Long m15x Review -kefka888

Edit: now with pics! here is the link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gallery/showgallery.php/ppuser/159409/cat/500

I thought I would share with you all my experience so far with my m15x that I got on the 12th of June. Yes, it has been a little while but I have been busy with school and wanted to get some time logged on my lappy before giving my final word. Just to clarifty for all of you I am an A+ certified technician who was an IT in the Navy. I am now in college and I was working part time at the local CompUSA as a laptop repair technician, till it closed (now I work at the VA hospital). This, I hope, allows me to look at this laptop objectively since I have seen and worked on almost every major consumer laptop.

First off here are my system specs:
Alienware m15x
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
RAM: 4 GB pc2-5300 @ 667 mhz
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX @ stock clocks
Hard Drive: 200gb 7200 rpm
Screen: 1440x900 15.4 inch
Keyboard: Illuminated

Now that that is done, I will go over my first impressions of the system as I pulled it out from it's very nice sleeve.

First I was very impressed with the sleeve. I continue to use it when I travel with the laptop. Not many people mention it but I find it very useful to protect the computer and is the first laptop I have seen or bought that has come with one. Toshibas and Hp's come with similiar silk like covers but are far from reusable.

Once I had it fully out of the sleeve I put it on the table and checked the systems finish for any marks. I was impressed with the paint job but also noticed that it was fingerprint prone, but that is no big deal to me and most systems I see today have similiar fingerprint problems but the paint is no where as good of quality as the paint on this system. Also, I would like to mention that my old 9300 dell inspiron was not fingerprint prone and the paint eventually faded where I would rest my palm while typing. I have no way of knowing if this paint will suffer the same fate from our corrosive hand oils, but at least I can see it and I am far more likely to remember to clean the oil off.

After opening the laptop and turning it on I was impressed by the lighting. I didn't even realize that the thing had lighting around the screen till that moment. I messed with changing the colors around for a bit and then decided to put it in sleep and go finish up some work (Yes, I was at work; the laptop was delivered to the VA hospital as the Veteran's VocRehab program purchased the system for me to use at University. So thank you VocRehab and taxpayers everywhere). Well after doing some work I decide to open the system back up to show some coworkers. Well, this is when I found out that my system doesn't come back out of sleep mode! Of course my coworkers didn't notice, but I sure did. I had fun showing them the laptop and they were all amazed by this "Alienware." Most of them had never heard of the brand.

As a side note I do hear "creaking" while opening the lid but it never even registered in my brain till I read some people complaining about it in these forums. This is nothing new to me, laptops creaking as you open them is so common to me that I don't even register it. I am not certain if these people are first time notebook buyers or what, but I am having a hard time thinking of a laptop that doesn't make some sort of noise when you open it. The screen is very sturdy and the hinge stays where you set it. The screen does flex if you open it from the corner but nothing out of the ordinary of my experience.

When I got home I tried testing the sleepmode a couple more times and decided to call up techsupport. I immediately wondered if this was due to me having 4gb of memory. It is a known issue with Vista that it has problems resuming from sleep mode with 4gb installed with certain configurations. My desktop has this same issue but it amazed me how a laptop could leave the factory without being able to resume from sleep mode. On my desktop I just disable the feature but on a laptop I would say sleep mode is one of the most important features as it allows you to close the system anywhere and resume work (or play) quickly. I promptly called techsupport and after asking me a couple quick questions about my account I explained the issue and the rep quickly informed me that they had just become aware of this issue with the batch of netlist memory installed in my system and told me he was sending me out 4gb of qimonda ram after making sure I was comfortable installing the RAM myself. Right on. Though it still has me wondering how this wasn't caught. It makes me wonder if they even test sleep mode at all. After waiting a couple days my new ram arrived and I installed it in the system easily. I really like the access panel of this laptop. It gives me immediate access to any of the system parts I would want to get to. I could change the memory, had access to the GPU heatsink processor/chipset heatsink, harddrive, mini pcie slots, and memory.This IS NOT the case with most laptops and was a pleasant surprise. After installing the memory the system is now working flawlessly.

