You may have seen the Clevo D900F laptop from various brands using different product names such as Advance Technology VX7670, BoXX GoBoXX, Sager NP9280, AVA Direct, or Eurocom D900F Panther and various others (feel free to add anyone not listed here in the comments for this post). And yes, the Clevo parts are indeed also the ones you will find in the high-end laptops sold through Alienware. The model I’ve recently bought at Advance Technology is labeled as the VX7670 and was customized with the following specs:
- 17 inch wide-screen WUXGA 1920×1200 LCD screen
- nVidia Geforce 280M-GTX with 1GB DDR3 RAM
- Intel Core i7 975 Extreme 3,33GHz, 8MB Cache
- 12GB Tripple Channel 1066MHz DDR3 memory
- 3 x 500GB 7200rpm SATA Harddisks (RAID0, 1, or 5)
- 8-speed DVD±R/RW LightScribe writer
- Intel WiFi 802.11b+g+n Wireless LAN
- Bluetooth
- 10/100/1000Mbps Fast Ethernet
- 12 cel Smart Li-ION Battery
- 2M-pixel Webcam built into the screen
- 7-in-1 Card Reader
- 4 x USB, FW, DVI, HDMI, etc.
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of all these models is Clevo, a company with a long history in creating some of the most powerful and amazing laptops you’ll ever see. They come with a somewhat high pricetag (almost 4200 Euros / US$5900 for the above configuration) and considerable weight and bulk but you certainly get a laptop that can compete with many a desktop and workstation. Especially considering that these laptop use the Intel i7 desktop processors and will support up to 3 harddisks (or SSD’s) and up to 12GB of RAM!
Does it work as I expected it would? It certainly seems so! It has the full performance of the Intel Core i7 975 Extreme and the benefit of 12GB of RAM should be evident. In addition to several bootable VHD’s I use on this system it is a real pleasure to have a laptop that is actually able to run VM’s (using VMware Workstation) fluently. Granted it is not nearly as great in performance as my real workstations it certainly works better than any other laptop I’ve ever owned (which at the time I bought them were all high-end mobile workstations from either Sony or HP).
The only downside, apart from the size of the laptop is its weight. Yes, 11 lbs, about 5.5kg. But a Kensington Contour Roller laptop bag should take care of transporting it without it becoming a real chore. You certainly get a very solid and sturdy laptop with a Clevo D900F or ones of its various models. A lot of the weight is probably also because of the heatpipe and cooling system used in these (which does indeed perform very well in keeping the i7 975 Extreme cooler than you’d think is possible in a case this small).
For some images of this ultimate mobile workstation, check out the large images over at notebookreview.com and xoticpcforums.com.
The battery? Oh, yeah, you should not think of it as a battery to run the laptop on for a while, instead you should consider the battery as a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) with an average running time of about an hour. You definitely need the power brick to keep this baby powered. It’s not called a power brick without a reason, though. It’s about the size of a brick and close to its weight as well. The power supply alone makes any netbook look like a slice of bread.
I travel with an extra replacement 7200rpm 500GB SATA harddrive (a Seagate Momentus) just in case one of the 3 inside the system breaks down. They’re disks, they always break and when they do it’s usually the most inconvenient time imaginable. Since I am using the system in RAID0, for performance reasons, I always keep a current image backup of the system on two external 500GB Western Digital Passport drives (those small 2.5″ USB powered ones). Performing a repair and a restore should be a breeze. What I would really like to see and test, and use, is this system with 3 x 512GB SSD’s in RAID0 but with the current price of those it wasn’t worth it to me at this time to get four of those (one as a replacement in case of failure and 3 in the system). But I do suspect the performance would be amazing in this system.
Of course, if you really want to you could do what this guy has done; triple boot Mac OSX, Windows, and Ubunto from your D900F. Most of the reviews and tests of the Clevo D900F appear to be very favorable towards it, describing it as the world’s fastest laptop, and after having had some time to install and play with mine I can say that I defintely agree. However, instead of me copying all the great statements and nice words about the D900F I’m just going to link to several other reviews that I support and endorse. These full reviews can be found at:
