Good Alternative to M14x?

I understand this is an Alienware thread, but I just learned about the Lenovo y580. That is very impressive for only $1k. It has a better graphics card as well! My question is why go with Alienware over the Lenovo? Is there a difference?

 

from a quick glance its a tad bigger (15" vs 14") and the graphics cards are roughly the same based on benchmarks, and you cant upgrade the CPU but it does look like a great deal, i would be curious what others think as well.

 

well...

1) its not an alienware. people pay a premium because they want the nice alienware case and the LED options.

2) 14" does not equal 15.6". 15" is your standard mainstream laptop, a 14" with a 650m is amazing power for the size.

3) quality of the parts. Alienware uses nice name brand parts, things you wouldn't even notice like the soundblaster recon3di.

4) overall build quality, Alienware is known for a nice sturdy build with sufficient cooling.

Lastly, there are a million other 15" laptops that will rival the 14x in power with similar video card, lcd, cpu, but remember the 14x is NOT a 15 inch computer. Alienware owners know they pay a premium for owning an Alienware, its as simple as that. If your top priority is price then AW is probably not the right computer for you.

 

having seen the m14x at best buy I can say its beautiful laptop, but the LCD quality is terrible. Its one of those laptop screens that you can see the white backlight on black colors, not sure why AW doesn't care about their screen quality, it makes my 2009 MacBook screen look godlike.

 

I checked out the Lenovo Y580 page and it looks like a good deal!

I would stay away from speccing a 5400RPM HD though. Definitely go for the 7200RPM drives.

I would also go for the full 1920x1080 resolution screen and not the 1366x768 screen. A 15" screen would definitely benefit from a 1080p screen.

According to notebookcheck.net, the 660M is about 11% faster than the 650M.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

It may be because the one you saw was 700p instead of 900p, I would say that getting the 900p is a very good way to go.

 

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad issued to me by my employer and it is a pile of junk compared to an Alienware. My company is finding they are not anywhere close to as reliable as the old IBM ThinkPads were. You get what you pay for. If your budget can only afford $1,000 it may be OK, but it will not be an Alienware and it will not have the fantastic Alienware support team backing the product. And it will have the blah appearance of a Lenovo.

 

I decided yesterday I was buying a laptop and today I did so I guess I kinda rushed through the decision, but this is what it came down to for me. I considered the AW, Sager, Ideapad, the Samsung Series 7,and the HP dv6t. None of them gave me everything I wanted for under $1000. They were all great deals with the coupons that were out yesterday and today, but they would also come along with at least one weakness. Most of the time being the 720p screen. So I ended up with a M14X today from the Dell Outlet. i7-3610 8Gb ram 500gb 7200 rpm 900p GT650 for close to $900. I'm happy as long as when it comes it looks and works like new.

 

That's really good money for the thing, especially if it comes in new-like condition. Good for you! \o/

 

Congrats on the new system!! Alienware makes great machines!!

 

$900 is a very good deal.

 

Called up today to cancel my order...didn't really want to, but at the advice of someone else I figured why not. (They offered me $35 when I cancelled the original order I made a week ago when I realized it didn't have the 900p screen). So they were able to knock off another $70 and I got it for $790 plus tax. Good deal it seems to me. I kinda wanted to cancel my order and get a budget gamer Acer or something, but how can I at this price. Bad thing is I'm going to have to upgrade my desktop PC. Can't have my lappy encoding video faster than my desktop. From the looks of things the i7-3610 is faster than my 1055T at 3.8.

Thanks everyone. Now I can't wait till it gets here. Trying to prevent myself from going and buying a mSata or something else till it gets here actually.

 

Congrats! Now regarding that mSATA drive... you may want to check out:

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

I will. Gonna check out stock performance first. This is just to keep me occupied when I'm at the gf's or work.