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VPR Matrix 200A5 Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "The hard to find VPR Matrix 200A5 laptop has been reviewed. Never heard of it? It's a laptop that's designed by F.A. Porsche and sold exclusively by...Best Buy! It seems there is starting to be a rather large following of the VPR line of laptops, but that they are getting tougher to find at Best Buy (not sure if they are discontinuing or if they are selling out stock before releasing a new version.)"
The new BMW line of desktop computers, each with an inline six processor engine and delivering 500 megaflops of power at 3 GHz. AND 4 wheel drive!
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I read somewhere that WorstBuy is dropping the whole vprMatrix line. Probably explains why I was able to get the 17" LCD monitor for $300 after rebate. I've been trying to buy another LCD for the past two months and can't find them. In fact, the store doesn't seem to have much vprMatrix stuff at all.
The laptop looks like a good set of compromises that all laptop manufacturers have to make. I don't see what all the negative comments are based upon! Now, the question that should have been asked and answered by the review is: DOES IT RUN LINUX WELL? Who wants to buy a computer only to be stuck with Windows? Do all the components have Linux drivers or at least have freely available documentation for those of us who can write drivers?
Then after 8 hours of hair pulling and cursing, it turns out it has an ALi chipset. Not Soundblaster Live! Oh, but that's not all folks. A few days later, I call asking for motherboard info.
Frustrating. Really frustrating. The machine itself is quite nice though. Beautiful widescreen, fast RAM, and very stylish. If there is this supposed following of vprMatrix users, I wonder if they would be of better use than tech support.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
http://www.vprmatrix.com/ (video card)
http://www.matrixnetsystems.com/ (networks)
http://www.matrix.com/ (hair salon)
http://www.matrix-orbital.com/ (serial interface displays)
http://www.matrixgames.com/ (video games)
http://www.alfa-matrix.com/ (connecting "hearts and brains) (?)
http://www.dakotamatrix.com/ (mineral sales) (!)
and on
and on
and on
Is it just me, or has the Matrix buzzword been beaten to f****ng death?
F.A. Porsche (the guys who designed the 911 and some Samsung LCD monitors)
Actually, no. If you read the previous posting you would discover that this is Porsche Designs GmbH, *not* the same as the car company, nor the designers of the 911. These folks started out in 1972 (when was the 911 first on the market?) and design everything from LCDs to kitchen sinks to scooters. But sorry, no 911.
And by reading into their website a little further, they have 12-14 employees. Makes you wonder why this laptop is so shoddy...
While the machine looks very nice, and performs well when it's running, I've had mine 3 months now, and out of that time, it's been working 5 days (so up and running for 5 days, down for around 85 and counting).
It died 3 days after I bought it (I really was liking it was working; light, fast, looks nice). Just dead (wouldn't turn on, no lights, etc.)
Called in to their tech support, and they sent me a box to sent it in. Took about 2 weeks total, then I had it back. They said the mother board and CPU had to be replaced.
When it came back, it was making a "thumping" noise. Two days later, the LCD died. Called tech support again, and they sent another box out.
About 2 weeks later, I got a call saying they were waiting on parts. Once I week I now get a call saying they're waiting on parts... *sigh*
So, I've spent around $2k on a laptop, and, excluding the first three days and 2 days a couple of weeks later, I haven't been able to use it.
So, my review:
1. Nice looking machine. OK performance for the money.
2. Their tech support is very good about getting the machine in for repairs (always helpful and polite, lets you know when they are having trouble and can't get it back).
3. Based on my own experience, these things break very easy.
4. They don't appear to be able to get replacement mother boards (what I'm waiting on), so if you're vpr dies, you are SOL.
I personal regret buying this laptop. I really need to have a laptop now, so I'm now in the position of having to buy another one, if I can't get Best Buy to either fix it, send me some other comparable laptop, or my money back (haven't been able to do any of these three at this point).
Any suggestions on getting them to send me some other laptop or my money? I've been trying, but they've refused to this point. Not sure what I can do, as any legal action I take against Best Buy is likely to exceed the cost of a new laptop....
I currently work for BB, as the lead tech at a best buy in the northern Chicago area (i'm actually typeing this while on the clock). At the moment, and from what i've been told, yes, the current line of VPR laptops are being closed out. We have carried them since before christmas, if i recall, and it the 200a5 was reviewed in Maximum PC mag. They keep saying that they are comeing out with a new line, which i hope they do, but i haven't seen nor heard anything.
It's too bad, becasue they are some REALLY nice laptops, arguably the best we carry. I haven't seen nor felt any heat issues, nor had any reliability issues with them (Sony, in my experiance, is the worst of the bunch in that catagory). I've worked with them extensivly, and i can't report any high heat issues. My only complaint was that the Northbridge, made by Ali, has absolutly horrid preformance, and in testing scored around half the memory bandwith of other comparable laptops. Also, the graphics chipset is only 32mb.
