Sold my Alienware M11x R2 because...

... I couldn't get over the poor screen quality. It's a great little laptop for gaming, but that is just about the only thing I could use it for.

When I travel for work, I ended up bringing two laptops with me... a MacBook Pro 13.3" for work, and an Alienware M11x R2 for gaming.

I decided to get rid of both of those laptops, and get a Sony Vaio SA3 13.3" laptop instead. It runs a 1600x900 screen on a mobile Core i5 CPU (non-ULV), and an AMD Radeon 6630 GPU.

If Alienware comes out with a new Alienware M11x or M13x with an incredible screen, I'll come back to Alienware. But for the time being, no more Alienware for me.

 

Amen brother. After owning laptop another with a very good screen, going back to the M11x always makes me pretty disappointed. I just never realised how washed out it is or how narrow the viewing angles are. I still love it though and would find it very hard to let it go.

Also, a new M13x with an incredible screen would also be my dream as well!

 

You can install a better screen for the m11x, but used ones are a little over 500$, so its not a worth while investment.

 

True that but it would probably be better to invest in a new laptop. Also, I don't currently possess the skills to pull off such a replacement, or it would be a pretty poor job.

 

moar info

 

Hey Kent1146, just wondering why you chose the Vaio, there are some other laptops that in that screen size that offer the 540 (a bit stronger I think)..

 

The macbook air 11 uses the same screen as the m11x, but its the much better version. The part numbers are the same family, just different endigns. But unfortunatly the cheapest mb air 11 screen is about 500 bucks used

 

They wouldnt have sold so many if the price reflected the better screens. I suspect they figured the hardcore guys would use ext LCD. Just look at all the ports available!

 

Yeah, thats why I dont really mind the stock screen. Its good enough to game on. I hook up to a ext when I am at home anyways.

 

Has anyone attempted it?

 

I saw a few 13.3" laptops that had decent GPUs (GeForce 540M).

But they were made by Acer or Asus. I have owned both Acer and Asus laptops in the past, and was not impressed at all. My impression of Acer and Asus laptops are that they are cheaply made laptops with poor screens. And they looked like the design was thrown together as an afterthought by a nerdy Taiwanese electrical engineer in half a day (as in, they are very functional laptops, and have great paper specs, but ugly).

So, I went with Sony.

It also helps that this laptop I bought (Sony Vaio SA3 series) comes with an extra battery slice included in the package, giving me about 10-11 hours of real-world use watching movies on a plane.

 

Yea. The screen quality should be better. Which replacement screens are we talking about here?

 

macbook air 11 screens. not the cheap aftermarket ones, you need a real macbook one from a salvaged macbook. They run around 500-600 bucks.

I have not confirmed yet if it will work, but everything in the data sheets point it being a upgrade and working.

 

I thought the m11x screen was sealed in, is there anyway to remove the 'glass' and replace it without damaging it?

 

yeah its pretty easy, search youtube for m11x hinge repair and it will show you how to take it apart.

 

I always chuckle when they say - "m11x edge to edge glass". Since when did a plastic cover become edge to edge glass. Then there is the what 1 cm gap between the plastic cover and the actual screen, just a joke really.

 

It's funny, too, since the plastic on my m11xr1 and r2 were both slightly warped, making that "edge to edge" look like a carnival mirror. Not only that, the panel underneath was glossy... double gloss, lol.


Mind you, I went to a Vaio SA after that (the Acer 3830TG with the gt540m has severe throttling issues, no ASUS comes close in this size, neither of them have a backlit KB of any kind, while the Vaio does), while the 13.3" panel and 1600x900 resolution are great, that's really all there is to say of the display. It's matte, which actually makes the contrast ratio worse (simply because the contrast ratio wasn't that good to begin with), however, at least it looks okay...

The drivers are a horrid mess, but Sony, suprisingly, has put out 3 drivers so far. That's 2 more than expected... If Sony ever puts out a 12.x driver, then that's it, no more Sony drivers needed (primarily due to user game profiles, partly due to AMD CAPs).

Otherwise, the Vaio SA is rather light for a well built 13.3" notebook. The m11xr1 and r2 I had were both heavy for their size.

The few things I do miss from the alienware?
DisplayPort output. Dell seems to be fully onboard, here. HP, sometimes. Apple, even some Acers. Sony? Lala land, I'd guess. I do have a VGA port in the event a very old projector comes up. Then, as many Vaio SA owners have found out, the analoug quality of that port isn't great.

Optimus. I don't care if it's the AMD BACON or nVidia Optimus. I just like it for it's simplicity and ease of use. It's the one thing that told me to hold onto the m11xr2 for quite a while longer, after I bought my SA.


What I do like about the Vaio SA?

Display resolution.
Light weight.
Optical bay (not very useful, but still can be swapped out with another HDD).
Backlit KB (while not the greatest KB to type on, at least the backlight is even - the only thing that irked me about the m11x KB, otherwise, it was almost as good as my old Dell M1210, and that was almsot as good as my old IBM Thinkpad from a bygone era).
Cooling system. I don't know how, or what, Sony did, however, they managed to not make it louder than my old m1xR2 (louder than the R1, however) while gaming. It doesn't seem logically possible, but... it is that it is.

Otherwise, just a pic to compare superficially... (I dunno why, but the Vaio seems a lot darker in this pic than it is in reality)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/718/dsc0416qt.jpg/
(also note, I got a Vaio SC first, which is what you see in some of my other pics in my imageshack album. I now have a silver Vaio SA, the primary difference being HD6630m vs HD6470m, 1600x900 vs 1366x768, and silver keyboard vs black KB).

I hope I helped anyone looking for info on the Vaio SA - m11x difference. Mind, afaik, the HD6630m in the Vaio SA is at officially acceptable AMD stock clocks for the HD6630m, but like many low end AMD GPUs, the specs vary wildly...
In this case, it has a 485MHz core clock (lowest allowed), with 800MHz DDR3 RAM on a 128bit bus. While that is enough for it to easily clear the ol' gt335m, I'm not sure about the GT540m (afaik from the Sony NBR forums, at least, HD6630m in Vaio SA is slower in DX9, barely faster in DX11), however, that was comapring to a Vaio F2 with an i7 quad core + GT540m (of unknown clocks)...

One last part. I never thought I'd ever use it, but the fingerprint reader is fun to use, at least it makes my login *that* much faster (long password from work ).


Anyhow, have fun! I'll always have a bit of love for Alienware (strangely, a few of our employees have Aliens - more than Macbook Pros! ).

 

Thanks for the comparison between the M11x and Sony Vaio SA. It's great to hear the opinion of someone who owns both. I've thought about going for a Sony Vaio SA or Z before just because of those lovely high resolution screens but they don't have that extra something that can make me leave my M11x behind.

Your workplace sounds like the complete opposite of my Uni. It may as well be an Apple Store. I was so happy the day I saw someone else waving the Alienware flag!