Now as far as games and everything else go I am amazed by the performance and haven't turned my desktop on in days. In fact it's almost as powerfull as my desktop and I can take it with me anywhere. This system has met the power meets mobility challenge. With the settings in Age of Conan maxed out the system gets ~46 fps and in Oblivion with Highquality with 4x AA and 16x AF I am running higher then 60 fps with vsync on and I have never seen it dip below 35 FPS. I would test Crysis but I don't have that game as I'm not that big into shooters and after hearing the frame rates people get in that game I would rather wait till there is a system that can actually run the thing at a playable framerate (never going below 30 frames). I haven't noticed any downclocking and I only use a laptop cushion. Which would be the equivalent of leaving it on a table or other flat surface. I play for hours and the keyboard remains pretty cool. The only area of the laptop that is hot is the bottom right corner where the heat from the video card is expelled which is normal. It doesn't seem to get any hotter then my old dell 9300 (which had a 7900gtx) would get after hours of gaming.

I really like the stealth mode (which downclocks everything to save battery life) and the Binary GFX which lets me switch between integrated and discrete graphics to save even more battery life. This will allow me to have the battery life I need to last me through a day of notetaking at school. Especially with the option to put a battery in the smart bay.

Now, there is only one other problem I have found and it seems to be a driver issue. I found the keyboard would lag alot, but wasn't especially noticable unless you would be typing words that had two of the same letter in it such as "good, still, etc." But, being a fast typer, I would run into it quite often. I tried installing the latest touchpad driver I found it would no longer lag in windows but would lag in games with a chat client, such as Age of Conan. After removing the synaptic driver completely I found this solved the problem. After this I tried the generic driver from the synaptics website and found that the lag existed with this driver as well. So hopefully this will be fixed soon as I liked the functionality of the Synaptics driver (touchpad turning off when using a mouse, etc). I would also point out that this problem isn't unique to this system as many other laptops have had similiar problems. Beyond the lag problem the keyboard is one of the best laptop keyboards I have ever used. It is very springy and responsive and sometimes I forget that I am typing on a laptop... until I try to go for the number pad. I have noticed that the space key can sometimes make a squeeking noise.

In conclusion, I am very impressed with the system overall and am a proud owner. I would recommend this system to anyone who needs power and mobility in a laptop. While there were a few problems with the system, one was resolved quickly and promptly and the other I hope will be fixed soon. To those of you who have encountered worse I hope they are resolved quickly and wish you the best. Thank you all for your time and I hope it helps you in your decision on a new laptop.

 

Nice review! Thats my only complaint as well is the keyboard I miss my old dell keyboard a bit. Hopefully a driver will fix the lag. Otherwise my system seems flawless and I enjoy it (my cd drive did freak out on me very briefly)

 

Great,some pics would be better.

 

I will get to it once I can get ahold of the camera from my fiance

 

great review

its nice to see another happy m15x owner.

 

Will be looking forward to those

 

Nice review. Great to hear positive experiences from an expert.

 

Uploaded some Photos.

 

Congrats on your Alien there and kudos on an objective review
& nice ''Lights'' pic !! Btw, how are the touch controls responding on your laptop ? Recent owners have reported them to be working right out of the box.. Hoping that's your case too
Oh and it would be great if you could post in the Worldwide Forum Survey for the m15x
L8rs

 

Nice m15x review.

I totally agree that people concerned about creaking/wobbling must be new to laptops or something. I went to Best Buy the other day and inspected all the laptops there and they all wobble just the same as the m15x, with the exception of two Sony models which wobble a little less. My old Alienware m766 creaks just the same, and a few at Best Buy also creaked.

Most of the ones at Best Buy had less keyboard flex than my two Alienware models, but a couple of the HP ones also had flexible keyboards. I see no issue in this whatsoever.

I am on vacation right now and I'm typing this on my Asus Eee because the m15x needs a stronger wireless signal... this little Eee is awesome for siphoning internet from the neighbors down the street. Heh. Gratz on your new m15x!

 

I think that sums it up, a 5000 dollar laptop ( or in my case £2500) is of the same quality as what you can pick up at Best Buy... and you can even pick up 2 that are better?

This one?: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8718257&type=product&id=1200702543178

enough said

 

I am not either new to laptops nor I am... something (whatever something might be). I've checked so many laptops I lost count of (this include, but not only, Acer, Toshiba, MBP, Sony, Fujitsu, several Dell, etc...). And none has such a poor design of hinges as the M15x does. I thought my 5 years old Acer wobbled... then I got my M15x.

