Callidor's m15x review + youtube demo

Introduction: Our story begins back in February or so when I began thinking about what I wanted for my birthday…my birthday in June. This is no ordinary birthday though. It’s my 18th birthday, and it falls about two days before I graduate from High School. This was a golden ticket to dream big. I knew pretty much certainly that I wanted a laptop for college. I’ve had an AW desktop that’s served me well for over two years now, so that was the first place I looked. At that time, the m15x was brandy new, and it seemed a little too fancy for me, so I looked at the m9750. I had an accepted allotment of around $2500. After configuring the m9750 and looking at lots of pictures, I was pretty sure that that was what I wanted. I probably would have wound up with it had I not passed by some other 17” notebooks in best buy and got a better idea of how large they really are. I figured I would want something a little smaller for school, so I checked out the m15x. It wasn’t long before I figured out that I could get a stronger, faster, smaller system, for only about $60 more than my m9750 config. (The prices were different back when this happened.) The dream began. I talked about the laptops so much with my dad that he consented to put in his half and buy it early. My mom took a little bit of convincing, but she agreed. The order was placed late at night on Monday, March 24th. Specs are in the signature.

The Ordering Process: The short story goes like this: 3/24: ordered. 3/25: phase 2. 3/31 phase 4. 4/8 phase 3, phase 6. 4/9 phase 8, phase 9 (shipped). 4/12: received.
For the looong story, read on: You’ll notice the long time spent in phase 2. I did too, so I called them a couple of times to make sure there weren’t any issues with the credit card. On Monday the 31st I called and asked about it for the second time. They told me to expect some movement with the delivery the following Thursday or Friday. A few minutes later I was bumped to phase 4. I stayed there for quite some time as well. That Thursday night I found out that the 1440x900 displays were on backorder (from an NBR member.) I called them on Friday to confirm this, and it was indeed true. I was told on the phone that the new shipment would be in that same day, and Alienware-Steve said Monday. I was a little confused about why I never got an email about that, but decided not to make a big deal about it. On Monday I called again to find out if the screens were in and if I would start production soon. Again, I was told to check back on Thursday or Friday. On Tuesday, however, I moved down from four to three, then up to 6. That was nice. Next day, out it went.
This next part has nothing to do with AW, so you don’t have to pay attention…I just really want to tell this part of the story: We had it shipped to my dad’s office cause there are always people there to sign for it on weekdays. It’s estimated shipping date happened to be a Saturday. My dad was working, but only pretty early that day. So I drove up there before he went home so I could stay and wait for the truck. A few hours went by before I got enormously bored and gave Fedex a call. They told me that a delivery attempt had been made at 10:30 AM (a blatant lie. People were there, and there was no attempted delivery notice left behind.) I got angry. Basically, I went through a lot of Fedex bureaucracy in an attempt to have them send the driver back. Basically, I talked to a bunch of different people, and they all told me it couldn’t be done. He wouldn’t be back to the local station until after it was closed, and it wouldn’t be open again until Tuesday. While I was smashing my head against the wall for staying alone in that office doing nothing for so many hours, I got a call saying the guy was on his way back and that he would be there in 15 minutes. I waited outside the building to ensure that there could be no screw ups… With the package in hand, I went home.

The unboxening: This thing was well packaged. For some reason, my black box did not have the white alien head on it. Oh well. There’s not much to say beyond the fact that everything was well secured, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.












Style and Build: Let me start by saying that pictures don't really do a great job of conveying what this system really looks like. You can look at a million pictures of it (and over the course of this review, you will) and still not get a great idea of what it's really like. First of all, it's larger in person than you would think. Not cumbersome, but substantial. In the pictures below, you'll see it sitting in front of a desktop monitor. For reference, that's a 19" 1280x1024 monitor. To be frank, I love the way this looks. The juxtaposition of the elaborate lights with the overall simplicity of the style is something to behold. On the one hand, it's very traditional. It's a squarish box with a screen. On the other hand, it's like nothing else you'll ever see. The black glossy surface around the monitor is a very nice touch, and the lights...forget about it. This thing was put together well. There was no gap above the ethernet port, and everything seems solid. It is however a pretty hefty notebook, so you always feel a little nervous carrying it. I wouldn't call the display "wobbly," but it does have an amount of play to it. If you are typing vigorously, it can bounce a little bit, but I'm only noticing that now because I'm looking to make sure I'm not lying to you. It's honestly nothing to worry about. I've taken a number of pictures, but if anyone has anything else they'd like to see, feel free to post requests.

