My Allpowerful M17x Review (Complete with Tons of Pictures)

Alienware M17x Allpowerful



My Configuration:
- Space Black – Anodized Aluminum
- Intel® Core 2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
- Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI Enabled
- 17-inch WideUXGA 1920x1200 (1200p)
- 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
- 250GB 7,200RPM w/ Free Fall Protection
- Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner
- Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) + Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade

Total cost (Including shipping + taxes) came out to be $2,400.00 USD. My system was configured via a Dell Representative. I used Dell's July 7% EPP deal (Courtesy of Sleey0). Dell Rep also gave me an additional 7% on top of that (14% off), free shipping, and a instant $80.00 USD knocked right off the total cost. This landed me at $2,400 USD in the very end. Ordered 07/04 and Shipped 08/14.



Construction:
This desktop replacement PC build quality, in four words is, " Solid as a Rock." I have never encountered another PC so well built/Strong and sturdy. It is heavy, yes, but that heaviness adds to the fact that the aluminum used is very thick and not some lightly thin, bendable aluminium. This goes to demonstrate the time and quality Alienware has put into this machine. The plastic parts (Palm rest and glossy grill) are tough letting you know that this machine is here to last for years and years to come.
The machine is clean with sharp edges. Its front grill conveys a high-class automotive inspiration while the back retains the ripley design and a new chrome alien head.



Ports:
I will not go into this but the Allpowerful has more than enough ports than you'll need.
To clear things up, it has 5 USB ports where one of them is a eSATA/USB combo.



Lighting:
This may not be the most important thing to normal, non-gamer users, but it is an awesome thing to have for that extra edge in show-and-tell. The lighting is very bright. There are 9 individual places that you can configure. The lighting is all controlled via Alienware's Alien FX. It is very easy to use. There are two modes: Basic and Advance. The Advance mode allows you to have more options such as a pulsating light, etc. Mix and matching colors is endless - or you can have them all one color.


Keyboard/Touch Controls:
The keyboard is almost flawless. Keys are just a tiny bit larger than the keyboards that I normally use. This is because it was designed with gamers in mind who asks for that extra size. But all in all, there is absolutely no fuss here at all. Typing is quiet and not loud at all. The keys have a white outline. This is a trademark of Alienware's signature. It matches the system very nicely.
The light that emits from underneath the keyboard is MUCH more BRIGHTER when you are not in front of your system. This means that people who are probably walking by or standing next to you sees a brightly illuminated keyboard with awesome lighting flooding each key from the top and below.
The touch capacitive keys are snappy! No lag at all. They are highly responsive out of the box. They are all lighted and aligned to the right of the system unless you have "Num lock, scroll, or caps lock" enabled which shows up on the left side.
The lighting on these can be individually controlled and is also well lit.
The keyboard's backlight can be instantly switched off by pressing fn+f11.





Touch Pad:
The touch pad is textured, however, it is still easy to glide across. It doesn't have a rubber feel to it that stops your traction(as I hear some people talking about this). The click buttons underneath the touch pad sucks! They are very stiff and loud. But then again, most people who buy this machine have gaming in mind and use an external mouse.
The touch pad is flushed with the rest of the palm rest area but you can still feel when you fall off the touch pad. A nice addition so that you don't always have to look down.
The touch pad lighting can be instantly switched off by pressing fn+f12.


*Note, that if you turn off synaptics, the touch pad works MUCH better!

The touch pad is NOT aligned with the space bar as some may argue that this looks ugly misaligned. TRUTH is, it is not misaligned at all. Alienware and dell realized that when you lay your hands on the keyboard, your two pointer-fingers are on the keys "F" and "J" keys. This then became the center of alignment where the touch pad is perfectly aligned between your two palms. Nice work Alienware!

The Front Grill and Quad Speakers:
The Allpowerful M17x has 4 speakers, two on each side. And boy do they sound fricken' awesome! Let me tell you this, I listen to a lot of music with piano solos and most laptops crackle when the notes are high which causes the music to sound nasty simply because the speakers can't handle that range. But the M17x solves all of that.
The bass is nice and deep. The highs are crisp and clear. The speakers are basically a premium, no doubt!

The front grill can be easily scratched. It is glossy and attract a lot of fingerprints. It does have a very tiny gap between the plastic and the aluminum, but this is because it was designed with tiny spacers in between. Because of that, another line of light is illuminated underneath. A nice, unintentional design addition if you ask me.




The Screen:
The screen has so much controversy. Mines came with very minimal bleed. It is hardly noticeable. The screen has a protective glass literally from EDGE to EDGE. The glass runs until it falls off the edge of the display.-Unlike the Unibody macbooks E2E displays, there is no rubber lining that runs along the edge. This allows the screen to EASILY be cleaned and looks more awesome!
There is a webcam hidden behind the glass display near the top. It's cut-put hole is not a circle. It's a hexagonal cut-out. Nice if you ask me! Right next to the webcam is a bright white light when then webcam is action. Also hidden behind the glass display are two microphones.
The screen is well lit- Not too bright where colors are washed out or too dark where you cant see anything. The colors are rich and amazingly great for gaming. The resolution on my system makes things look small. But that is to be expected for an extremely high resolution screen.




