M11x-To buy or not to buy???

Hello all,
I've been tossing up buying the M11x for a few weeks now and am pretty set on it, mostly thanks to this forum, so I decided to join so I could get some knowledgable opinions on a few things...

Firstly, I'm planning on getting the i5 model (4g ram, 500g hdd) and was wondering how significant the jump is in terms of performance and battery life to the i7? I will be using this as my only computer and will mainly be carting it to university and back, using it for word processing, web surfing, skype, itunes etc etc, but I am only a casual PC gamer. I chose this laptop as I wanted something small (ie netbook) but powerful enough to run many apps at a time and last for a few years...am I going for the right machine?

I'm also a bit worried about the hinge problem! Combing through other threads I've seen that many people are having problems with the screen touching the keys and the hinges squeaking and breaking - is this a common/bad enough problem to stop me from buying it? What would be the best screen protector during transport (ie cloth, or the kabuto pad)?

Also, what is the most sensible warranty? Especially with the hinge/screen troubles...

 

it is my understanding that any warranty will cover hinges but if you want to be safe from more then hinges accidental could not hurt

the hinges and screen issues are in most of these laptops but it is up to you on if it is worth it dealing with dell and the tech when the time comes to repair it

 

Do not get any warranty from Dell beyond the standard one year. Their prices are ridiculous.

If you want to get another warranty get it from Squaretrade. There's a lot of people on this forum who did that and I've heard nothing but good things.

I myself passed on any additional warranties because I'm fairly sure it will be fixed by Dell. They send out technicians to replace the entire screen if you have a problem with the hinges.

As far as battery life, I can't tell you much about the i5, but my M11x with the i7 gets about six hours of battery life with light browsing, dimmed screen and FX lights shut off.

 

I just ordered my m11x

i7
4gb
320gb hd

Can't wait for it to arrive. Currently in production

 

I'm currently in the same debacle, though I haven't for sure decided to go with the M11x... Sure, they look awesome, and probably perform awesome. But, I don't know. I'll keep an eye on this thread and see some responses to your question.

 

nice question awaiting some expert to respond back my use would be similar to what Dozycone772's queries...

 

Benchmarks have repeatedly shown that there are basically no performance benefits to the Core i7 over the Core i5, in either general application use or gaming. Especially gaming. The Core i7 will show improvements in synthetic benchmarks, or with CPU-intensive activities like video transcoding. But nobody buys the M11x to do video transcoding or run benchmarks all day - they buy it for gaming.

Even if you had the money, I would not recommend the Core i7. The $150 you spend on the upgrade from Core i5 --> i7 would be better spent elsewhere, like on an SSD. The only situation where I could see the Core i7 being a worthwhile purchase is if money was absolutely no object, and you simply had to have "the best" just to have the best.

 

Thanks Kent, useful information there.
I was also wondering if anyone could explain to me what the 'turbo mode' is? I'm pretty new to overclocking and I can't figure out if turbo mode is the same thing, or if it is sort of power/performance setting?

 

Explaining Intel's Turbo Boost technology | Speeds and Feeds - CNET News

all it does is increase the clock speed even more when the laptop is stressed like in game

 

so is the turbo boost only available on the i7 processor, or the i5 as well?

 

i would buy itt, loving my laptop since day one =]

 

i5 has turbo boost as well

 

It is also available on the Core i5. The Core i5 starts at 1.066Ghz base clock speed, and goes up to 1.866Ghz max. The Core i7 is 1.2Ghz / 2.266Ghz.

But again, the clock speed difference has very little impact on real-world situations, unless you are doing something like video encoding or running CPU benchmarks.

 

I'm looking at the m11x, and seems to be good, but I have a Dell Precision M2400, Core2Duo 2.53 t9400, 4gb ram with the nvidia quadro fx 370m. How would the m11x's performance be compared to the m2400? How does the processor compare to it? What about the quadro fx 370m? I find my m2400 limiting for gaming and was wondering if the m11x would be a good upgrade since it would be useful to take to class and game since I'm a university student.

 

BIG UPGRADE!!!
The M11x's GT335M sports 72 cores compared to the Quadro FX370M's measly 8 cores. On top of that, the 335M has an entire GB of memory, four times more than that of the 370M.

I know there is probably more to this, but I think it would be safe to say that the GT335M is about 36 times better. 9x more cores and 4x more RAM.

 

What does this mean, the graphics card having 72 cores? What is a core/what does it do?