Sitting on the now extremely messy desk


See the gap above the ethernet port? Neither do I.


Running some windows updates


The light pipe. Hard to get a clear shot with the flash off.


Playing Halfe Life 2 Lost Coast


Installing one of the FFXI expansions


Keyboard and Trackpad: The trackpad on this thing, as many of you know, is "invisible." By that I mean it is totally flush with the rest of the palm rest, and is made of the same surface. Were it not for the Light border around it, it would be impossible to tell where it began and ended. That said, I think this is remarkably sleek. You need not fear about wandering off by mistake because not only is this a spacious trackpad, but the light border certainly feels different. You will notice if your finger has gone too far...not that it ever should. The tracking on this thing is alright. Most of the time, I find myself using a USB mouse, but that's not to say it is bad. If your hand is a little moist, this will drag, but under most circumstances it's comfortable to use. I wouldn't say its really any better or worse than any other laptop track pads. Before I got it, I was a little nervous about accidentally wandering into the unmarked scroll areas, but fear not. They are well away from where your finger will normally be, and *gasp* they are very effective. It feels just as natural as the scroll wheel on an external mouse most of the time. Definately nice work there.


As for the keyboard...as those of you who have been following the owner's lounge know, this is where I've been having a problem with the laptop. The keyboard itself is nice. It's more on the clicky side of the spectrum than spongy, and it offers pleasant tactile response. My only complaint with its build would be the bottom edges of the keys. Let me explain. Suppose you hit the "K" key for example. Sometimes, on the up end of your key stroke, your finger will bump the underside of the "I" key. It's not an impediment to typing, but sometimes you feel like youre going to accidentally knock a key off. Maybe that's only the way I type. It's also a very insignificant thing.

The actual problem I'm having doesn't seem to really have anything to do with the keyboard itself. Essentially, whenever the computer is working, whether it be running a game, or even just downloading something in the background, the keyboard response drops dramatically. It's not just a matter of text appearing a moment after it's been typed, but rather a total decrease in responsiveness, to the point that every other key stroke can go unregistered. I am assuming that this problem is unique to me, so I would not worry about it. That said, it is very... very frustrating. This is particularly the case since I am an MMO junkie. To have to moderate my own typing while playing the games I play most hardly seems fair. I will be emailing/calling Alienware about this today, and I will keep everyone posted on how well they help. I am very nervous, however, about having to either reformat the drive, or send this back for repairs. I'm really just not sure what it is that could be causing the problem. Anywayyy...Right now I am typing on the m15x, and it is responding just fine. Whenever the thing is working, I like the feel of the keyboard. As Alienware/User pointed out in his video demonstration, it's a pretty standard laptop keyboard. The pictures that make it look more like a desktop keyboard are pretty tricky.


Display: My m15x has the 1440x900 resolution monitor on it. I know this is largely a matter of preference, but let me take this moment to highly recommend this size over the WUXGA. This is already quite a high resolution for this size monitor. Everything looks crisp and beautiful. When I go back to my 19" 1280x1024 desktop monitor, it looks comparitavely sooo much lower res. I would imagine that upgrading to the 1920 resolution would make things uncomfortably small on the screen. As I said though, that is a matter of preferance. The other thing to consider is the extra power required to run games at that resolution. It's your money, so feel free to go for whichever resolution you like, but I would advise the 1440. Anyway, the thing look great. No dead pixels, and everything is sharp from pretty much any viewing angle.







