IGN finally reviews the core i7

Alienware M11x Core i7 Hands-On - Gear Preview at IGN

Well, they finally got a review of it.
Though it seems they sugar-coated optimus and the battery life.

 

Well this is just an outright LIE:

 

Does it matter? You want battery life get a non-gaming machine. That's your option. More power, less battery.

 

No one is talking about whether you want power or battery, I'm pointing out something that is just wrong on IGN's review.


Yes, I think it matters that something that has been proven to be false in this forum is posted on a site like IGN as an "official review".

 

Which is why i say that IGN sugar-coated the battery/optimus!
In all honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Dell pulled some strings on IGN.

 

I agreewith you, there's a fair amount of honey in that review, makes me remember why I don't visit IGN

The M11x R2 is a great machine, but for someone who is looking to buy one, they're going to be sorely disappointed with the battery life after reading that review.

 

No one takes IGN seriously. I mean really...

 

I get about 7-8 hours battery life with moderate non-gaming use out of my Core i7.

 

Well I took them seriously.
For the most part, they are legit.
I mean, the M11x R1 review seemed pretty spot on.
I think Dell (or whoever) was afraid that the battery life would be a big turn off and hurt sales, so they compensated by pulling some strings on IGN.

 

I would like some tips from you to extend my battery life! I can't seem to get past 4.5 hours reliably, even having my browser open seems to drain the battery. I already disabled Bluetooth and WWAN, and I don't use overclocking. My next step was disabling Aero. I also went through the windows power options and optimized as best I could.

 

could be something else entirely, but R2 battery life really isn't as much of an issue after 'update':

Alienware Software Update Gives M11x R2 45 Min More Life

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...54-gives-m11xr2-45-min-more-life-discuss.html

there's always a 'fresh' start option!

 

out of context, that reads like that. But the way I read it is probably how it would work in reality. The reviewer is comparing their experience with the R1 battery VS. their experience with the R2's. He says "...the only way to get the most out of the battery (on the R1) would be to manually switch to the CPU when you were using the M11x for anything but gaming. Ultimately we found it to be a bit tricky to keep track, but with Optimus, the M11 does it on its own."
If you have trouble remembering to switch the R1's graphics around, you'll see a good improvement in battery life just having the process be automated now rather than manual.

 

Hybrid graphics are like a standard transmission. More efficient and better gas mileage. Optimus is like an automatic. More convenient, but less efficient.
In either case useage habits or tweaks by the individual can have an impact on either system.

Reviewers as a rule aren't spending much time with review units and as a result some of their findings are skewed or flat out not accurate. Someone who's had the system for 3 days likely knows more about it than they do. They often don't take the time to evaluate issues like optimizing battery and performance, the ins and outs of Optimus, differences in drivers, etc. Heck the laptopmagizine.com review had an update to its initial review that stated that Dell had just released an update to Command Center that improved battery life. That update had been out for weeks and many of us had already been using it!

 

How? Is this with the lowest brightness setting and no WIFI? I get about 4-5 hours tops.

 

Same here, I just don't believe the M11x is capable of more than 6 hours, and that's highly optimized and with no brightness on the screen (ie unusable)

 

Anandtech claimed 7-8 hours too I think.

I think they mentioned in either their R2 first look or their full review, that they cut off many of the processors running in the background of Win 7.

I have heard some people say that if you know which to cut off(background programs not being used) then you can gain significant battery life, but personally I am not a wiz kid, with the kernals and what to take off and such.

 

One of our posters has said the has about 20 processes running, and I don't think even he gets 8 hours.

I have 75, I could probably cut it down to 30 or 40, but even then I doubt I'd get more than 5 or 6 hours.

 

They guy that did the review for Anandtech, when asked what he'd done to optimize his review unit for battery life, stated that disabling the BTTray.exe service (I think that was it) helped battery life because it had a memory leak. As far as I know memory leaks don't impact power consumption in any way shape or form. Beyond that he mentioned the usual suspects in terms of what to disable. I'm not buying it.

 

On an i7:
My discharge rate with TurboBoost disabled is from 15 to 18mW, and says the full lifetime of the battery is 4:32, just browsing.

I also have all the ports disabled (WWAN, Btooth, SDcard, etc) except for the wireless.

Brightness is 2 clicks down from max.

I'm only browsing most of the time.

I just don't see how you can claim 8 hours in ANY configuration of the i7, unless your screen is turned off or something.