I bought it w/o an OS and installed Fedora Core 1 on it as soon as it showed up. I like the 8890 as it has a 17" screen, ATI Radeon 9600 video card, hardware RAID, two hard drives, every conceivable connector on the back, and a built-in removable MP3 player. It's been a great PC, though at 12 lbs, it is tiring to travel with. :) Luckily, my job bought me a Dell Latitude D830 and told me I could do whatever I want with it. Needless to say, I never booted up the windows it had on it. It's first boot up was with Fedora 6 DVD for a fresh install. It's now running Fedora 8.
Ours are pretty similar in specs, I think. I have dual hd’s and raid also.
Have you called David at Sager to see how much it would cost to fix it? Are they top (screen) or bottom (case) hinges? I’ve seen ‘em (8890’s) advertised on notebookforums and on eBay, also. As well, there is a European distributor that sells parts.