Gaming and Performance: I would like to point out at this point that I am using the 8700M GT, not the 8800M GTX. Despite what a lot of people have said about this card, this thing can really hold its own. The first test I ran (because it was the quickest thing to install) was the Half Life 2 Lost Coast stress test. At 1440x900, maxed settings, 4x AA, and 16x anisotropic filtering, this thing hit about 70 average fps. Playing through it, I hovered usually between 40 and 70, with peaks in the 90s, and lowest points in the 30s. Playing this was extremely smooth and looked great on this display. Following with Steam games, I played through much of Portal, which at similarly high settings, ran beautifully. Slight slowdown when rendering views through portals, but extremely playable at maxed and close to maxed settings.

I've been playing around with Lord of the Rings online, which is much more of a burden for this system. I started by cranking the settings to max, then turning frill distance (draw distance for things like tall grass, flowers, etc.) and stencil shadows down from ultra high to high. This is how I play it on my desktop. I also turned off dx10 dynamic shadows (extremely demanding feature) and dx10 distand landscape lighting or some other superfluous thing. At those settings it ran, but chugged a bit. It's playable, but I would certainly turn it down further for raiding or any serious playing. See youtube demo for both of these things.

Final Fantasy XI is notorious for having issues with Vista and 8xxx series cards. That certainly seems to be the case as this is the least graphics intensive test I ran, and it performed far worse than the source engine games. I intend to do some tweaking to get it right, but as it stands now, it's not unbearable, just a little sluggish.

FFXI gameplay shot


Overall, you will get amazing performance out of a remarkably mobile package with the m15x. Considering how happy I am with the 8700, you will be in for a real treat with the 8800, provided you can get around the downclocking issues.


Misc: There are plenty of odds and ends to explore on this machine, and I don't really have too much to say about them at this point. The smart bay is certainly a wonderful thing to have. If you've never used one, it takes about 5 seconds to pull out whatever is in there, and another 5 to slide something else in. The touch controls...they're pretty effective. The volume slider is a little hit and miss, and it is often preferable to just use the OS volume slider, but the bluetooth, wifi, command center, and stealth mode buttons all work just fine in my opinion. One thing though...they seem to stop working when the computer wakes from sleep mode. That seems to be fixed, however, by putting it in suspend and then resuming it. Not a major issue. One thing I absolutely love, and is helping me write this review, is the media card reader. I'm not even going through any software...just swapping the SD card from camera to laptop and transfering pics as I take them. Definately a nice thing to have. The speakers on this thing are nice. At higher volumes, however, expect to hear some distortion. In my case, I think it's more prevalant out of the right speaker than the left. I think many people will be using these as desktop replacement systems, however, and will probably have them hooked up to external speakers. Even if you're not doing that, these speakers should be just fine.

Conclusion: Well, keep in mind that I've only had this thing since Saturday. The bottom line is, I am very happy with it. It looks, feels, and performs great. The issue I am dealing with is the keyboard responsiveness. If that gets resolved, I am very happy. If not...well I'm not sure what I'll do. The simple answer is, it makes the thing pretty unusable a lot of the time. Hopefully I will find a solution before long. I know this is really only a first impressions review, but I really hope that it's helped some of you with your decisions or what have you. If you want any more pictures of any specific part of the notebook, feel free to let me know and I should have it up in no time.

First youtube vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i98OaRxqBpM

EDIT: more vids. Bioshock: few clips from the beginning tied together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXQTEDPi0tU

and lotro gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kbUjS_I0cQ sorry for the sucky recording quality on that one.

lotro combat (by request): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtdtTQ_7o-w

 

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your experiences with the machine!

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

Just thought of it...are there any other games you can test, perhaps WoW, UT3, etc??

More information concerning real world gaming and other stuff would be great =)

Also, do you have key stroke lag when using Word or emails, etc??

Thanks,
K.Shub

 

Thanks for the review. I'm also getting an m15x soon. It is nice to hear some good reviews about it, even if there are aspects to be improved upon.

