thinking about selling my m15x and getting a m11x

for various reasons i am thinking about doing this, but i think the thing that worries me the most is the lack of gigabit ethernet. perhaps i am overthinking this but i am currently on a fiber optic connection in japan that gives me blazing fast internet and i wouldnt want to lose that speed for anything. is there talk of an R3 coming out very soon with gigabit? or am i paranoid about my speed?

here is a link to my most recent speedtest to prove i am not lying about the connection speed

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1110858542.png

 

Dayum that's blazing. I wish we got that type of internet here in New Zealand. Heck we don't even have fibre optic yet.

Here is probably the fastest you can get in New Zealand. Or well where i live.


You seem kinda paranoid. If you sell your M15X for an M11X all your doing is trading computer performance for internet speed.

Wait do you have the All Powerfull M15X or Area-51 M15X

 

OK, that is some good speed you've got there. I'd sure like a taste of that.

Using 100Mbits full duplex Ethernet on a switched interface (no collision domain) you'll still get those speeds.

Given you're using a point to point connection. And like Japan is going to be using Bridges or Repeaters, when Ethernet switches are as cheap as chips.

Full duplex at 100Mbits point to point is 100Mbits upload and 100Mbits download, thus it's 200Mbits(sort of) excluding framing and overheads.

I'm guessing you'll be OK with a 10/100 Ethernet interface.

Mind you, pushing speeds of 60Mbits, then I'd be considering 1000Mbits as well just to err on the side of caution. Or in case you go on holidays to Korea(South).

Just make sure you're using CAT5e cable or better.

Who knows what an M11xR3 will have. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

i have the all powerful m15x. bought it about 8 months ago. the reason i am thinking about doing this now is because my friend is looking to build a new computer and i will be leaving japan soon enough. having a small laptop that will be easy to take home with me would be nice. if i did go for the m11x i would buy a monitor (alienware monitor hehe) to hook it in to. my main concern is the internet speed, which is why i am second guessing the decision to begin with. the m11x i would be looking at would be an i7 model with 8gb of ram and a 500gb HD, which is pretty comparable to my m15x. the main difference would be the graphics card. having the HDMI port on the m11x is definitely a plus, so it all comes back to the lack of gigabit ethernet that irks me.

 

i love the internetz for this reason, you can get answers like this. i was searching for some real world speed differences but i couldnt find anything, only theoretical speeds, which is understandable but sad at the same time. i really would not want to take a hit on speed and this is my main concern, it would be nice if i had a friend here with the computer so i could test it, but sadly none of my friends can afford an alienware lol. i think the netbook in the house is 10/100, which i may be able to test with. i will have to look in to that. but i know its not an ideal test bed.

does anyone else have any more advice?

 

just ran some test from the netbook with the 10/100 connection. i seemed to average in the high 50s for download and upper 40s for the upload. here is the most recent result

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1110974659.png

so it looks like there isnt a huge hit. and some of the hit could possibly be caused by the CPU vs the flash applet being used on speedtest.net

 

You will not see a difference in internet speeds if you are using 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps. More does not equal better in this case. The only place you see the speed difference in a LAN where large file transfers happen. One thing to note also, is your computer is the bottleneck for the processing of the internet data in this case. So basically you are at the mercy of your machine to handle and display all of the data you receive. With the Alienware it would be virtually unnoticeable as far as the Ethernet card speed is concerned.

 

i am well aware that more does not equal better per sae. my concern was more that i would possibly take a performance hit due to the limitation of the 10/100 v my internet connection, which does not appear to be the case. i wouldnt say the computer is the only bottleneck as there are plenty of other bottlenecks that can occur upstream as well. i also do have a home server that i use to transfer files back and forth quite a bit via the LAN. it being unnoticeable is certainly a good thing, i am still going to investigate further using the netbook (even though the cpu is an obvious bottleneck) to see how it fares under "real world" usage. anybody else care to add their $.02?

 

I think what we're trying to say is, the Ethernet interface is not a problem.

However as soon as you say LAN, I'm thinking CDMA.

Whatever, I'm sure you'll sort it out.

 

If you're worried about going from 60 Mb to 50 Mb -- you're too spoiled! Haha...

 

why do you think CDMA when I say LAN?

 

lol its true, i want to use as much of this creamy internet goodness while i am still here.

 

BTW the M11x has wifi-n card only draw back is they have the cheaper brand DW1520 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card which can only go upto 150Mbps. If you are lucky you can pickup an intel replacement which can get 300Mbps though.

Super laptop but bad connectivity:

100Mbps LAN
USB2 only
No external SATA
Slow Wifi-N

Why?????

Oh do keep inmind you will loose your VGA port

With regards to M11x R3 there has been no data sheet released yet so you are very wishful if you want to wait...

 

those are some good points. i forgot about the esata port. hmm.