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Hey guys...
Wanted to share my thoughts on the new R2, for any of you that want to reminisce about your first days of ownership or may be contemplating taking the plunge on one.
For the record, the current specs are: i720, 4GB@1,333, 2x5870 (Dell beta), A07 Bios, RGBLED, 128GB Falcon SSD, etc, etc, etc...
Initial thoughts:
1) It's a very fast machine. The SSD, as with all machines, makes the computer feel like it's from the future. I ripped this out of my MBP, to give the Alienware the honor it deserves. It takes this computer (any computer) to the next level. Cannot stress enough how necessary it is to go solid state and wait for the capacities to catch up. Everything is just immediate...
2) It is NOT my Macbook Pro. And by that, I mean both good and bad things. On the good side, I have a real quad core processor. If I offered Apple $100k for a quad core laptop, I couldn't get one with a quad. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, Minesweeper is about the only thing on the Alienware that 'just works'. It's really sad that in this day and age, with both Microsoft's and Dell's resources, that they couldn't put together something more consistent. Apple might stick you into a 'walled garden'. But you know what? It's not a bad place to be.
3) Fit and finish are superb. For $1900, I couldn't ask for more. I might try. But I'd expect to be laughed at. I have a feeling that once we get the LCD panel dialed in, it's going to be a real thing of beauty.
4) Power management sucks the wang. It doesn't seem to matter what I do. If I walk away for 10 or so minutes, the screen shuts off. Bumping the mouse or tapping the space bar yields a powered-on display but no image. No amount of waiting brings it up. [ As a matter of fact, one feature of grace that I'd like to point out is that Firefox saves my tabs, when I quit. Well in the midst of writing this, I had to step away for a bit. I came back to the screen in it's sleep state (I'll call it). Sure enough, it required a hard boot to get the computer back up. Thinking I had lost all of this, you can imagine how surprised I was to see not only all of my tabs restored but also this text. Wow!] So there's no recovering the system from a resting state. Also, restarting in Windows seems to fail more often than not. And last night, while typing into the LCD Calibration thread, the screen flickered twice (hasn't happened again, yet). This is all leading me to #5.
5) Crossfire is a double-edged sword. Or so I'm finding. It sounds great on paper. And I'm sure I'm feeling benefits in the games that take advantage. But it doesn't seem to be worth the headache. And I'm saying that based on my intuition that the majority of the power management issues are stemming from the dual video cards... A raise of hands. How many people would rather have one GTX480 than dual 5870's?
6) Trackpad. For when it's used, it's okay. And I appreciate the efforts to replicate the Apple two-finger scrolling in the newest drive. But for those of you who own Apple laptops of 2005 and onward, you can attest to the fact that they've nailed trackpad navigation and all the rest are trying to catch up. At any rate, I love the stippling and the button(s) are okie dokie. Would still love to have proper two-finger scrolling and, even more, two-finger tapping (right-click). Ah well...
7) Keyboard. The keyboard is fine. I like the backlighting and choice in colors. I got the laptop in silver. My LED lighting setup is pretty straightforward; everything in red but the keyboard in white. Tell me that isn't stylish. I should get some industrial art design for thisTyping is an easy affair. Compared to the MBP, the key presses feel slightly sandy. There's just this ever-so-slight texture to it. I don't mind it. It's just there. Maybe someone coming from a really spongy keyboard would say that the R2 is super slick and definite... I tend to have the laptop on the coffee table, while I slide underneath and push myself against the couch. There's also a desk setup that I use. But I'm primarily here. So with the laptop at about chest-level, the ramping off the front of the base (just above the speaker grills) is really appreciated. It's nice and gradual. You don't end up with pressure points on your wrists or forearms. The only nag that I have about typing is that my left hand palm will touch the upper-left edge of the trackpad and initiate a cursor movement or, worse yet, a left-click
What number are we on? Oh yeah...
8) Audio seems pretty good. I'm listening to Pandora through some earbuds right now... Occasionally, when I open or close a window, I'll hear a slight pop. And I've also noticed that when I have the earbuds in but nothing playing and when I do something in Windows that initiates a sound, I'll hear a slight hiss that lingers for a few seconds before going completely silent. I will say that this is probably an amplifier function (let's not call it a feature). It probably just keeps a small bit of line voltage running for a few seconds. No biggie. All in all, it's pretty clean and I think we've taken computer audio about as far as it can go. The next step is just to figure out how to wire it directly to our brains...
9) Oh yeah. More power management; Does anyone else think that it's normal for the speaker grill lights (and all the rest, as far as I can tell) to stay on, after the laptop lid has been closed? I didn't think so. C'mon Dell
Later all...
Initial m17x musings...
Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Integr8d, Aug 29, 2010.
