Just got my brand new m17

Hey everyone,
I just got my brand new m17 a week ago and it's been running great. I thought I would do a little review of it so far. I had two m15x's before this and both broke after 5 or 6 months and had to be replaced, and the second time I got them to give me an m17 (long story but someone in my family is very high up in dell). Anyways, this laptop is beyond comparison to the m15x; it makes the two I had look like absolute junk.

Specs:
Intel T9600 2.8ghz
4gb DDR3 1066
Dual 1gb ATi 4850's CrossfireX
Wuxga 1920x1200
500gb + 320gb 7200rpm Hard Drives
Intel Ultimate N 5300 wireless card
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 + win 7 upgrade

Price Paid: FREE (replacement for the 2nd m15x)

Build Quality: 10/10
I have to give this laptop a 10/10 on this, it is so well built. No screen creaking or wobbling, and the latches lock firmly I got the skullcap design and it's very nice. The outside alienhead lights up blue and can be turned off when the keyboard lights are turned off. The plastic feels strong a durable and while I wouldn't expect it to hold if I dropped it, I wouldn't worry about carrying it around like I did with the m15x's.

Software: 9/10
There's not much to say here, no bloatware, which alienware is good for. Minus one because there was no temp monitor like the m15x's had, and I had to download HWmonitor, which still can't pick up temps on the 4850's.

Sound: 9/10
The system comes with two speakers in the front and a subwoofer underneath. While I would have liked the speakers to be on top of the laptop so that it doesn't sound like the sound is coming from underneath you when gaming, the sound quality is very good and clear and can get VERY loud (the loudest laptop I have owned or heard). It also comes with a physical volume wheel on the side of the laptop, and I have to say I like this far better than the touch slider of the m15x's. And it's in far enough and stiff enough that you won't hit it unintentionally. There are built in microphone receivers(2) at the bottom of the lcd, and surprisingly they are able to pick up tones very nicely (much stronger than any other laptop mic i have used)

Graphics: 10/10
The 4850's in this system completely deserve this rating. I'm coming from an 8800gtx 512 mb in the m15x's, and these wipe the floor with it. I can run any game at maxed settings at 1920x1200 (except for like crysis of course ) Ive tried games like COD4, COD5, Bioshock, L4D, FC2, and Gears of War(haven't installed any others yet). I believe my 3dmark06 score was somewhere around 14k, I ran it on older drivers in vista 64 before coming to 7RC 64, so I will have to re-run it and update.

Screen: 10/10
The 17" Wuxga in this laptop is absolutely beautiful. Textures are crisp, The brightness is more than adequate, and there is no ghosting. Also having the extra real estate in windows is a huge bonus. The text is not too small to read, but I would never take this res on any smaller screen.

Heat: 7/10
Okay, this system can get HOT! and the fans can be pretty loud when they are running. I can't blame it though, considering it's running two graphics cards, and also my AC is broken so my room is sitting at 85 degrees here . It hasn't had any problems with artifacts or overheating, and I don't expect it to. The cpu cores maxed out at 64 C when playing several games for a few hours. And this is on par with the cpu from the m15x's which also hit the 60's. I can't get the 4850 temps yet b/c I don't have a program that picks up their thermal sensors.

Keyboard/Touchpad: 8/10
The touchpad is very nice, as it is sunken into the palmrest, has a dedicated scrolling section, and a dedicated off/on switch on the keyboard (Fn + F5). Finger movement on it is excellent and it works great. There is a fingerprint reader built into the palmrest, and it works great. The keyboard is very nice, and typing is a breeze. The dedicated media buttons are a huge bonus too, and make listening to music even in games easy. The numpad is a great addition and the crammed math buttons on top don't bother me at all. The only two gripes that I have with it are that the CTRL button is very small and is further over to the left than normal (so that alienware could fit a duplicate "\" key next two the spacebar... yeah, there's two of them, one above the enter key and one to the left of the spacebar... ). So anyone using the CTRL button for crouch in games will either have to stretch their hand or use a different key. The next issue was that the backlighting is almost worthless. It's so dim that you can pretty much only see it at night, and it's spotty at best with the light displacement. Like right now I have it on blue and can't tell that its on at all.

Ports: 10/10
This laptop has everything for ports. On the right side its has the two usb, an 1394, headphones and mic, an optical, and a notebook lock slot. On the left side it has a media card reader slot and an expresscard slot, along with a reset button that you have to stick a pen in, which I "assume" is for the motherboard. On the back it has an ethernet port, HDMI, vga, esata/usb, and coaxial. There isn't much more that I could have asked for ports on a laptop.