BTW, the price that a lot of places are quoteing at, and the price on the VPR website, is way off. When we still actually had an active stock, they were selling for $1600 after rebates, and when we were trying to clear them out, they went for $1350 after rebates. Good luck finding them now, though. If you can, the 180b5 was also great, pretty much the exact same thing as the 200a5, only with a 1.8 GHz proc and a 30gb hard drive, vs. the 200a5's 2GHz and 40gb.
I'm not too sure what is going on with the whole VPR thing though. I hope they are continued, they were wildy sucessful, our stores could almost never keep them in stock, desktops or laptops. We are getting a new high-end desktop in, as of 4-29-03. To my knowlage, it's the 9150, a 3GHz P4 with dual 120gb hard drives in RAID 0, and a GF4 Ti4200. So they VPRs arn't dead, i hope they are continued, but i don't know. It is nice, though, to actually carrey a quality computer, insted of selling e-machines and compaqs all day. I don't know why they would be closed out, they were wildly profitable, and customers and employees both love them.
HOWEVER, there are _quite_ a few issues with it. For one, the damn built-in NIC doesn't work 99% of the time. I have resorted to using my external PCMCIA NIC (or wireless, when it is available). Seems pretty bad to me, but mine could just be defective (or I could have just fsck'd it up testing out all those Linux drivers, heh). Also, the keyboard is VERY fragile, ugh. Keys pop off all the time -- there are 4 posts, one in each corner under every key... the bottom 2 hinge onto the board and the top two snap on... those top two break very easily. What I find questionable is the fact that Best Buy salesmen were trying to tell me the keyboard is very fragile and really used that to try to get me to buy the warranty (I didn't, but I might go back to get it, ugh). Also... (and I should've done my research on this ahead of time) it uses an Ali chipset, which I'm _not_ very fond of. Getting apm working properly is a B*TCH. (I haven't succeeded thus far)
Overall, I made a decision, and I'm stuck with it, so I guess I better be happy with the vpr Matrix 200A5. Since hindsight is 20/20, looking back, I should have waited, for pretty much all other laptop manufacturers have put out better stuff out there (though not as light or stylish) for considerably cheaper since I bought it. My original plan was to buy the 15" PowerBook, which I didn't for various reasons, so I bought the 200A5 instead. I regret it. I would've boughten the 17" PowerBook, but cost is an issue for me. My suggestion to other people? Stay away from it (if you can even find one), and get either a PowerBook instead, or if you like x86, get a Toshiba or a Compaq/HQ or whatnot. There are some very nice laptops out on the market with better hardware specs and cheaper prices. Just my $.02.
Ok... I bought the 200A5 a while back and I have found it to be a great laptop functionally. I run windows 2003 Server on it and haven't had any problems. The major qualm I had about buying it initially was the keyboard. As I've seen the keyboard fall apart on the display models in bestbuy I was really worried about that. I have found however that it holds up quite well under regular use. I only had one incident when I poped a key out but it simply snaps back into place.
The integrated wireless is nice but lacks signal strength. I'd say it has about half the signal strength/distance of a standard orinoco/wavelan card. The battery life is decent. I get about 2 and a half hours on it after 6 months of use. The performance initially is limited by the harddrive that is in it. The Go420 video card is good for most things but driver support sucks. They haven't updated since the original version and nvidias drivers bluescreen the system given the nonstandard display. I'm not sure how this translates on the linux driver side.
I got so pissed at the harddrive I decided to open the system and add a 5400rpm travelstar to replace the 4200rpm drive in it. It took quite a bit of work to get the casing off (lots of screws - needless to say you can't replace the harddrive easily on this thing) and of course the thing has to support only the 9.5mm drives... There is a sleeve that holds the harddrive in place. I took a dremel to the sucker and was able to hack off the top of it so that a 12.5mm drive would fit.
All is well not... the drive fits inside the casing although the left palm rest runs a little warmer than usual now =P. Performance is much better now though. If you decide to mod your 200A5 be careful after you open it because the molding that covers the cdrw/dvd drive is very thin so the bottom part of the slot can snap off easily (nothing a little epoxy can't repair though)
Last thing of note is that I've been experimenting with using it as a peer to peer bridge between my Toshiba e750 and work lan. It works great. Activesync through 802.11b is so much faster and I can now browse the web/rdp into boxes from my pda.
Don't you dare mod me down for running windows. I work closely with my linux engineering friends and we all have a much more tempered view of both operating systems. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Can't we all just get along?