Primary laptop replacement?

Hey everybody

I can say that it was this site and the reviews on many others that convinced me last week to make the purchase, and I should have my m11x next week. I am a student, and I bought it because I've never had a "luxury" machine before, and I wanted to have a laptop that could play HD Video and games. I am confident I'll have that.

My question is as follows: I currently own an Eee PC 1005HA which I am selling to my grandmother to help subsidize the m11x. I hated that little farker for everything other than taking notes; great battery life, terribly underpowered. I also, though, have a 3 year old 17" Toshiba Satellite (I don't know the specs offhand, sorry, but it was like a 3.1 on the Microsoft Index thingie, and barely runs Football Manager and can't run Modern Warfare 2 on lowest settings). It is nice in a certain sense in that it has a lot of screen real-estate in order to arrange windows for writing papers, research, etc. However, I had bought the m11x hoping it to be a replacement for both machines. I am fortunate enough to go to a school where there are high quality machines available for use all over campus if I need a bigger screen, and I also own a 36" HD TV in my room that I can (and have in the past) use in order to give myself more space.

My question is, how would the m11x perform as my only computer knowing that the specs on my old Toshiba are pretty pathetic (did I mention ~45 mins battery life if I'm lucky?)? Would it be smart to try to get another $100 off the Toshiba, or will I end up missing it? Obviously the ideal solution is for me to just have the singular laptop; less mess, less hassle for syncing, etc. but I am open to discussion before I try to make the logical decision. I don't want to be burned by getting rid of the machine. What are your suggestions? I haven't necessarily ruled out buying a second monitor for the pc, for instance, though that would need to wait a little while.

 

The M11x could easily be a laptop replacement! It could easily outclass both of those laptops and be far more portable. If your afraid the screen may be to small, don't worry, you will get use to it.

 

My girlfriend has a Toshiba Satellite similar to the one you were talking about. I can't remember her specs off the top of my head either, but I think it had a Radeon Mobility x1300 in it. Aside from a big 17" monitor, all we really do is watch movies on it. I have an R1 m11x, and she handles most of the programs or games I throw at her. I wouldn't use it for video editing or cpu-intense gaming, but as my old single-core XP tower died, this is a decent replacement. It's sort of like buying a BMW with a tuned-down Lamborghini engine in it: you save money, it looks awesome, you just can't go as fast as a full blown Countach. lol that's probably a bad analogy.

I get like 3-4 & 1/2 hours of battery life on it, integrated graphics turned on, brightness turned down, and power saver mode enabled. ~2 hours if using full NVidia gfx. I tried hooking mine up to my 40" Samsung HDTV, but I haven't really played around with that yet. (My HDMI cable isn't long enough and it's in use by the PS3.)

 

I had no doubts about that until the first time I talked to a Dell associate on the phone (was attempting to get a deal on the line following the guide from this site. sadly, I tried a few different reps and none of them bit, but got around 12% off from the chat client), who was virtually trying to talk me OUT of buying the m11x. Little sh*t. I am still mad at him for making me think that I wouldn't like typing papers on it, and he was trying to get me to let him build a different machine for the same price. I knew what I wanted. I politely ended the conversation quickly, but he left doubts in me big time. Something about the Core 2 Duo (I'm getting an R1) not being able to handle my day-to-day and this, that, and the other. I just needed someone to allay those doubts, because other people have said that the keyboard operates like a dream, and I already have a wireless mouse.

 

Wow, what a sh*t head.
The Alienware M11x easily does day-to-day tasks...

 

@ebondefender, I have little doubt about the capabilities of the machine, it (by all accounts) is a great little beast, and very customizable (I've read and read and read about this thing the last two weeks in anticipation), but my question is should I keep the Toshiba? I agree it's good to have the screen for viewing movies, but I have that TV in case that's the decision I make, plus a 360 if it comes on a DVD. I'm planning on eventually buying an external Blue Ray player (saw one for 100 bones) and possibly an external monitor. That should suffice, right, for everything I'd need in a college setting? Portability, gaming, video, and occassional photoshop and illustrator? I don't touch video, but I've seen that it *can* be done if I venture there in the future.. Short, I think it is going to blow the socks off my Toshiba, I just want to make sure I won't kick myself for getting rid of it.

