Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 3 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
SkyFire Series 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 720P 30 FPS HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-10AM (£16)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,166.00 including VAT and delivery.

Will post here with updates, pictures and possibly an unboxing video if I don't get too excited and forget :p
 
J

jwonno

Active member
Purchased on finance (which I intend to pay off before it burns too much of a hole in my pocket) and sent the documents off today, hopefully it should go into Pre-Production sometime this week.
 
J

jwonno

Active member
Finally into "Pre-Production" on "6th Working Day". Not sure whether to expect delays as I understand a lot of people have ordered the 3610QM.
 
J

jwonno

Active member
Working day 14 and I'm finally "In Building", though I amended my order while it was in pre-production. Decided that as it will mostly be a desktop replacement, it wasn't worth having the matte screen as I can just apply a screen protector to reduce smudges, and have use the money to get a laptop cooler.
 
J

jwonno

Active member
So my SkyFire II finally arrived on Thursday and I'm thoroughly impressed so far.

Processed Date 22-05-2012
Pre-Production Date 29-05-2012
Build Date 08-06-2012 (by Tom Davies)
Test Date 11-06-2012 (by Carl Auckland)
Awaiting Dispatch Date 11-06-2012 (packed by Aiden Ramsden)
Dispatch Date 11-06-2012

Here are some pics, though the quality is not the best as I had to use my phone to take them.

I really like the look of the laptop. The chassis has a nice brushed effect, and all of the speakers, vents, ports and optical drive fit the style of the rest of the laptop. It is heavy to carry in one arm for an extended period of time, but as this is a desktop replacement I will only be moving it when taking it to friends. My family immediately commented on its size too as they've only really seen standard 15.4" laptops, not a problem for me.

The keyboard is well spaced out and I have not had any problems converting from my mechanical PC keyboard. The red WASD keys are a nice touch, I do have a problem with the amount of give that is only present under these keys though; this is especially concerning as it is designed to be a gaming laptop. I've not had much occasion to use the touch-sensitive buttons at the top except to open the optical drive for testing BluRay playback.

17.3" feels like a perfect size to maximise productivity while still being movable. The screen (which I ended up switching for a glossy) is clear and bright with decent colours, but depending on lighting levels it's sometimes easy to see reflections in the darkest parts of the screen, which could spoil the moment in atmospheric games & movies. Speaking of which, this laptop far out-classes my ancient PC in terms of playing HD content through the BluRay drive and gaming. I have not got round to trying Crysis on maximum settings yet but I have put it through a couple of benchmarks:

3DMark06: 19130
3DMark11: P2975

The sound from the speakers isn't nearly as tinny as some of the other laptops and cheap speakers I've heard. As expected there is noticeable distortion past 50% volume which is present in pretty much all built in speakers. Easily solved by a half decent pair of external speakers or headphones. I've yet to try playing a BluRay to an external screen and test the sound over HDMI as don't even know how many channels it supports.

My SkyFire II came with Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit) pre-installed which I was planning to dual boot with Kubuntu, but I'm going to leave that until I get an SSD to boot it from; for now Windows takes priority so I can play my games. From the first boot-up I did not need to install any additional drivers. The touch-sensitive buttons worked straight away, Bluetooth and wireless were already set up and the graphic drivers were up to date.

Credit goes to the PCSpecialist team who have delivered a fantastic product with solid service.
Thanks guys!
 
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