Webcam: 10/10
The 2.0mp webcam on this laptop is great. and the ability to tilt it up and down is another bonus. It's a huge improvement over the junk webcam that was in the m15x's, and image quality is great. It can be disabled through the keyboard(Fn + F4) and lights up blue when it is being used, another bonus.

Battery Life: 8/10
Lets face it, the battery life on this laptop is terrible. But then again, I'm sure people aren't buying a 17 inch laptop with dual graphics cards expecting to travel and get 4 hours of battery life. It gets about an hour to an hour and 30 minutes just surfing the web, so it's not at the top of its class in 17inch gaming notebooks battery life by any means, but its pretty much average and like I said above I doubt it matters to many people. To me this is more of a portable desktop and the battery is a bonus in case the power goes out .

Accessories: 9/10
Hey, what happened to my mousepad.... I didn't get one . O well, I still have two from the m15x's. Anyways this came with the usual accessories: hat, power brick, manual/cds, and cloth sleeve. The manual and cd's were in a very nice binder, shaped like a sideways rectangle with the binding being on one of the shorter sides. The power brick is, well, huge. I mean, its easily 2 to 3x the size of the one for the m15x's, and is heavy as anything. But hey, all the juice for this machine has to come from somewhere.

Overall: 91%
-lets face it, this system is amazing, and I am more than happy with it. The little things like keyboard lighting don't personally matter to me, and overall I highly recommend this system.

 

nice review.
i love my M17 too.
i really want those 4850s though. ha

 

Similar feeling to me on the machine; there's better out there; but I'd have paid a rather hefty premium in the UK to get one.

Im actually a little dissapointed with the screen in mine tbh, the contrast ratio is not amazing which can result in a faded appearance; suffers from back light bleed and all in is a little washed out; it does also blur a little but not massively so. Im quite picky on this sort of stuff though; its not a terrible screen, and due to the res is exceptionally sharp; Im just used to better.

All in I really like it, oh and Everest trial will pickup your GPU temps

Leave the default audio drivers on the machine rather than updating; then switch the EQ to powerful, it really sounds much better with this machine as it makes the 'sub' do more of the work. Make sure to disable for headphones though as it sounds awful with them, but try it out with the speakers, it sounds much nicer in the mids

 

I agree, I'm in love with my M17. Although I can peak at just a little above 2 hours surfing the web. Are you sure you're putting it into low power settings? Try turning off Crossfire too (Disable CatalystAI in the Catalyst Control Centre) and make sure that in the Catalyst Control Centre it's set to maximise battery life. Perhaps it's the 4850s, but 10W extra a card shouldn't make that much difference.

How do you switch the EQ to powerful? o.o

 

Did you leave Alienwares Realtek software on the machine? You need to the official AW drivers as Realtek updated ones conflict a little when it comes to enhancements, and just dont work properly (I tried both) lol

If so click the little Realtek HD Audio manager icon in your taskbar (looks like an orange speaker), it might be hidden if you have used it in an age.

Then, go to sound effects, and on the pulldown menu for equaliser presets (NOT THE BUTTONS), change to powerful (pressing reset will turn it off). Go listen to some rock/metal afterwards or anything with a decent section of mid/bass and you'll appreciate the difference, especially if you alternate between off and powerful whilst listening.

Dont touch the other EQ settings as they're horrid with the M17 speakers, and again dont use any of them (including powerful) with headphones

 

Erm, I'm not sure if I even have any Realtek drivers on the machine (edit: just searched, I don't.). I had to reformat the whole drive when it screwed up partitioning itself so I may not have reinstalled the driver.

 

If thats the case; go to the AW site, and download the latest Alienware audio driver for the M17. This will get you back on track, and shouldn't take very long, the realtek driver package isn't that large.

If you're having trouble, let me know and I'll get you a link.

 

*cough* having trouble *cough*

I haven't got a MyHive account and I presume that's what you mean. I could make one but the number or whatever it is is currently in another country...

 

Hahah,

http://aliendl.alienware.com/Mobile/M17/M17_Audio_Vista_x86_x64_6.0.1.5874.exe

Install that and all should become clear

 

Why thank you gud sir.

 

Any luck?

 

Hey nice review. I just received mine of Friday and I'm very pleased. I've had some issues with Alienware this year and I was so relieved to receive the laptop within 2 weeks after ordering, and in good working order upon receipt (with one exception with the video driver not working in crossfire - easily fixed with new drivers).

