My initial impressions of my MX17R3 | NotebookReview

Kalakzak Notebook Guru

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So I received my new laptop on April 6. As I have mentioned in other posts this was my original EDD. I placed my order on 3/11.

This is my first ever PC order from Dell and, by extension, my first Alienware laptop. I ordered online, which in hindsight probably cost me more money than I could have saved if I would have called and haggled. However, I sort of dislike talking on the phone and dealing with sales reps so I just opted for the quick and easy approach of online ordering.

I have to say that, as far as online ordering goes, Dell is pretty smooth, at least when it comes to the actual configuration process. However, once the order is submitted, the irritations start.

As has been mentioned time and again here, Dell is less then informative when it comes to actually telling you anything about where your order is actually at. Having your order state "In Progress" or "Building" or any similar synonym is just plain generic. Dell reps themselves appear to have zero information and almost zero interest in actually helping. Occasionally you get lucky and get someone who actually knows something and can give real information but that is the exception and not the rule.

Personally I only dealt with Dell via e-mail. Those few e-mails were mildly useful but never really answered my questions.

The first e-mail had to do with billing. I assumed that, when I ordered, Dell would charge my account and then proceed to process my order. I did not expect them to charge my account and then not actually collect the money at that point in time. It would have been nice to know this at the time of purchase so I would not have to worry that something went wrong with the sale or have to make sure that I kept the funds available. When I asked them when the funds would be taken they would only say "sometime". That was not a very helpful answer and I asked after it twice.

The second was an attempt to gain a build status of my order. I initially tried calling them but was informed that their systems were down. Obviously my calling was not a good thing for them. So I settled on another e-mail. That resulted in a non-answer over the status of my build but did result in my shipping method getting upped to NBD for free.

And so I waited as patiently as possible from 3/11 until 3/30 when my order information got sent to FedEx. This was also a surprise and an irritation since I waited another four days before my order was actually picked up by FedEx. My order also suddenly arrived in Chicago. I thought that Alienware machines were assembled within the US and therefore expected to see a shipment origin occurring from their location but that does not seem to be the case, as doubtless others knew before now.

The most irritating thing about my shipment was that my laptop was sent ground and not NBD as was detailed in my order information on Dell's website. However, since my original EDD was 4/6 and I did not pay for NBD I guess that I had little reason to complain over much.
In the end my laptop arrived when they said it would when I placed my order. And while I never really got any information from Dell that was useful when I asked I also never experienced any back and forth with my EDD that others have reported experiencing.

Now onto the actual laptop itself.

Given the reports from others here on various defects with their units I examined mine quite closely after unpacking it.

The Physical Unit:
There were no scratches in evidence anywhere on the laptop casing. I made it a point to look for these very closely given Dookies experience and with the issue reported of the coating peeling off of another unit. Glad to say that this inspection passed with flying colors.

The only places that were covered with protective plastic was the main lid Alienware head and then Alienware head power button. There was nothing on the screen or anywhere else. This has been noted elsewhere and is disappointing.

The right hand side of the media bar is raised 1mm and the LED light is visible through the gap. This seems to be a near universal defect with the R3 design. While disappointing I have to admit that it is fairly minor.

There is no case flexing on the sides of the unit. I believe that Dookie mentioned that his R3 flexed on the sides if pressed. I do not know if any others have experienced this issue as well. Thankfully the sides along all the USB, sound, HDMI, etc ports is very solid.

After having typed quite a bit I have not seen any keyboard flex at all. In fact I have to press down very hard on the keyboard to get it to flex at all, Much harder than anyone would while typing away and hard enough that I would not expect the keyboard to continue functioning for long if you did type that hard.

The overall feel of the unit is great. I do not have any complaints with the overall ergonomics of it.

The screen is perfect. There are no dead pixels discovered thus far and no dust or other defects to be found.

The media bar buttons have a smaller footprint then I would like. However, once you get used to them they seem to work just fine.

The touchpad is large and very responsive. In some ways it is too large as I have a tendency to inadvertently rest my left hand thumb on the pad which tends to mess up my attempts to scroll the mouse around with my right hand. This is something that I will eventually adapt and get used to.

I dislike how small the lights are for CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK and SCROLL LOCK. You would think that they could have been made larger, more obvious and still look good. The little pin pricks of light are just not the best design.

The sound is good. Even at max volume there is no rattle and very little if any distortion (depends on what is playing and on the innate sound quality to begin with).

Performance:

Performance wise the laptop is great. While I am not using a SSD I am using RAID0 and from power on to login screen is about 10 seconds. Hard to argue with that. Also overall application response times and load times are excellent and much faster than my current desktop.

The Windows Experience rating is a 5.9. This is based on the hard drives and I am sure would be much higher if I was running SSD's. All other scores were 7.6 except the CPU which was a 7.4. This would have been higher if I had gone with something other than the 2630 2.0 Ghz CPU. I already plan on upgrading the CPU at some point in the future.

The 3D Mark Vantage score was right around 12,300. I will have to re-run the test as I forgot to save my results but the number above is pretty darn close. This was run without any over clocking.

So far my unit is not auto-switching between the AMD and CPU vid cards when taken off AC power and run on batteries. I have to force Windows to use one or the other. I might be doing something wrong here or perhaps this is the way it is supposed to work. When removed from AC power I get prompted to hit FN F7 to switch.

I have not done any testing with battery life at this point as I have not been home long enough for any stretch to be able to keep an eye on the battery life. I will get around to this soon.

The only game that I have loaded so far is EvE and I have not done anything more than get it set up and log into the space station screen to deal with pilot skill training. Again this has just been a time issue. I will get around to loading and playing my usual games before much longer I am sure and I am looking forward to seeing how they run.

Overall I have to admit that I am very happy with the laptop. While it may not be as sturdy as the R2 is based on the structural materials used the laptop at least seems to be sturdy enough to withstand daily wear and tear. This will obviously become more evident as I tote it up and down stairs, inside and outside and to and from work and wherever else I may roam.