Buying an m11x... what do you think of this setup?

So I'm pretty much sold on the m11x and will be buying it within a week or two. I'm looking at getting the m11x r1 and then doing a few upgrades by myself.

I'm going to get the m11x with:
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU
- 2GB Dual Channel DDR3 800MHz
- 160GB SATA-II 5400rpm

Priced at $599.

I figured I would do upgrades to the RAM and HDD by myself as the Alienware options are a bit pricey.

I was thinking about these upgrades:
- Samsung 640GB 7200RPM HDD ( Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM640JJ 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive)
- G.SKILL 8GB DDR3 RAM ( Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ)

The HDD is $80 and the RAM is $85. So I would be spending $165 in upgrades and installing these items by myself. I'll probably be getting a cheap external optical drive as well. What do you guys think? Are these good options? Is it easy to install a HDD and RAM on the m11x?

 

Its very easy to install A Hard Drive.
I recommend bumping up the ram just to 4GB. There is a 50.00 off Alienware coupon out there that will get you that extra 2GB for free from dell. No real reason to go to 8GB... Or if you want just go to 6GB with 1 ram 4GB ram chip

then buy this insted of the second big hard drive ist a 64GB SSD hard drive.
Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow V100 Series SV100S2/64GZ 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

The SSD will make your heart sing... I store all my larger files to an external hard drive, so use the internal spot for an SSD and use the saving to buy that external HD

I just bought the same laptop with 4GB ram for 599.00 so find that coupon!

 

Absolutely agree about 8GB not being necessary for most people and the money being better spent on something else.

 

I know people say that 4gb is the best option....but if you wanna play future games like diablo 3...then more ram prob will help....since the SU7300 will struggle against modern games.

4gb is more than enough but if you wanna keep this laptop for more than a year I think 8gb will help down the road....

 

For $100 USD you can 8 GB of RAM... 4 for less, say $60 and get better quality RAM than Dell uses. I say get it, push for an extra year of warranty and get your own memory. It takes all of 5 minutes to put it in. This includes boot time

 

I was thinking about getting a SSD but the prices are just too high. I'm not too big on using external hard drives so I would want the most capacity I can get for right now. Maybe in a couple years I'll buy a SSD when the prices drop.

That coupon for 4gb of RAM does sound tempting.

My thinking was that I would just get the 8gb of RAM and just be done with it... It's only about $40 more than buying just a single 4gb RAM

 

Consider a Momentus XT hybrid drive. 4GB of onboard SSD that basically works as a smart read cache for your most commonly used apps. The largest one is 500GB, boot times and windows response time is drastically improved, and the hard drive itself is pretty quick.

 

Hell get both... thats part of the fun...

 

Interesting! Is it noticeably faster than a standard 7200rpm HDD?

 

Read here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...e-momentus-xt-hybrid-hdd-w-built-4gb-ssd.html

 

I don't really know how it is to use 8 GB of RAM IMO, 6GB is pretty good, but there're only 4 or 8 GB(extra $300) options?! How greedy Dell is?!

 

That's because if you put 1x4GB and 1x2GB into the machine, only 4GB would operate in dual-channel mode (if you're lucky).

 

Although dual-channel over single-channel doesn't really gain you much in real life. 8GB is an inexpensive upgrade, although not really needed unless your memory useage dictates it. Virtual machines would consume lots of RAM.

 

2gb and just a 5400rpm hard drive


i think you will get yourself a very slow machine... with thats specs you can buy a normall subnotebook, cheaper and same speed

 

Look at the rest of my original post. I'm upgrading the hard drive to a 640 GB 7200rpm HDD and to 8 GB of Ram.

 

htwingnut, what's your opinions on the criticisms o the Momentus XT?

I think they are probably quite good, but I hear of vibration issues with them being for some a real problem...

Never get RAM from Dell, get it from some online retailer. For what you pay to get 8GB of RAM by adding 4 on top of the base through Dell (average RAM quality at that), you can get 8 GB of the best speed/quality online and upgrade it yourself.

 

My first XT vibrated so badly that my hands would go numb after 5 minutes of continuous typing. The second one was much more inline with what I'm used to with 7200 drives - a very slight tingle.

 

i also bought the m11x and am planning on putting in my own ram. but im not sure if it will work with it... check out my post and let me know, if you can.

 

What post. Any DDR3 1066MHz or faster will work.

 

What subnotebook below the 13" has a performance that is close to a gt 335m and the su7300 c2d cpu under $700 that has 5-7hours of battery/portability on the go and can play modern current games at med-high settings at native resolution? Tell me lol

The 4gb ram and 5400rpm is just fine, the cpu/gpu is the one that determines the performance