My only quibbles are with your scores on the build quality and LCD screen. I would give it a 9 on build quality. The area underneath the touch pad is kind of hollow and rattles a little bit when tapping the keypad. Also, there are sections of the media access control buttons that are raised up, making it a little bumpy going across. The LCD screen is good, but I agree with Alex on some of the bleed and uneven lighting. I'd say 8-9 on that.

On the other hand, I'd give the keypad a solid 9-10. I loved the one on my m9750 and this one is similar. After using my wife's ASUS on occasion, the M17 is responsive with a great feel and the buttons require just the right amount of pressure to activate.

The M17 was just was I was hoping for and I'm very glad that Alienware gave new life to it with the upgraded GPU.

 

Good to hear some constructive criticism and now that I looked I noticed some slight light bleeding at the bottom, but I had to look to find this and I'm not one to be bothered by this... The touchpad rattling im not sure on and the media buttons for me are smooth across, and I just double checked.

 

just let your lcd burn in. gaming and movies and stuff will "exercise" you lcd.

 

Burn in will never cure LCD backlight bleed, tbh LCDs gain very little out of use; although sometimes crystals can become stuck/unstuck

 

Just thought I would add here that I got the temps from my system and cpu idles around mid 40's to low 50's, and peaks under load around the mid to high 60's. The 4850's idle at mid 60's and peak under load at about 90C (fallout 3 entirely maxed- which btw looks beautiful at 1920x1200 8xaa 16xaf). Overall these seem like good temps considering my room is sitting at 85 degrees now.

 

That sounds about right Rifle; Im running a pretty hot X9100 so my temps are higher. Its a great laptop when you consider what it can do; just make sure you're on the latest ATI drivers if you're not already
I used some of the hottest things known to techies to see where mine would go anyway. General load temps even with my processor are in the mid 60s for the majority of programmes

 

Panels can settle over a period of days if left on and its happened to me on more then one occasion and most recently on my M17x where out of the box bleed was fairly bad and over 3 days of leaving it on its basically non existent.

 

its from the bulb dimming some from initial use not the screen changing at all quad. the bulbs are like flouresents in a way they give off the most light when first used then settle out. same applies to ccfl tubes

 

Nevermind - Zfactors done a better job than I could

 

I was more under the impression of the panel actually heating up IE bending and then becoming more uniformly fit thus creating less bleed.

 

no way. the bulb would never heat it up that much and the panel itself will never generate that kind of heat you can hold a panel in your hands for hours while turned on they do get hot but not nearly enough for that.

also sometimes it does appear the bleed goes away but if left turned off for a few days the bulb can "rest" and you may see it again.

man id take a base model dual 4850 system right now if i could use the dpa card on it... nice price now all i need to add is the dual 480 and lit keyboard everything else i have sitting here

 

Doesnt really work that way AFAIK, the screen shouldn't get hot enough to warp, although stuff like partially trapped crystals working free can happen, burn in traditionally helps more conventional techs like CRT/Plasmas more than it should for LCD, although electronics settling in (rather than the panel) is occasionally suggested

 

Haha, join us again Zfactor. Yeah it's not a Clevo 280SLI/M17x or the rather insane mobile I7 machine, but its still bloody nice

 

even crt dont benefit much from burn in like plasmas can

 

Well, that's true...they benefit a lot more than LCD though
And Im rather fond of Plasmas even with the downsides

 

i would if i didnt have to lay out cash right now with the m17x i can use dpa for 12months free... and pay it montly with the m17 i cant use that i already asked

 

Yeah im awaiting the 4850s to be for sale hopefully and the new screen i have coming and i will be all set as well . Hopefully it all works out or ill be on to something else though havent decided what yet .

 

my pioneer kuro is FANTASTIC i love that thing though i saw a new 240hz led sammy in a lab enviornment the other day and JUST WOW it was stunning

 

Hehe aye, RIP Kuro

LCDs have come a long way; but for movies and stuff; they're still a way of beating the plasmas overall, LED backlit are a good step but I think they'll probably still be one step behind til OLED takes over, or LCDs effectively use pixel by pixel lighting, and are able to utilise higher colour gradients like a plasma.

 

Grats on the new M17! Even though there has been a couple glitches with mine I still love it. Heck, I don't think I've had a laptop without at least 1 or 2 minor glitches. Though that could just be my luck.