Also, I've seen things about CoreAVC or CoreCodec or something to make HD video run through the GPU (which is definitely the m11x's strength ahead of the CPU, particularly for the R1). What do I need to know about that?

 

Geez, that's bad customer service! He was trying to talk you *out* of buying one of their products??

 

I know. I was inwardly getting really mad. He kept talking down to me and was trying to make me feel stupid for wanting it as a primary. I will enjoy playing CoD and typing papers on it, I don't need it to end world hunger. He pissed me off.

 

Yes. In favor of a different one. I couldn't believe it, either. The only one "he could honestly recommend was with the i7 and SSD." I informed him that I called him to save money, rather than spend $600 extra. You ever have those moments where you know you're right, but a little dissent instills doubts? That's what he did.

 

What he said

It will be great to carry about, much better than a 17" laptop.
If you need more screen space then buy a screen to plug in and maybe a keyboard & mouse for a "desktop" experience.

 

Okay, great! Thank you for allaying my fears, everybody.

 

The reason the Dell rep probably persuaded you to buy the Core i7 w/SSD is because those two parts are high-margin products for Dell, and the sales rep probably earns a bigger commission for selling them to you.

In any case, you will be very happy with your Alienware M11x. It sounds like you want a single highly portable machine that has enough battery life and performance to do what you want. Rest assured, the M11x will definitely fit that role..

Just don't forget to come back next week when you have your laptop, and tell us what you think!

 

For what it's worth, I agree with everyone, the M11x for what you are wanting is just fine... it will totally smoke the Toshiba you are replacing, definitely get rid of that one, you'll be totally fine with the M11x. It's great for daily task, and is a fantastic game machine for every game but a rare few. Enjoy! I absolutely love mine. I've got an Asus G73 as well, and the M11x does 99% of what I want to do, and use it most of the time.

 

I've been using my M11xR1 SU7300 for months now. CPU has NOT been a problem for me. Great battery life and no over heating.

The Dell rep back in March questioned my purchase of an M11xR1 regarding CPU(Maybe that's standard). I'm so glad I just ignored him, but bless him he was clued up and very helpful.

I have MySQL server, Apache server, gimp, PHP, Perl, Java SDK and Android SDK, OpenOffice, notebook++, numerous video packages and browsers AND most of those are all running at the same time. Oh and a couple of games and it handles all those just fine.

My SU7300 OC'd out performs my single core Pentium4 3.2Ghz HT processor.

As an all round system, including gaming, the M11x SU7300 is still a good buy.

If you know the games you're going to play and you've modelled your requirements the SU7300 is fine. Remember you're getting a VGA(M11xR1), HDMI(Connect straight to TV), DisplayPort(Connect to second monitor), Firewire as well as 5.1 audio(3xports, 6 channels) all built in and you won't get that with many/if any other systems less than 12" wide.

I have two 24" IPS monitors, wireless keyboard and mouse connect to my M11xR1 at home. Just for a laugh I even played a DVD on each monitor(2x24") simultaneously and the God of notebooks didn't even strike me down, they both played fine.

If gaming is excluded from the 'package' then there are 13" notebooks with i5-430UM (HD5430 GPU) at a better price/performance placement.

Tosh, we love you, but you have to go.

Don't worry about the M11x screen size, it'll grow on you.

 

Thank you, my good lads. I knew from the outset I should love this machine, but now I just want the freaking thing to arrive so I can mess with it.

 

Day 1 - love it, rebuilt it twice and now happy with my view of it as a powerhouse netbook that will hit 80% of my gaming needs.

 

If you're a student, remember having an extra backup laptop can be very important...

I mean for those times when your primary laptop fails and you need to write a term paper, during finals, and it's 12am, etc

 

and those are the only times it will fail

 

I have a feeling that this dell rep you talked to is the same one I talked to this morning who told me that dell doesn't provide any discounts for alienware since it's a 'premium brand', other than the 10% off EPP discount - that none of my coupons would work for it - and then proceeded to try to convince me to buy some other laptop. Overall he just acted like "If you're buying alienware, you have money, so don't come asking for discounts because we want some of that money you were going to use for toilet paper later tonight." I think the idea of the m11x - an alienware that's relatively affordable and gives you a lot of bang for your buck, is completely foreign to half these people. Pretty maddening.