 

Other than the graphics card tho, how would the processor compare? t9400 vs i7? 2.5 vs 1.2?

 

I was about to buy this laptop until I read the thread about the hinge issues. I'll most likely wait until a fix is confirmed.

 

In my mind i has always been: DELL=QUALITY...
I hope Dell is going to be professional about this SERIOUS hinge problem...repair ALL the hinges...no questions asked!
For a computer of this brand called DELL ALIENWARE, it should already be done since a long time....
Seriously, Dell ?

 

I was in the same predicament. I really love the look of the m11x, the size is great, the power is great and i love the backlit keyboard .... but that damn screen. A lot of responses i've read have been along the lines of "it'll be fine so long as you have your warranty".

That aint really good enough - i don't want to be faffed with getting engineers to rip apart my laptop every so often and it's looking like too common a problem to take a gamble so i've opted for a higher specced (but bigger) similarly priced Vaio. I've had Dells before and haven't been overly impressed with their lack of quality control but i hoped their Alienware range would have been better.

It's a shame, without the hinge and screen problems i'd have loved it :/

 

Bear in mind some statistics....

Just pulling numbers out of my behind now but it could still be something to think about:

Say Alienware/Dell has sold ~10,000 laptops of the model M11x.

The majority of the buyers are "aware" of what they're buying in terms of performance, brand etc. Which means that it's generally people who know stuff about computers (at least more than your average Joe).

Granted the buyers' knowledge of hardware and computers in general they are also generally active on forums online. These users most likely also actively search for problems, fixes, issues online on forums if they were to encounter a problem.

A rough count of the people having problems with their hinges reported on this forum is 170 (counted from the poll). Then take a solid number to multiply this, say 10 (just to make the total even larger than it probably is, i doubt there are 10 forums just as large as this one concerning this very topic). That would sum it up to 1700 distinct users that post/discuss their problem online.

Now say that 50% of the people that actually experience issues post about them online, since we earlier concluded Alienware-owners are generally more knowledgable than your average laptop user. That gives us a total number of 3400 people who would've experinced problems with their hinges.

That's not even 50% of the total M11x's sold. With these numbers 34%, duh!

As i said i pulled numbers out of my behind, but still. It may be a little worse but it still proves a point.

I write this in desperation and pray to the almighty powers that this will not happen to my M11x when I finally get it

 

I have had my m11x i7 for about a month now and absolutely love it. Best purchase I have made in the last 12 months across any category. No problem with hinges, no problem with software, happy with the latest drivers and the games / applications / others I want to run all work perfectly for me.

Looks fantastic. The only small complaint? I'd rather have a better screen for a higher price.

Picked up i7, 500Gb, BT, 4GB for just over £880. The starting price for the i5 in the UK is £849 - so to me it was a great deal which I know a few others on this forum also used. Should you go i5 or i7 I would personally base it on what discounts you can get and whether you believe it is worth the extra.

I'm very happy with it.

*Oh I did experience random freezes but after removing Dell Datasafe backup then this has now been resolved - or at least I have not encountered the issue again in 10 days.*

 

I really hope you are wrong, because 34% would be huge! From a good company, I would expect no more than 5% of production with a specific issue to be normal. Keep in mind that 50% would be the same as to throw a coin and wait heads or tails, which is intolerable for a company. Moreover, the hinge issue is a problem that develops with time. One can only expect that the numbers will become worse without a definitive solution (the machine has less than one year in the market...)

Anyway, just a parenthesis to comment the above assumptions. Regarding the thread, my advice would be if you are going to buy a M11x, be aware of possible problems in the hinges and buy extra warranty.

 

Of course it's an unacceptable defect unit rate but it's still not guaranteed to be faulty. That's all i meant. You're still more likely to get a fully functional unit.

But yes, it's really really bad design and from what I've seen also poorly handled by Dell.

 

Arr only -ve I have on the m11x

 

Each core is actually like a mini-GPU. (Well there is more to it, but it would take a while to explain).

The more cores a card has, the more power it has. It's kinda like a CPU.

 

I saw it stated earlier in this thread that the I5 and I7 aren't really much different when it comes to games, but does that also include games like MMORPG's where the processor has to do more work? Or is the performance jump so small I wouldn't notice it in this area?

