ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
I've had my Optimus IV for a week or so now so I feel able to write an objective review of it and the buying process.
I'd never used PCS before and only came across them almost by accident during a web search. I did as much research on them as I could and I lurked on these fora for a couple of weeks to get a feel for what sort of feedback they have. After much tinkering with the configurator I settled on an Optimus IV with the following spec:
At £856 inc VAT it was undoubtedly an excellent deal. There were no problems or issues during my build and it was shipped 8 working days after my order was accepted.
I wasn't present when it was delivered. My wife and I spend much of our time on our sailing yacht in Greece so the Optimus was shipped to our son (who is an IT techie like me) and he checked that it was all working ok. My wife brought it back here to me after her Easter visit home. So I had a very long wait, and yes, it was hard...
First impressions are important I think and my first impression on taking it out of the bag was that it looked sturdy and well put together. It feels solid and robust, the only minor negative point is that the plastic cover on the top (when folded closed) flexes slightly. This isn't a big deal but it does dent the feel of this being a very solid and sturdy laptop.
The chassis is well finished, there are no sharp corners or edges and everything fits together well, even the power, wifi and VGA buttons (which are recessed into the chassis) fit properly and squarely. They all have a very firm and positive feel to them too and this again contributes to the feel of this being a well-built laptop.
I like also the way the ports are arranged along the two sides of the laptop and not along the front. The 3.5mm sockets for headphones etc. are much easier to use in this configuration, my last laptop (a Compaq) had these on the front which made them very awkward to use. Only the VGA port is not on the edges (it's on the rear) and although we use that for our (aged) flat screen TV it's not difficult to plug in there.
There are five green leds on the front left including, caps lock, num lock and scroll lock and I'm not happy with these at all. In a normal sitting position you can't see these properly. They should have been moved onto the top face of the case or wrapped around the corner so they are easy to see - the is especially important for caps lock because I'm always LEAVING THIS ON! The four leds above the keyboard are discrete but easy to see, these show bluetooth, disk access, iGPU and dGPU.
One other negative point; I emailed PCS immediately after placing my order asking that no stickers be put on the laptop (NVIDIA, HDMI etc.) and got an email reply saying this would be done. Well, it wasn't and I have these horrible, superfluous and impossible to remove stickers on there now. I hate those things....
I ordered the Optimus IV without an OS because I bought a copy of Windows 8 Pro during the offer period earlier this year and which I had yet to install anywhere. From reading these fora I understood that PCS only supply drivers for Windows 7 and that us Windows 8 users have to download the drivers from the Clevo site. As it turned out my Optimus arrived with a disk containing Windows 7 drivers and a second disk containing Windows 8 drivers. Installing the drivers was a breeze, the disk has it's own menu system to help to do this.
I was expecting impressive performance from this laptop and I wasn't disappointed. With no applications yet installed it would boot from cold to the Windows 8 lock screen in 8 seconds and I could login and be at the desktop in another 10 seconds. Even after turning the Windows hibernate feature off (which I never use anyway) and after installing all my applications it still boots from cold to the lock screen in about 12 seconds and I can be at a working desktop in a total of about 25 seconds (and that includes password typing time). Applications load almost instantly and with my highly active data on the SSD as well (in a separate partition of course) most activities happen as fast as I could ever want. As an example, LibreOffice would take 30 to 40 seconds to load on my aged Compaq (sometimes longer), on the Optimus I can be editing a document within 4 or 5 seconds!
I'm not a gamer and I'm not one for benchmarks either, nor have I really stressed either the CPU or RAM yet but it's already clear that I'm not even making them break sweat at the moment so there is plenty of performance there for the future. I've also not heard the built-in fan yet, the only sound is from the fans on my cooling pad.
Any new laptop takes a bit of getting used to of course because everything is in a slightly different location than you are used to. That said, the keyboard on the Optimus is taking a lot of getting used to. It's a good solid keyboard, the keys are firm and responsive but I think that a full-sized keyboard with a numeric pad is a bit much for a 15-inch laptop. It's very nice to have a separate numeric pad but it means that the main keyboard (the qwerty bit) is skewed to the left. The centre-line of the laptop lies in line with the K key for example. As I type this I'm very conscious of a slight leftwards twist in my body and although I haven't felt any negative effects from this it's not a natural angle at which to be sitting. I would think that on the wider 17-inch model this effect would be much less noticeable. It's another minor point (and it's not PCS's fault of course, Clevo make the chassis) but it's something I wasn't expecting.
I was also not expecting the raised wrist platform below the keyboard (where the touchpad is located). You can see it in the pictures on the PCS website but I hadn't realised quite how deep the keyboard is recessed (it's about 3mm). When the laptop is on a flat surface I found that this created a slightly awkward hand and wrist position, I'm sure I'd have got used to it in time though. When I finally swapped out my old Compaq and put the Optimus on my angled cooling stand the problem disappeared. In fact, when angled slightly the raised platform becomes an advantage and does it's job as a wrist rest very well - although my left hand is currently resting on the edge of the case because of the left-skewed qwerty part of the keyboard.