Let's put it this way then... The M15x is very likely to be more prone to have a screen that will wobble than most nowadays' laptops. Some M15x might have a more stiff screen (maybe AW is working on that, who knows...), but that the wobbliness is present in a very big number of cases... that's undeniable.

So it would really be good if comments that vaguely resemble "They don't know what they are talking about!" would not be used on these matters.

Appart from that, congrats on your system kefka. Would you mind sharing with us some monitoring of temperatures during gameplay? And CPU tests?
Cheers and hope the good experiences continue...

 

I guess I am different than most people then, because I didn't buy the m15x solely for its hinge design. I didn't even realize that most people only look at hinge design when considering a laptop purchase.

I realize you said "enough said" but I said more. Sorry.

 

Now... that's a very nice and wise sentence. Because that's exactly what everyone here is saying... we choose laptops based on hinges. Applauses...

 

Exactly. Hinge Design = Build Quality.

M15X = Expensive
Expensive = High expectations when it comes to quality.

I wont expect much if I buy a 250quid dell cheapo laptop but if I am spending over 2000 quid on a freakin laptop, I expect this thing to NOT wobble so much or have cracks or come apart in less than a few months.

 

lol well I don't think he meant that.. but I made it a point that even something as simple as a hinge should be better, assume you get a car for $400.000 do you aspect that a hinge is loose.. no you don't and it would make you question the rest of the car... this is what I mean..

 

i have owned a large number of systems and still do. we have 20+ notebooks in my office and at my business'. none of them are nearly as bad as most describe the m15x is here and some of those are 400$ cheap compaq's.. they dont squeak at the hinges and have next to no wobble. the compal jfl92 im typing this on has basically 0 wobble unless i shake the thing around. and again no creaking and all the seams are in line a tight. for a 550$ bare bones i guess i should be impressed?

im not trying to knock alienware, heck im thinking about buying one myself... im more on the lines of this thing costs 4-5$k in some cases and doesnt feel any better than my 400$ ones?? now understand im not talking about performance here at all. im specifically talking about build quality..

just my thoughts.. heck i love the looks and design of it but im just not sure id buy one...though i do want one

 

Some people seem they are determined to "defend" AW and accept something that is not up to expectations. I bought something perfect... I want something perfect. That's nothing short than my right as a AW costumer.

Plug... what did you buy the M15x for then? I am sure you are aware that 102ºC is an accident waiting to happen on the M15x? And that's exactly the temperatures your GPU is able to come up to during gameplay. Or is that not really a problem? Now put that together with bad hinges. What's left that is good? The lights?

 

I found this quite a promising review. I'm also a fast typer, so any keyboard lag would really, really annoy me.

So... Qimonda RAM... this apparently clears up the inability of the M15x to come out of sleep mode? What brand RAM do they put in by default then?



EDIT: I've just chatted to an Alienware sales representative from the UK site about this question, and they've basically told me that they install RAM from ever major brand, so there is no telling what RAM all M15x buyers will receive. I asked them about the failure to come out of sleep mode issue, and he said that this issue has now been resolved. I told them that a member of this forum had received their M15x on 12th June with this issue, and I questioned them as to whether it was recently resolved. My answer was that is has been recently resolved, followed by a suggestion to contact the sales support team to get specific answers. What's the point of sales chat if you need decisive answers? These people could make the difference between a customer making an immediate purchase or making a later one. *sigh*

 

so nothing has changed then?

 

I am certain they use every major brand. They just happened to send me a laptop with a bad batch of Netlist memory. I didn't bother testing the memory before sending it back because it's not my job. I did however extensively test the memory in my desktop. I use 4 x1 gb corsair xms2c4 sticks and when I have 2 of them installed my system can go into sleep mode fine.. no matter which pairs I use. When I install all 4 I cannot go into sleep mode at all. In fact in AHCI mode it will corrupt my harddrive and in native IDE mode it will crash. There is nothing wrong any of the sticks as I have tested each one individually for hours. Vista can just be a ***** when it comes to 4gb of RAM and sleep mode. Certain RAM configurations will work others will not.

