Alienware M11X, yay/nay?

[lurker53]

I've been looking into buying a laptop as my next toy, and it seems the M11X fits the bill so far.

What I need:
HDMI
Dedicated GPU for gaming purposes (no Crysis, just WoW or SC2) with support for 1080p video, both local and flash (I know some of it is handled by the CPU as well)
Good battery life
~$1000

I know the brand name itself makes the damn thing overpriced, but I wanna treat myself. I appreciate the aesthetics on it as well. The battery life with the dedicated gpu off is equivalent to netbooks, the size/weight is a little bit bigger but I can live with that, and the dedicated GPU turned on will help tremendously when I need to game on the go.

For a little while I was looking at netbooks with a dual core atom and Ion 2, but they don't quite seem to perform at a semi-decent gaming level yet.

Anyways, for those voting yay, which parts are worth it after purchasing it? Is an SSD going to make that huge of a difference? Is there going to be a noticeable difference over i5 or i7? I'm guessing the Sandy Bridge variety of the M11X will be out in a month or 2, so hopefully the current revision will get cheaper. Dell also has random sales, apparently last month the i5 option only cost $800

 

[galeener]

If they gave me one I would take it. Yes an ssd in a laptop will lower power consumption also and be fast. If you waited for Sandy ones to come out the 2500k would seem more suited to that laptop than say the 2600k but i guess its personal preference and it you want to squeeze just a little more out of it at a higher cost. Also I quess they could go with the laptop version of the sandy bridge cpus in that one also won't know untill the specify though. 2630s or what ever.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

If it says Alienware on it, I say Nay.

I'm not saying it's a terrible machine ..... others will ..... but I just think you can do better with an Asus or Clevo box. Alienware......pre Dell ownership .... was made by Clevo.

In fact, just about every laptop brand you'd recognize is made by someone you never heard of:

* Quanta sells to (among others) HP/Compaq, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu, Acer, NEC, Gateway and Lenovo/IBM - note that Quanta is currently (as of August, 2007) the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world.
* Compal sells to Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Acer, and Dell.
* Positivo Informatica sells to Samsung, Sony, Siragon, Toshiba, HP
* Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to HP/Compaq, Dell, IBM, NEC, Acer, and Lenovo/IBM.
* Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP/Compaq, NEC, and Dell.
* Itautec sells to Siragon, LG, Samsung, Sony
* ECS sells to IBM, Fujitsu, and Dell.
* Asus sells to Apple (iBook), Sony, and Samsung.
* Inventec sells to HP/Compaq, Toshiba, and BenQ.
* Lanix sells to Sony, Compaq, Toshiba, Siragon, Itautec
* Uniwill sells to Lenovo/IBM and Fujitsu & PC World UK own brand Advent.

Clevo sells to Sager and most of the "boutique" brands like Falcon, Voodoo, etc .....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/91510-clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-reseller-info.html

If you're looking to combine long battery life (not while gaming of course as those two things are mutually exclusive) with the ability to play games, look for GFX switching technology like Optimus in a Sandy Bridge laptop....make sure you get something in writing from the vendor addressing how the SB defect has been addressed either by a B# board or by them simply not using the defective ports. I wudn't settle for the later excuse ina desktop but in laptop .... just how many times are you gonna add a 3rd or 4th drive to a laptop ?

Clevo model W170HM and W150HNQ would be my choice or the equivalent Asus model. The Clevo ones however are custom build and you can pretty much choose each item to fit ya budget. This used to be the cheapest source but as they actually build for many of the other online vendors, they appear to have agreed not to undercut their major customers.

http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=W150HNQ
http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=W170HN

 

[JackNaylorPE]

If they gave me one I would take it. Yes an ssd in a laptop will lower power consumption also and be fast. If you waited for Sandy ones to come out the 2500k would seem more suited to that laptop than say the 2600k but i guess its personal preference and it you want to squeeze just a little more out of it at a higher cost. Also I quess they could go with the laptop version of the sandy bridge cpus in that one also won't know untill the specify though. 2630s or what ever.

The laptop versions are... at least the ones I have seen in production are

Intel Core i5-2520M Processor, 2.5 GHz, 3MB Smart Cache
Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor, 2.0 GHz, 6MB Smart Cache
Intel Core i7-2720QM Processor, 2.2 GHz, 6MB Smart Cache
Intel Core i7-2820QM Processor, 2.3 GHz, 8MB Smart Cache
Intel Core i7 Extreme i7-2920XM Processor, 2.5 GHz, 8MB Smart Cache

SB laptops have been available since January 9th

 

[galeener]

Thanks for the list not been in the laptop market for a bit.
This will be a good reference.I was more talking if they release a SB version of the MX11

 

[lostandwandering]

Thanks for the list not been in the laptop market for a bit.
This will be a good reference.I was more talking if they release a SB version of the MX11

Yeah. I think Jack was referring more to the fact that the 2500K is a desktop part only. We should start to see some ULV Sandy Bridge parts in the coming months I would guess.

@Jack: Yes, you can do better but not at that size. If you are specifically looking for a laptop under 14'' with a strong GPU, the M11x is about the best out there for that cheap. I know Asus and Sony have 13.3/14'' laptops with good dedicated graphics, but I believe they are significantly more expensive. I don't like Alienware all that much, but they have hit a niche market right on the head.

 

[drake123]

*cough* Sager NP5160 @ xoticpc.com *cough*



yea...

 

[galeener]

Sager NP5160
Ah nice but its 15.6 inch not sure what size the OP wanted but thats a nicer system spec wise and is Optimus enabled so it would get better battery life also if not using the geforce card while you were messing around on it.
He may want to look at this also because its around the $800 he was looking at on the MX11 depends on how you build it out I guess though.
Still in preorder though.