The touchpad is responsive and easy to use, the supplied driver has a setting that disables the touchpad automatically if a USB pointing device is installed. This is a HUGE benefit because it eliminates completely those annoying cursor movements due to accidental touchpad contact when typing (and when using an external mouse). But when you disconnect the USB mouse the touchpad is instantly available for use. A little thing I know, but a very useful little thing!
The full HD display is an absolute joy. My last laptop had a 1280 x 800 display which seemed huge when I bought it, even so most applications had to be opened in full-screen mode to be really usable. On the Optimus running any application full-screen is like viewing it on an Imax screen, it's huge! For the first time ever I can now run almost all my applications in windows, even the browsers, and still see everything there is to see. I went for the matte screen because the sun is bright here in Greece and I hate reflections, yet the colours are deep and the image is sharp. The only problem it has created for me is that I can no longer use the picture I was using for my desktop wallpaper because it's too low resolution now! I've managed to find a suitable 1920 x 1080 image to use instead though. I can't really complain about that though can I?
I was aware before I bought it (from these fora) that the sound from the built-in speakers on the Optimus was poor, actually it's awful and even installing the DFX Audio Enhancer has failed to improve them very much. We listen to online radio quite a lot on the boat and we have the Optimus plugged into the boat's FM radio (as we did with the old Compaq). The sound quality through our radio and speakers is excellent so there's nothing wrong with the Intel audio system that's installed, the Optimus just has rubbish built-in speakers (even though they're Onkyo).
I am extremely satisfied with my Optimus IV, it performs better than even my high expectations and it's clearly a well-built laptop. I seriously doubt that PCS could be beaten on price, build time or their responsiveness to customers (I got an email at each stage of my build). I would strongly recommend PCS to anyone else lurking on here and wondering whether to buy. My son will almost certainly buy his next desktop from PCS now he has seen the quality and price of my laptop. I will be coming back to PCS again too for my wife's next laptop.
Thank you PCS for a superb laptop and thank you too to all those on these fora who helped me with my configuration. Put me down as a VERY satisfied customer!
I'd never used PCS before and only came across them almost by accident during a web search. I did as much research on them as I could and I lurked on these fora for a couple of weeks to get a feel for what sort of feedback they have. After much tinkering with the configurator I settled on an Optimus IV with the following spec:
15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3630QM (2.40GHz) 6MB
12GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (3 x 4GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Hard Disk 120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 11 working days
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3630QM (2.40GHz) 6MB
12GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (3 x 4GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Hard Disk 120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 11 working days
At £856 inc VAT it was undoubtedly an excellent deal. There were no problems or issues during my build and it was shipped 8 working days after my order was accepted.
I wasn't present when it was delivered. My wife and I spend much of our time on our sailing yacht in Greece so the Optimus was shipped to our son (who is an IT techie like me) and he checked that it was all working ok. My wife brought it back here to me after her Easter visit home. So I had a very long wait, and yes, it was hard...
First impressions are important I think and my first impression on taking it out of the bag was that it looked sturdy and well put together. It feels solid and robust, the only minor negative point is that the plastic cover on the top (when folded closed) flexes slightly. This isn't a big deal but it does dent the feel of this being a very solid and sturdy laptop.
The chassis is well finished, there are no sharp corners or edges and everything fits together well, even the power, wifi and VGA buttons (which are recessed into the chassis) fit properly and squarely. They all have a very firm and positive feel to them too and this again contributes to the feel of this being a well-built laptop.
I like also the way the ports are arranged along the two sides of the laptop and not along the front. The 3.5mm sockets for headphones etc. are much easier to use in this configuration, my last laptop (a Compaq) had these on the front which made them very awkward to use. Only the VGA port is not on the edges (it's on the rear) and although we use that for our (aged) flat screen TV it's not difficult to plug in there.
There are five green leds on the front left including, caps lock, num lock and scroll lock and I'm not happy with these at all. In a normal sitting position you can't see these properly. They should have been moved onto the top face of the case or wrapped around the corner so they are easy to see - the is especially important for caps lock because I'm always LEAVING THIS ON! The four leds above the keyboard are discrete but easy to see, these show bluetooth, disk access, iGPU and dGPU.
One other negative point; I emailed PCS immediately after placing my order asking that no stickers be put on the laptop (NVIDIA, HDMI etc.) and got an email reply saying this would be done. Well, it wasn't and I have these horrible, superfluous and impossible to remove stickers on there now. I hate those things....