 

guys stop asking him to test so much games
he just bought a $2500 computer and doesn't deserved to be asked to do everything for you guys - he did his part for a pretty lengthy and good video and doesn't have to do any more - i'm sure all games but crysis will get great frame rates with his config.

@callidor - +rep and 5 stars on video thanks

 

I tested Oblivion, which at pretty much full specs (save for tree canopy shadows, self shadows, and grass shadows) ran at about 40fps in cities, but slowed down considerably in forests. to the point that settings would have to be lowered. keep in mind that was also with 4x AA on.

 

An additional note concerning what I said about speaker distortion. I've discovered that its not really distortion, but rather part of the case resonating with the sound. Essentially, if i put my hand over the plastic bars covering the right speaker to keep them from vibrating, the resonance sound goes away. I'm not really sure if anything can be done as a more permanent solution to that. And about the keyboard...it works fine in word or any email client...as long as the system isnt working. the second a download starts, or a game is running, it will lag to hell again.

 

Very nice review - I've only scanned through it, paying most attention to what you had to say about the Display! I've gone for the 1440x900 as well as I couldn't find the need to get a higher resolution apart from the fact that... just maybe I would have prefered the matte screen.

 

Pretty nice review Callidor +1 rep. I bet it took a couple of days to put up?? lol
The display looks beautiful by the way. The games look beautiful as well. man..I'm drooling.

Can't wait to get mines...

 

Exactly my thought, thank you for the review

 

thanks for the great review Callidor

hopefully mine will run as good as yours when i finally get out of phase 5.
cheers

 

Do you by any chance have Bioshock and would you be able to post a video?

If you could take it in fraps and upload a full quality that would be awesome

 

I do own it, but I have not yet installed it on this machine. That shouldn't take long though. Here's the catch. I only have the trial fraps so the best I could give you would be a 30 second clip. (or a few of them) The other thing is I know I would need to use windows movie maker to compress the clip so it wouldnt be like 10 terabytes. I've never really used the software, so can someone just give me quick directions on how I would compress it? I'll try to get that vid up tonight for you.

 

alienware/user uploaded a fraps video to megaupload and its about 250mb

ask him, and thanks in advance if you figure it out!

 

Link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=240034

 

Well I took a bunch of clips, but the second I import one into windows movie maker, it crashes it...trying to figure it out..

 

two more videos for your viewing pleasure.

three clips from the beginning of bioshock spliced together (hehe) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXQTEDPi0tU

lord of the rings gameplay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kbUjS_I0cQ

EDIT: please keep in mind the decrease in performance that comes with fraps recording.

 

additional testing info: im running the first level of HL2 in the background. completely maxed out settings with 4x AA. 150+ fps. Beautiful. (Sorry for all the posts in a row, but it's my review, so shut up!) ...>.>

 

By all means go ahead and frag this thread with your posts
Grats on a great system !! Makes me wanna consider the 8700 GT card..
But hmm.. I've got till Sept for them to fix the downclocking issues the 8800GTX seems to have.. Oh well..
Keep the vids coming when and if you get the time
And I'd recommend you edit your original post and add the links in there too..
Have fun !!!

Edit: I forgot to *gasp* - You have the Samurai Champloo box set !!! No fair Does it have original Jap audio with subs ? Or is it dubbed ?

 

Both Glad to meet another champloo fan. Jin is my hero.

 

First Darkfly has alllll the games I want to get and now you have the BOX SET for Samurai Champloo.. Sigh Out Loud
It's one of the best series, with only Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho and Code Geass to rival it IMO

Edit: Sorry I can't comment about your videos as yet, I'm at work - at the reception - and don't think I'd looked reserved if I were to be gawking at and blowing my ears out with the audio..
Hehe.. Kinda ironic though - I'm temping at my dad's company which is into Car AUDIO

 

how much does lotr online / month? cost
and is it on ultra high setting?

 

As far as I know the monthly fee will clock in at $9.99 a month (when you sign up for three months of service for the special price of $29.97, subject to certain terms and conditions) with an option to become a Lifetime subscription for LOTR Online for a one time $199..