If you aren't going to put 4gb in your system you have nothing to worry about from this problem. If you do have the problem the system will work fine (as long as you don't go into sleep mode) till they send you new memory. Only took 2 days for me to get mine.

As far as the "wobbling" that I have read about in this thread, I do not notice any wobbling, the hing is sturdy and the screen stays where I set it. There is creaking, as I said before, but it's not anything major. I'm not sure how the hinge could be improved. I don't notice anything out of the normal with the hinge.

The hinge has nothing to do with the creaking, however. It is caused by the 4 or so pieces of plastic moving when you open the lid. In fact, since the
m15x probably has around 4 or 5 pieces in the lid (due to the light pipe) compared to the usual 3 I am surprised at how quiet the lid is. There is nothing I know of that you can do to solve it other then normal wear. After awhile the plastic will smooth out.

 

Can you post a video of you opening and closing the lid, pulling the lid in your direction (when its opened) just to make it lean a bit and release it, turning the computer around, shacking the desk a bit?
Nothing too agressive. I would be interested on comparing it with videos like CNet video review.

 

I will work one for you later. I just got off work and want to enjoy my Friday night. Is this the cnet review video that is on their website?

 

Well, perhaps I should say that I did not go to Best Buy with any Laser Wobble Measureers... I just sighted up the wobbliness with my eye, but my impression was that my m15x does not wobble any more than any of those laptops, with the exception of a Sony model which wobbled slightly less.

I am sorry I keep saying positive things about my m15x... I realize this is an Alienware-Hate forum, but I really haven't found any reason to hate it yet. Sorry

I bought Crysis even though I don't play shooters, just to humor you folks who lambaste me every time I say anything good about this laptop. I may post my fps and temperatures later if I get it installed... I noticed that the ThermoFan utility which came with the m15x is showing much lower GPU Temperature than Riva Tuner, so I'm not sure what to think.

I emailed Alienware about the temperature I reached while at the EQ2 Character Select screen, but I can't get into my email from where I'm at so will have to wait until next week when I'm home.

 

Plug, please do not interpret things like that! This is, by no mean, an AW hate forum. We are here trying to understand what is wrong (if anything).
I said quite a handful of positive things regarding the M15x. Heck, it has a potential to be a hell of a laptop. I can see myself completely loving it (and in fact, when I received it, that's exactly the feeling I had).
We all want to work out, jointly, on pinpointing problems and fixing them (or better, putting pressure on AW to fix them).

Please, do make positive comments, otherwise this forum loses all it's point. I'm sorry if my comments made you feel personally "lambasted" (that's a new word for me today).

Regarding the temperatures, you should really get it checked. Disregard temperatures of GPU read by thermofan. It's not accurate.
Use Rivatuner of HWmonitor for correct readings.

Sorry again...
I'm sure every single one of us is only trying to help each other out.

 

Oh, I am not super serious... I know people just want to help each other.

I was just runing Crysis for the first time and I changed all the settings to Very High Quality and the computer never got over 80c. But this game appears to have a little bit of a learning curve... more than I want to fool with while I am on vacation so I will look at it next week when I get home. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

I'm starting to guess that maybe the earlier models wobbled more than mine or something, because mine really does compare favorably to any of the other laptops I saw at Best Buy.

At any rate, I'm glad Kefka888 isn't having any issues and I can't imagine how much it must suck, milcs, to not have your computer and to just have to wait patiently while the rest of us are having fun.

 

I'm kinda confused - 'cause in the New Alienware GPU drivers thread it says the new drivers fix the hibernation/sleep problem but here it's the memory.. Umm
I'm guessing it's both ?

 

When I got the laptop the beta drivers weren't out and the new memory worked. I would test with the old memory and beta drivers installed but, unfortunately I sent the old memory back on monday.

The two main components of sleep mode are memory and the video card and how the OS interacts with the two. In fact if you don't have your video drivers installed you can't go into sleep mode, hibernation, etc. So it is completely possible that the new beta drivers are solving issues some people had with sleep mode. Also, as stated before, Vista, just like XP had, is still having sleep issues with certain memory configurations/chipset. Whether this is an issue with vendors not writing the drivers correctly or is faulty code on microsofts part, it is probably a combination of both. In fact, Nvidia was the cause of like 60%+ of Vista crashes just a couple months ago compared with MS at 30% or so. Food for thought.