Concerns about latest M17x

I've been eyeing the M17x for some time. Intending to purchase one when the time was right, I had sufficient money to afford it, etc...

I've been watching with growing interest in its evolution and growth. I've been very pleased to see the memory capacity grow beyond 8Gigs. I've become disappointed to see the screen resolution drop to 1920x1080, from the previously available 1920x1200.

I've been getting close to making a purchase only to completely put it on hold due to this disappointing drawback.

What are your thoughts on this? Does anyone have insight on when (if?) alienware will rectify this?

 

I would say that the drop in the screen resolution should not be that big a deal, but it's not my money we're talking about, now, is it?

Personally, now that my main gripe with the R1 has seemingly been resolved with the A07 BIOS and disabling the Gen2 PCI-E, the only thing I have to really gripe about is how much my wife paid for mine (Christmas / return from Deployment gift), versus what the R2 and R3s are going for lately.

I would offer that if you're looking to do some gaming on the machine, you're not really going to see a significant difference between 1920x1200 and 1920x1080. I use mine primarily for some general video and music editing, light to moderate gaming, and hooking up to a 50" plasma to watch movies.

 

Welcome to the established new standards. 1080p is the product of the 16:9 aspect ratio agreed-upon by some international consortium as a compromise between media content publishers.

 

you guys should also keep in mind that bigger resolution requires better hardware. and 1080p is a standart now, as games would have LOWER fps movies wouldnt actually benefit from 1200p (tried myself a blu-ray, skirts on top and bottom, video doesnt go fullrez) so I dont think its worth complaining.

 

I had concerns about this too but considering that as already mentioned most TV's are setting this as the default resolution and videos play with the top and bottom border I've resolved myself to the fact that this is now the standard across all platforms, it could also be the reason why Dell have elected to go to 18" screens in their next series of laptops, I'd expect others to follow

 

Honestly, if 1200p is now going to be replaced entirely by 1080p, I'd say the standards are getting lower and lower.

 

Agreed, since it seems the ceiling on Blu-Ray is, if just for the moment, the 1080 standard.

I don't know if I would agree with "lower and lower"... Yes, 1080, 720, and 480 are all numerically lower than 1200, but if the majority of HDTVs are coming with a 1080 ceiling, and so many people use HTPCs in some form or another with their HDTVs, it would seem that at least for the moment, the 1080 setting / limit is the best standard, until something better comes out.

Oh, wait, what's this 3D HDTV / software crap I've been hearing about???

 

Well, some of us have performance computing requirements beyond gaming. This kind of a rig, or the upcoming M18x (revealed here: Alienware goes massive with M18x gaming laptop behemoth | ZDNet) are what myself and a number of other folks use AND travel, while keeping a stable working platform with us in a mobile way. I'm sorry the gaming community looses a few frames per second with a better resolution, and yet I can feel the pain too (though I rarely play games). I desire the screen real-estate for optimal use of multitudes of windows, specifically for linux. I'm still going to push for the 1920x1200 that they had just a couple of months ago. Maybe I'll get lucky and blessed with some video driver option that works in a way to restore full screen usage.

 

1900x1080 is here to stay. !900x1200 is in the process of being phased out. I don't like it, thats one of the main reasons I'm sticking with the M17x R2. That and the superior RGB LED screen. Thats the main turn off for me when it comes to M18x. Also that resolution is a physical charactaristic of the screens build. No driver will change that.

 

--->DR650SE, thanks for the info, disappointingly unfortunate as it is.

.............. anyone have a spare M17xR2 fully loaded to sell CHEAP??

Hmmm, wonder if Dell/Alienware has a refurbished one laying around?

 

if you measure right round the screen of the two high resolution offerings there is very little difference

 

i am very interested in your post

can you share with us the none game applications you want to run on your laptop, perhaps some of us can help you find a very well equiped business XPS that would suit you needs better THAN A GAMING LAPTOP lol

please share :GEEK:

 

Geoffxx,

Thank you.

I want to clarify my last post. Obviously, with the M18x not yet out, I/we obviously don't have such a system. I'd meant to say "... myself and a number of other folks WOULD LIKE TO use, BOTH FOR WORK and travel, ..."--in my eagerness to post, I'd left a few words out. My apologies.

I rarely play games, and never watch movies (on my laptop). My world tends to center in Red Hat, CENTOS, Fedora, and numerous VMware Virtual Machines (both Linux and Windoze). Portability of my world/data/infrastructure is mandatory due to bringing my system to and from work, various homes of bud's, or on the road to a client.

Screen real-estate is where it is at, visually, especially to flip between numerous full-screen VMs or multitudes of windows, 10+ virtual desktops, etc. Having the disk space resources for 30+ VMs is essential, as is the maximum amount of memory.

Been holding off on upgrading to a tricked out Alienware M17x due to {lack of} money for a while, but also waiting for the HW to settle down on the resolution issue now that I've seen what is available is below the standard I desire (was seriously ready to buy a month ago).

My current laptop is a 4+ year old, out of warranty, Dell XPS M1710, x32, w/ 4GB RAM, single GigE NIC, 1920x1200 native resolution, dual monitor support and 500 Gig internal HD. It has done good by me, but showing its age. I've had very little trouble, only a couple of trouble calls in to Dell tech support where they've taken great care of me. GPU temp averages 161F.

At any one time I can have between 3 and 6 VM's going at once, along with multiple sessions via VNC or X. I desire to be able to significantly up the ability, with a new laptop to more VMs and more VNC/X sessions and had figured to do that with a tricked out Alienware M17x. The loss of precious screen real-estate put the immediate brakes on that purchase. Yep, that one detail (cause all the others are in good shape) has flummoxed me.

I've looked at other laptop manufacturers (maybe not as studiously as I should). So far I haven't found an acceptable combination of the best of breed amongst the staple of components I want, like quad-core extreme I7 CPU, 8+ gigs of RAM (prefer 16), 512 gigs of HD (preferably solid state, and 1T, if I could get it), GigE NIC (dual GigE NICs??), native screen resolution of 1920x1200 (at the least) and support for dual external hi-res monitors (2560x1600+).

Too, I remember early ads for the M17x that offered a write'able blu-ray drive, but have only seen readers for some time now. Was hoping to see that fixed.

I appreciate the offer(s) for helping me find something.

I saw your mention of 18+ inch screens. I'd like to see the spec's for that, too. More screen is good, I'd be looking to see what the resolution is though.

I don't believe I'd get much (any?) value from a '3D' M17x/M18x system, per se, but would like insight/feedback on that.

R,
-Joe

 

Dell outlet has a 15% coupon going on, I was able to get a fully decked out R2 for $1700. RGB, Xfire 5870, 8GB RAM, Intel 6300, Blu-ray, 820QM. It only came with a 320GB 5.4K HDD, but I put my SSD in it anyway.

Unfortunately Joker sold both of his R2's...

 

just scaning over your post - what you need is windows 7 and a pile of ram.


and an Imax cinema ....... just kidding


but seriously, if 1cm height is that critical to fitting all those virtual desktops onto your laptop then that is entirely up to you mate, I kneel before you and respect your big virtual world, I can only imagine

 

Awww, don't do that. I'm just a guy like anyone else, simply doing my thing.

The difference in height matters (least I felt it does), especially for the VM's as the border has to be scrolled when the display for the VM doesn't fit within the physical screen space.

Help me understand what you mean about 1cm of height. I'd thought that a 17" screen, at 1920x1200 provided decent visual space. Seems to me that having the same screen (17") at 1920x1080 would simply squash the vertical by virtue of 120 less pixels in height. What am I missing?

R,
-Joe