I ordered the Optimus IV without an OS because I bought a copy of Windows 8 Pro during the offer period earlier this year and which I had yet to install anywhere. From reading these fora I understood that PCS only supply drivers for Windows 7 and that us Windows 8 users have to download the drivers from the Clevo site. As it turned out my Optimus arrived with a disk containing Windows 7 drivers and a second disk containing Windows 8 drivers. Installing the drivers was a breeze, the disk has it's own menu system to help to do this.
I was expecting impressive performance from this laptop and I wasn't disappointed. With no applications yet installed it would boot from cold to the Windows 8 lock screen in 8 seconds and I could login and be at the desktop in another 10 seconds. Even after turning the Windows hibernate feature off (which I never use anyway) and after installing all my applications it still boots from cold to the lock screen in about 12 seconds and I can be at a working desktop in a total of about 25 seconds (and that includes password typing time). Applications load almost instantly and with my highly active data on the SSD as well (in a separate partition of course) most activities happen as fast as I could ever want. As an example, LibreOffice would take 30 to 40 seconds to load on my aged Compaq (sometimes longer), on the Optimus I can be editing a document within 4 or 5 seconds!
I'm not a gamer and I'm not one for benchmarks either, nor have I really stressed either the CPU or RAM yet but it's already clear that I'm not even making them break sweat at the moment so there is plenty of performance there for the future. I've also not heard the built-in fan yet, the only sound is from the fans on my cooling pad.
Any new laptop takes a bit of getting used to of course because everything is in a slightly different location than you are used to. That said, the keyboard on the Optimus is taking a lot of getting used to. It's a good solid keyboard, the keys are firm and responsive but I think that a full-sized keyboard with a numeric pad is a bit much for a 15-inch laptop. It's very nice to have a separate numeric pad but it means that the main keyboard (the qwerty bit) is skewed to the left. The centre-line of the laptop lies in line with the K key for example. As I type this I'm very conscious of a slight leftwards twist in my body and although I haven't felt any negative effects from this it's not a natural angle at which to be sitting. I would think that on the wider 17-inch model this effect would be much less noticeable. It's another minor point (and it's not PCS's fault of course, Clevo make the chassis) but it's something I wasn't expecting.
I was also not expecting the raised wrist platform below the keyboard (where the touchpad is located). You can see it in the pictures on the PCS website but I hadn't realised quite how deep the keyboard is recessed (it's about 3mm). When the laptop is on a flat surface I found that this created a slightly awkward hand and wrist position, I'm sure I'd have got used to it in time though. When I finally swapped out my old Compaq and put the Optimus on my angled cooling stand the problem disappeared. In fact, when angled slightly the raised platform becomes an advantage and does it's job as a wrist rest very well - although my left hand is currently resting on the edge of the case because of the left-skewed qwerty part of the keyboard.
The touchpad is responsive and easy to use, the supplied driver has a setting that disables the touchpad automatically if a USB pointing device is installed. This is a HUGE benefit because it eliminates completely those annoying cursor movements due to accidental touchpad contact when typing (and when using an external mouse). But when you disconnect the USB mouse the touchpad is instantly available for use. A little thing I know, but a very useful little thing!
The full HD display is an absolute joy. My last laptop had a 1280 x 800 display which seemed huge when I bought it, even so most applications had to be opened in full-screen mode to be really usable. On the Optimus running any application full-screen is like viewing it on an Imax screen, it's huge! For the first time ever I can now run almost all my applications in windows, even the browsers, and still see everything there is to see. I went for the matte screen because the sun is bright here in Greece and I hate reflections, yet the colours are deep and the image is sharp. The only problem it has created for me is that I can no longer use the picture I was using for my desktop wallpaper because it's too low resolution now! I've managed to find a suitable 1920 x 1080 image to use instead though. I can't really complain about that though can I?
I was aware before I bought it (from these fora) that the sound from the built-in speakers on the Optimus was poor, actually it's awful and even installing the DFX Audio Enhancer has failed to improve them very much. We listen to online radio quite a lot on the boat and we have the Optimus plugged into the boat's FM radio (as we did with the old Compaq). The sound quality through our radio and speakers is excellent so there's nothing wrong with the Intel audio system that's installed, the Optimus just has rubbish built-in speakers (even though they're Onkyo).
I am extremely satisfied with my Optimus IV, it performs better than even my high expectations and it's clearly a well-built laptop. I seriously doubt that PCS could be beaten on price, build time or their responsiveness to customers (I got an email at each stage of my build). I would strongly recommend PCS to anyone else lurking on here and wondering whether to buy. My son will almost certainly buy his next desktop from PCS now he has seen the quality and price of my laptop. I will be coming back to PCS again too for my wife's next laptop.
Thank you PCS for a superb laptop and thank you too to all those on these fora who helped me with my configuration. Put me down as a VERY satisfied customer!
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