Initial impressions of M17x R3 by Choppus

Normally, I'd hate a color scheme like that, but that looks clean.

 

Unfortunately no. Every zone is the same color. Now you can do some crazy stuff with morphing from color to color or pulsing a color. And you can do it for different time amounts and then change from solid to pulsing of another color, and then to morphing of 2 colors and any combo thereof. The possibilities are endless. You can also set it up for a zone to react to something the computer does. Like when you open a certain program, or if you get mail in outlook. It's kinda hard to explain it all as I am new to the whole thing. But there are tutorials that you can watch when you first open it up and it really explains/walks through a lot of steps so that you have a better understanding of how it works and what you can actually do. I haven't played around with it a lot, but some. To me the morphing and pulsing is distracting when I'm trying to work on stuff. I prefer the plain jane blue setup that they sent to me. Now if I was using it play music or something and it was just going to be sitting and plugged into power and doing it's own thing that would be cool to set up some sort of light show while I wasn't actually working on it. LOL Also if you get a mouse or another device that works with the AlienFX, you can change them to whatever color you want. The one they show in the tutorial only shows that it has one zone. Not sure if they other stuff that has more than one zone, but if they do, you could have more than one color on your mouse or other USB device that is AlienFX compatible.

If you read his earlier post he was talking about changing the color of each individual key. Although that might be cool, I think it would be very time consuming and a pain. lol.

 

Thank you very much Choppus!

 

No problem. I'm here to try and ease your guys' pain as you wait.

 

thanks choppus!! good info

 

Interesting, I was hoping it would be much higher. I wonder what it pulls without sun shafts and shadows. Thanks for giving it a shot dookie.

 

Hardly any noise. Once you turn up the speakers to like 25% while gaming, you won't be bothered by the gpu fan spinning (which isn't even that loud anyhow).

I'll take this question, mang. @ikant, I'm 5'4", and will be going to grad school with my R3 in the Fall. It's sorta big, but not that heavy. It's about as heavy as my calculus textbook that it sits on top of.

Yup, preference. I was bold and daring enough to buy something that's as big as my torso, and have hardly any regrets in doing so cuz it's manly to lug this thing around

Again, I say it's manly

No prob bob. Won't be able to get Crysis till maybe the end of the week though, so I'll test that for y'all

 

Did you uninstall the language packs before this?

 

I did not do anything special. I just used the windows update thing and downloaded it.

On a side note I did not have anything else running and nothing else updating. That was THE only thing running.

 

Yep. I never run anything on my systems when doing OS updates. I have found - after some serious headaches - that it is just better that way.

 

Was the facial recognition something you added at configuration, or did you buy it somewhere after receiving the laptop? Just curious because from your review it sounds interesting. I just don't see an option for it on the online configuration.

 

I configured it as part of the build.

I ordered it through AAFES, and wondered it that was an option on that only, but now I can't find it on the Dell website or the AAFES website. I'm sure you could buy it aftermarket if you would like.

 

It's named Fast Access Facial Recognition 3.0. Mine says Version 3.0.86

I did a quick google search and it looks like some people have had problems with it. I imagine it's earlier versions though. I haven't had any problems with mine at all.

I did turn off the constant monitoring though, because if I sat back and was just reading stuff it would start a countdown at 10 seconds that it was going to lock out. I had it set for one min of not recognizing to lock the computer. I had to keep sitting up in the chair for it to recognize me. I'm sure I could have stayed sitting back and let type my password a few times like that it would recognize me and I wouldn't have a problem. You also have to temp. disable it if you want to use skype. I'm still using it to log on to the computer, just don't have the constant monitoring turned on. I just set my screen save to come on after one min now. So If I'm not using it the screen saver comes on and then when I hit mouse pad or a button the screen saver goes away and then it looks for my face to log me in again. Basically the same thing, but I'm not bothered by it constantly trying to recognize me and it's not using as much of the system resources all the time constantly running.

 

I have added a few updates to the first post if anyone is interested or hasn't seen them yet.

 

I'm coming in late to this party---wanted to ask about the screen real-estate regarding the 1920x1080 resolution. Does is seem 'less' than the 1920x1200? I'm concerned about the differences in screen real-estate, as I'm very picky and need/use it all. I've an older dell XPS M1710 (XP 32bit). It runs well with 1920x1200 and I just don't want to loose screen space. Tell me what you think and have observed.

 

Regarding these updates>>
-The screen is VERY bright. It's brighter than my desktop monitor, which I thought was hella bright when I first bought it lolz. I normally use my R3 at full brightness, but when I first bought it, I had it on 4bars, which is PERFECTLY acceptable to me. We sure are spoiled by the R3's hardware, aren't we?

-I don't really notice a diff on Power Saver vs. High Performance on mine, so I just leave it on High Performance on both battery and plug. You've seen my posts about the battery life though. It's simply amazing.

 

I have not used 1920x1200 so I can't really help yo. I will tell tell you that have no problem with having 2 webpages open side by side, or a webpage with an office application open next to it.

 

u convinced me of geting one

 

Who convinced you?

 

LOL I guess we will see you in the order status thread.

 

Updates Added!!!