 

@OP

I don't know what to say. The hinge design looks really crappy - it looks like you can break it pretty easily; and apart from the fact that you can't close the screen and lock it in that position, the build is fine. It's not the problem of replacing the hinge, even if you have to do it yourself. The problem is that it seems the weak hinge is a design flaw - and that the new one will suffer from the same problem as time goes on. The question is are you willing to cash out extra for the 2-3 yrs warranty... or you feel confident of reinforcing the hinge yourself (which btw completely voids the warranty).

Otherwise the laptop feels really good. It has some metallic touch (I think its some magnesium alloy) and the plastic used for the keyboard/touchpad area feels very sturdy and I haven't noticed any flex.

I don't think you can beat this laptop the way its designed under the hood. The cooling and heat dissipation is insanely good. Let's just say gaming WoW in a room @ 33 C, neither CPU or GPU went over 65 C. When it's running on integrated graphics, battery life is really good (I get around 5 hours typically for whatever I am doing) and it's pretty quiet - again probably thanks to good passive heat dissipation. I just love the looks... from lightning, alien heads and alien eyes blinking when hard drive works.

If I had to decide again when buying a portable laptop, would I buy m11x again? Unfortunately, most likely not. The performance and gaming is really great and all... but for a computer that gets carried very often (what I do) I'd go for something more robust and less prone to braking... even if that means seriously cutting down in the gaming performance department.

 

No.

There is no noticeable benefit to the Core i7 in gaming, and certainly not worth the +$150 more. Take the money and spend it on a better warranty or an SSD.

 

I purchased one of these on July 16th, and I returned it on Tuesday after having received it on the 5th of August. My laptop must have really slipped under the QC people in production, because the hinges' alignment was atrocious. I had a tiny gap between the body and the screen on one side, and a huge one on the other (I could almost fit my pinky finger through the gap on the right side). The LED light part on the front-right of the laptop was slightly damaged (it looked like someone pressed hard on it and cause weird things to happen with the LEDs), the chassis wasn't flush on both sides -- as in, the plastic was flush to the body on the left but stuck off on the right side. Basically, it was like my computer had a stroke and the entire right side was off! Considering I spent about $1,600 when it was all said and done for the unit, I was pretty disgusted. It was my first, and my last purchase of a Dell/Alienware product.

 

I am torn about this.

I was 100% certain I had found a great laptop that looks great, can play most games and is very portable but now after reading the hinge thread and complaints, I'm not sure if I should take the plunge or not.

The whole "You better extend your warranty if you want to go with this laptop" thing just doesn't go well with me.

Decisions, decisions..

 

Its available on both.

 

I bought the m11x r1 and I'd have to say that I'm probably regretting getting it. The thing that is bothering is the processing power of it. 1.7ghz is not very good and I probably would switch to the Envy 14 if I could :/ The price points are about the same for what you're getting and it's an extra 3'' with the same battery life and more performance.

 

So I've had this laptop for a month and denied extra warranty coverage during the initial purchase (should've thought twice...)

I've had the Dell Inspiron 9300 for over 5+ years without warranty, and til this day, it holds up pretty well - which was why I didn't feel the need to purchase additional warranty.

I received a promotional offer to "get 3 yrs of additional coverage for as low as $370" + a "$75 Dell Promotional Gift Card" if I act before 08/29/10. I am getting a little paranoid about the "hinge issue" and I am interested in protecting my investment; which warranty would you guys recommend me if I currently have the 1-yr basic warranty?

 

If you're looking to save money, you can call up Dell and haggle with them. I believe that the sales reps are paid on commission, so they have incentive to sell you a plan at a price you are willing to pay.

Or, you can go with Squaretrade. Although they do not have the convenience factor of Dell's Advanced Protection plans, they are also much cheaper than Dell. You can get a 3-year warranty that covers $999 for $130, or the same warranty + accidental damage coverage for $200. Once I found out about this, I cancelled my extended warranty with Dell, and went with Squaretrade instead.

 

You mean pipelines

 

How is the i5 or i7 compared to the Core 2 Duo 2.53ghz processor?

 

The m11x is what it is and is the size it is. Starting to compare it to the Envy 14 starts to move you to another footprint.

As for the hinge issue, buy the Razor Kabuto mousepad and when you are ready to close it up, just lay the pad over the keys. I don't even have to worry about stuffing the m11x into an overpacked bag that way...

 

Well that does help with the keyboard grease... but it only puts more pressure on the hinge ( see pic). Not a lot, but it's very weak as it is...

 

Yeah, I would recommend you stop using the Kabuto as your screen protector. The hinges are not going to like that. Used mine that way briefly.

 

Woops. Wrong thread...