And you know what, I called a bit later and talked to another guy (i think he was indian or something) who immediately set about trying to save me as much money as possible, and got pretty much all my coupons which supposedly weren't supported, to work. Thank-you-very-much mr. "you don't get any discounts because you're buying alienware therefore you're rich". You'd think these reps would actually try to get you to buy their products...

 

yup, just buy a monitor and screen for when doing school/other work and its perfect.

 

I have one mainly for schoolwork and portable gaming. It's fine. Unless you are a person that has to have the highest spec'd processor possible (doesn't sound like it), the SU7300 will do. After all most of the internals are the same outside of the processors...

 

mine replaced 2 laptops , had am emachine (acer aspire one clone) and a large beautiful asus f3sv. The m11x r2 gets better battery life than both of them combined and games better than the asus with its aging geforce 8600 gs. I thought i would miss the 1680x1050 screen on the asus , but really i havent. Youre going to love it.

 

I have the M11xR1 and I love it. I do have the M17xR1 (bought from a forum member). They arrived on the same day. The M11xR1 plays COD4:MW really well. I was very impressed. I'm going to try Crysis on it once I get all my Amazon HD videos downloaded. I'm an author and have Photoshop CS2 on it, runs flawlessly, and also Office. Again, runs flawlessly. I think it's perfect for students.

 

Sales reps are there to make commission. The more stuff they sell you, and the more they can get you to pay for that stuff, then the more commission they make. Once you understand the profit motive of sales reps, then you can begin to use it to your advantage.

For example: The first sales rep you spoke to refused to give you a discount, because he thinks that he can somehow convince you to take the higher price (and therefore make a higher commission). That is the only reason that he stood his ground on not giving a discount.

Here's the trick to working any sales rep into giving you a discount:

1) Make it clear that you are price sensitive. Start the conversation with questions like

"Oh, how much is that? What if I were to ugprade to the faster processor? Oh, that's too expensive. How about if I upgraded to a larger hard drive? How much would that be? Oh, I don't think that's worth spending that much money on that." Keep this going for about 5 minutes.

2) When you are ready, put the carrot in front of him.

"Hey, Jim, I appreciate you taking the time to walk me through all of this. Look, I am on a budget, so here's what I'm thinking. If you can give me configuration X,Y,Z, and give it to me at a price of $ABC dollars, then we can make this happen right now. Otherwise, I think I'm going to have to pass until I can save up some more money."

If the offer you made is reasonable, then the sales guy will jump on it every time. Better to make a small commission than make none at all. This works in every case where you can negotiate with a sales guy working on commission - cars, houses, expensive enterprise software licenses.

 

See that's the weird thing about this guy - I made it clear from the start that I couldn't afford this computer unless I got discounts / that I was poor and very money sensitive, and basically what he said to that was "well then you shouldn't get alienware. here let me show you other, less expensive computers." Even when I made it clear that, no, I'm gunna stake it out until this computer, he didn't give in at all - in fact the conversation just ended (I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere with him). If I was a sales rep, at that point I would've instead said something along the lines of "Hm ok well let me see if there's anything I can do..."

 

I think you revealed your price point too early. You gotta play the other person just as much as s/he is trying to play you. Tease them and tire them out with the hope that they are going to make a huge commission, then make the sales pitch.

Think about it this way: imagine going on a date with a girl who flirts with you and teases you all night with the idea that you are going to get lucky. Then she tells you at the end of the night that she doesn't go that far on first dates, and that she only makes out on first dates. You will be slightly disappointed, but gladly take what you can get. She leads you on, teases you, and then makes a sales pitch that you accept because it is better than nothing.

Now, imagine a date where the girl comes right out and says, " I don't fool around on first dates. I will, at most, make out with you, only if you are lucky." You wouldn't even bother to pick her up, because she already anchored herself at a certain bargaining position.

The less information you give about your position, and the more information you get out of the other person, the more power you have. And the easiest way to do that is to just keep asking questions until you think the other person is ready to break.