About to order my m15x. Questions

So I am finally about to order this thing. Here are the specs:

Warranty: 1-Year. to be upgraded as I see fit.
Design & Display: Silver Ripley Design
Display: 15.4" WideXGA+ 1440 x 900 LCD (720p)
System Lighting: Alienware® AlienFX®
Video/Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® Series - 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GT
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)
Operating System (Office software not included): Windows Vista® Home Premium with Service Pack 1
Memory: 1GB. To be upgraded myself
System Drive: 120GB 7,200RPM (8MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW)

And now the questions.

1. Alien respawn. What is it? Is it worth $50? Are the backup DVDs windows has you make a good enough substitute?

2. 64bit windows. Whats the story? Do I sacrifice anything to upgrade to 64bit? Such as ability to customize the lighting options or anything else?

3. Benchmark software. I have never needed to benchmark anything so, understandably, I don't know how. Is there a guide? Or is it fairly straightforward?

4. Notebook locks. Anyone personally using one right now that they know works?

Thanks for the help guys!

 

1. I think you could make the backup DVDs by yourself.

2. No, I think there is a nice guide to upgrade to 64 bit without sacrficing much on NBR.

3. wPrime, 3dmark06, PCmark vantage and HDTune. All very straightforward, wprime takes 25-35 seconds and the rest.... hit run and eat a sandwich.
Use HWMoniter to moniter your temperatures

4. I have a Kensington Lock (forgot name). It works fine, suggest you go for that brand. Although I dont know if there is a lock slot on the m15x.

Good luck on your m15x journey, hope its a non-defective one.

I don't have a m15x, I'm posting what I have heard and experianced on NBR and off my friend's m17x and m15x.

 

there is a post on here about the lack of the ability to use locks on the 15x.
while there is a lock slot, either the locks do nto fit or have to be modified to work.
unless some mods have been made by either the lock makers, AW, or the owners of both, i do not see locks as working at this time.

as qaz said, there is an AWESOME guide on how to use and tweak 64 for use on the 15x.

the rest was answered.

 

Your computer is basically identical to mine, which I just received yesterday. I used Gskill PC5300 memory, 2x2gb. It was $61 delivered from newegg. I was able to download the free version of 3dmark 06 and got 10,077 on it. Enjoy your new computer!

 

Alien respawn, you don't need it. Sometimes m15x can get as messy that nothing but sending it back can fix it, ask Stone (nothing from personal experience but what I read here at NBR)

To have a healthy state of your Vista machine, 32 or 64 you need couple of things setup properly. I think I will create a new guide on how to get MAX out of your Vista machine and start loving it

1) Schedule Disk DeFragmentation to run everyday in background. A single round of gaming can leave lots of fragmentation behind the scene. Fragmentation happens continuous so should be the defrag.

2) Configure System Restore to run twice in a week atleast, don't worry about the space it takes snapshots (incremental backups) and does not have duplicate data. It is the best tool to bring your system back to life.

3) If you can live with it, have your UAC turned on. It really helps, agreed sometimes annoying but keeps your system files unaffected.

4) Keep it clean, uninstall unnecessary programs. I never install anything new on my physical machine first, specially if they touch system files. Have a copy of Virtual PC with you, test your new programs there and once you are satisfied and really want it then install it on physical machine.

I can think of few other third party tools that helps you to keep the system running at peak. But that will be later in my next guide... sometimes later

About 64bit, AW will not help you but I am here to assist if needed. See my signature for the guide talked about.

 

Better yet I am going to use my desktop for new programs. I plan to keep this machine completely clean because I will only have to install things I use as pretty much default such as firefox and VLC.

Anyways do You think this is a good buy for 64bit vista:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Skusearch_v2.asp?scriteria=AA66790

I will be making the vista recovery disks before even connecting to the internet. I don't have enough for both the m15x and new vista but it would be helpful for me to have the cheapest 64bit disk ready to order when I get sufficient funds. This way if I ever have to send it back I can use the recovery disks to reinstall the original OS.

 

Congrats on your new system, and I won't even try to answer your questions, seeing how they already have been answered.