 

those settings are as they are described in the body of the review...ultra high with a dx10 exclusive settings turned off, and frill distance and stencil shadows turned down from ultra high to high. and yep, wraithers pricing info is correct...but those are the "founder" pricing options...they're offered if you were one of the first to buy the game, or if you get a reference code from one who was. otherwise, i think its $15/month

 

Woops ?
My bad then - was reading through the articles on different sites and saw a lot of "Founder's this" and "Founder's that".. Should've looked for the most recent article..
So how's the laptop been this mornin - Still got your keyboard lag ?

 

it's interesting...it usually takes a minute or two after start up to subside...and then it's fine until something is downloading or installing. during games, the keyboard lags as much as any other part of the game. if the game is running well, the keyboard will run well..the interesting thing is though...ive experienced a visual delay on letters appearing on the screen plenty of times...in this case, there is an actual drop in responsiveness. i'm going to do a bunch more testing with an external keyboard later today and try to isolate the problem

 

Ahh yes.. Had been following your situation for the last two days..
Good luck with the testing - hope it proves to be a software problem and a clean OS sweep will do the trick

Hehe.. Funny thing is my wireless mouse at the office died and I've been only using my keyboard for the last 2 hours to do my work and post on the forum.. Don't know what I would've done if my keyboard experienced an "actual drop in responsiveness" like yours

 

Could you by any chance ask alienware/user how to upload a full quality of that Bioshock vid to a site like megaupload? I have yet to play it on xbox360 or PC so I'm curious to see which looks better.

 

I have seen it on both. Overall, (like anything else) it looks better on PC. The issue is, there is no AA setting in the game's menu...so people have attempted to force it on...with mixed results. btw, incase you missed it, i did get a clip of it up.

 

i can assure you that your keyboard in not faulty. Its a software issue. If you see a delay from when you push a button, to the letter showing up on the screen, you are seeing what many people see on their pc's. Ever open up word and start typing and nothing shows up for like 1 or 2 seconds? I would reinstall your OS before you return the keyboard. Could also be background processes causing it. The external keyboard is fine because its using a different interface..prolly usb2.0 right? Reinstall your OS if possible. The delay is def lag because it happens when things load...if you dont want to reinstall your OS completely...reinstall all drivers including the chipset.

 

I agree. I don't believe it's a faulty keyboard, and you are right..the external keyboard I tested (which had no problems) was USB. I have re-installed the chipset and ps/2 keyboard drivers, which have not fixed the issue...basically i just need to figure out how big a deal i think it is...it only occurs under pretty specific circumstances.

 

try reinstalling the OS....its a pain but it wil eliminate all the possibilites...any computer, like even mine in my sig, has that happen sometimes when loading..ive noticed it in most in laptops also...and when your reinstalling drivers, are you using a driver cleaner to completely wipeout the old files?

do you have the latest bios btw? many people suffering from keyboard lag get it fixed with new bios

edit: also try this if you want..in your processes tab for windows..disable pcm services, does the notbook have software running on the desktop for the keyboard? such as for the lights and extra key functions? try disbaling that software also. Antivirus can also do it, being that everything you type almost is checked, especially in IE, try disabling alot of stuff and test it, let us know if this works

 

I saw the youtube one, but quality on youtube is awful compared to what you see in game. I am debating spending the money on the 8800m and i'd like to see for myself how Bioshock looks. I've been looking forward to getting this laptop since it came out so I could play it because my pc is definately showing its age. Upload one to www.megaupload.com like alenware/user did in his review, he showed some other games but i really want to see Bioshock

 

There's an old video on here from Absinthe42 - I'll try and find the link for you
Ahh - The link * http://termu.com/abs/* no longer works
Don't know if I'll be able to upload it from my home connection.. I'll try when I get home..

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtdtTQ_7o-w

someone posted a request for lotro combat on my other lotro vid. i decided to fraps this one so you could see more clearly, just be aware of the frame rate drop that comes with fraps recording.