M11x or netbook?

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Considering getting a netbook for something much more portable and longer-lasting than my OCZ Whitebook/m17. With all the netbooks out there it's hard to make a decision but the M11x kind of stood out for me.

Things I want to do:
1. Something easy and lightweight to just throw in a bag and take off and not have to worry about lugging a monsterous power brick like my whitebook.
2. Play 1080p movies smoothly
3. 5+ hours of battery life
4. casually surf the web, type documents, etc.
5. Play the occasional single player game (MW2, Supreme Commander. SF4)

Would appreciate some opinions about this. What made some of you pick the M11x over a netbook? Did any of you pick a netbook over a M11x and why? What does the M11x offer over a netbook and vice versa?

Thanks in advance.

 

If you're gonna play MW2, probably M11x..

 

For me the selling point was the portability and battery life so I can get work done on the go. I can also game and travel with it, its light and takes up little room. It beats lugging around my 17" laptops. With the good battery life I can now lay in bed and browse the internet and not worry about being tied down by a power cable. I also lay in bed and game. I like bigger screens since I've gotten used to 17in laptops over the last 4 years, but this is great for all the casual stuff. Looking forward to lightening my travel loads with this thing.

 

Well if you want to be able to play games on it... your gonna need the M11x.

Netbooks dont have the power you need to play a game. Trust me.. It's like trying to run a game on a server with an 8mb videocard. It just wont work.

 

My m11x will be replacing my asus eee which is currently up for sale. I want something with more hd capacity as my eee only has about 8gb of useable space and something which can play games such as fallout 3 and the total war series. Also the m11x will have better battery life as i only get about 4 hours atm on the eee. I always take a laptop with me when i work away and for me its better to have something small which i can bring in my rucksack rather than a 17 inch laptop in a big case.

 

M11x with a SU4100 processor is your best choice.
A good ion 2 netbook is going to run you at least $500, and you are pretty much stuck with a slow Atom CPU, and forget about playing 1080p video or even a game without the Ion chipset. For battery life, the battery will last 6+ hours on battery if you take the time to optimize the computer, and I'm currently typing out a 6 page paper alongside this post. This computer isn't that bad of a word processing machine.

The only thing that I can see a netbook offering over an M11x is a lower price. Size is a wash between a netbook and the M11x, and the M11x weighs a bit more than your typical netbook, but look at what it's packing.

 

Edited the quote with my opinions in red.

 

Simply put - a friend of mine with a recently purchased ION netbook is now sorry he didn't wait and purchase the M11x..

Compared to other netbooks on the market - there is NO comparison - and you'll be hard pressed to experience any positive gaming session on one ...

 

m11x, but do you need to play 1080i movies on such a small screen? 720p will be more than plenty.

 

HDMI.

Plus, I have gone through probably a half dozen netbooks and none, even an ION comparable netbook (Toshiba T115D) while gaming capable, just couldn't hack it as well as I'd like. In some ways I regret spending the extra $100 on the SU7300, because I got my M11x cheap, and it would have made it even cheaper, but all in all the M11x is fantastic for its size.

 

Thanks everyone for your replies. It sounds like the M11x is the way to go, especially if I want to watch 1080p content. It also sounds like everyone is very pleased with it so far.

I guess the only decision left is black or silver. I have a few months before I need this so hopefully there the price goes down a tad or a good deal pops up.

 

Just keep an eye out for coupons. I stacked like 4 different coupons to save about $250 off my M11x. If you don't need virtualization then you can get the SU4100 and save $100 too.

 

From reading around the Lunar silver doesn't really show finger prints. I myself have the black and agree with a lot of people, it shows fingerprints pretty regularly, although that doesn't bother me. I just clean them.

This may also be a good read for you
Alienware M11x Happy Vs Unhappy owners poll

 

I picked up Lunar Shadow/Silver because of the fingerprint issue and the fact that I didn't want just another black laptop. It's a great color and you rarely see the fingerprints on it. (You can with certain angles and certain sources of light.) However, I've also seen pictures of the black and it looks really nice, especially with the flakes in the paint.

Personally I'm getting rid of my netbooks in favor of the M11x. I haven't touched them since I got the machine. Also hoping to leave the land of restricted apples fairly soon. Of course, the M11x weighs almost twice as much as most netbooks out there. It's also a bit larger. Personally I like the build of the M11x. feels very solid. I like the keyboard better than the Macbook Pro.

 

Yeah, one of the main reasons I went with silver (lunar shadow).

I don't have mine yet, but it doesn't seem that light... in fact its heavier than my 13.3" m1330 xps that I need to replace. I had these requirements:

1. good battery life (> 5 hrs); the more the marrier -- ideally enough to entertain me during 13hr flight home
2. good build
3. ability to play (newer) games and at least 720p movies without overheating
4. portable (~< 2kg)

Also I did not want anything over 13.3". Even with this one it gets crowded on a bus/airplane (economy) seat. First time I travelled back across the ocean I had 15" but they put me in buisness class due to lack of seats so it was great. But on a regular seat... I don't even know if you could open it. . I also thought of 10-11" netbooks which have awesome battery life, but I wanted something with significantly more power than my iphone.... and no Atom cpu wasn't going to cut it.

My alternatives were (maybe you can check those out, see if that would work):

- Asus UL30 (felt cheap like it was built in Fallout 3)
- Sony VAIO Y series (Z series is actually great, but the cost is WAY too high); also the battery life isn't that spectacular. The build is amazing... out of all laptops that i played with at local "Buy more", Sony felt really the best.
- HP Envy 13 (too expensive as well)
- HP ProBook 5310m (this one I didn't see in RL, and seems pretty cheap at beginning but try customizing anything on HP web, price will go sky high... also comes only with integrated GPU)
- MacBook Pro 13 (no idea if I could live with OS X tho..., also relatively expensive)
- Dell Adamo (everything is sealed and battery life is ... lol)

I ended up paying $900 after discount for m11x (SU4100/4GB RAM/250GB HD) which is price-wise in line with the weakest 13" lappys, but it's way more powerful, the battery can be made to last pretty darn long on integrated graphics and I can do pretty much anything on it that I do on my desktop. So I thought ah well I'll just sacrifice smaller screen for pretty much everything else.

 

Can you play 720p/1080p content on integrated graphics or do you have to switch to the 335?

 

I've had no issues with 720p on the IGP, and in a lot of cases the IGP is able to do the 1080p stuff too.

Even hulu and youtube with 10.1 beta 3 flash is able to run pretty great on IGP.

I'm also getting 3+ hours surfing around and watching videos with the 335, so this is a pretty good setup.

I really do like my wife's Lunar Shadow... Hers sits on a table all day long never getting touched, and I'm moving mine around so much I feel like we should swap eachother... but I just let her pick the one she liked so oh well

black does pick up some fingerprints but they're really not that bad