System Noise and Temperature:
For a system to be built this strong and so massively powerful, one would expect it to accumulate heat and noise very fast. I hate to disappoint those that believe this on the M17x, but your intuition just got smashed to the ground. This system is always been cold to the touch- Even when it's on your lap for hours! I first thought that people were exaggerating about this but it really is always cold for some reason. I ran various benchmarks and my temp has gone up to 75-80 degree Celsius but only then does it becomes warm. It will not burn your lap if you had it on there.
The M17x, in my opinion has the best cooling system in a laptop/desktop replacement system. Half of the whole bottom of of the system, literally, is a cooling vent.
I have thee GPUs and a total of three fans in the system and even with all three fans running, it is not louder than your typical laptop (Compared to my HP HDX16t equipped with Nvidia 9600M GT)
This allpowerful is promised to remain quite and cool most of the time, if not, all the time.
**A tip for potential buyers, Noise and Temperature should not be a problem at all, if ever.






The Hinge:
Solid like a rock. I haven't heard a single creak from it! It's smooth and SILENT, but at the same time, its very stiff. It's the type of stiffness that shows high-quality rather than a technician who doesn't know how to screw in a hinge! The hinge is one of the best thing about this laptop!






Where the E2E Display Meets the top edge:
I don't know how to explain this but the new M17x's glass display was designed to not exactly align with the top aluminum. Though it isn't aligned with the metal, it is TIGHTLY sealed.
I actually like this look because it put the M17x in a design category that has been untouched by any other company.
I've added a picture of this below to show what I mean.






Box contents:
It comes with a free Windows 7 Upgrade coupon. I can't wait to install W7. It also comes with a recovery disk and some other things you won't be using (Personal preference- Junk).
The power brick is not big at all compared to previous Alienware systems or other High-end gaming desktop replacement systems.
It is a little bigger than a DVD box. But considering that this machine is extremely powerful, you're gonna need something to keep it's juice running.


Battery life:
Using the 9400M GPU, I was able to chug out 2 hours and 47 Minutes before the system went into sleep. This was with the brightness at 75%, web surfing, light photoshop, music and some short video clips.
Amazingly that I even get this much battery from such a machine. It goes to show how well-engineered the Allpowerful is when switching into lower-powered GPU.
I have not tested the battery life of the M17x while using the GTX 280M cards. I plan to stay plugged in (But not charging) if I use these cards!

Idle temps are around 35-42 degrees Celsius. Cold to the touch!


Gaming:
With the GTX 280M, I have only tested one game so far, and that is LEFT 4 DEAD.
I basically went into the video settings and cranked EVERYTHING up to the MAXXX.
I was blown away to see how powerful this machine was already.
The Allpowerful was able to breeze over that game with no problem at all. Images looked great. No studdering, no hiccups, No problem.
It made playing Left 4 Dead like it was a game of 2002.


Normal Usage:
Since I have the quad core processor, things seem to run much faster. I didn't see a change in things such as browsing speeds, but when we're talking about Adobe Photoshop, Pinnacle Studio 12, CAD, the Quad processor made it feel like handling such tasks were a sinch. I am considering myself a Quad core user for life unless an Octa core comes out!


Things to do:
1) I have an Intel X25-M 80GB (G1) SSD currently in my HP HDX16T. When I get my second HD Caddy, I will make the 250GB 7200RPM and extra storage drive while I power thru the machine with the SSD. =)

2) Overclock the system.

3) Obtain/Install an Intel Q2E QX9300. (If anyone has one, or knows where I can obtain one, please PM me)






If you have any questions or want to request a shot from a certain angle of my M17x, post it and I'll try to get it up here as soon as possible!

I hope you've enjoyed my review!

 

Very nice review, great pictures, good job!

 

Great review!

 

Excellent review! Great pictures, too

 

More Pictures for Scaling purposes. Enjoy!

 

Very well put together.

I especially liked the first picture in the "Where the E2E Display Meets the top edge" section.

 

Thanks. It was hard to articulate what I meant in that section. Those with the M17x should know what I am talking about.

My Favorite picture of all that I took was:



I think that the back was more eloquently designed than the front! Drools!

---

** Did you know that all these pictures were taken with a phone?
I own a Japanese SHARP keitai.
Look for the phone in one of my pictures! Can anyone ID it?

 

I liked the picture with the cd at the back. I haven't received mine yet and i didn't bother picturing the size but now i know how huge it is. WOOOW awesome

 

Very nicely done. Congrats on the pricing, that's a great deal. It was great to see some pictures with scaling.

 

I'd like to second this, there hasn't been any with scaling I've seen.

But what I like the most are the CLEAR images in various angles/forms

 

Whats the shiny area around the touchpad? I've never seen that on other systems.

 

That's just an invisible shield for an HDX16t. I just installed the other day- very poor workmanship in applying it since I did very fast.
It wasn't made to be for this laptop since there is not one out for it yet.
So I took the initiative to cut the shield to fit the M17x's palm rest to protect it for the time being. I'll eventually remove it soon when I find something better.

 

great review wow!

 

Great review and +rep given!

And thanks for giving me a shout-out for the e-value code!

 

No problem! If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have gotten this system at that incredible price!

 

I am shocked that your rep gave you an extra 7% plus $80 back My rep wouldn't budge. He only offered free NBD shipping.

It doesn't matter though because I got the Boeing discount from a family friend

Did you ask for any extra discounts or did he just give them to you?

 

You know what? It was funny, she decided to just add 7% on top of that e-value EPP code. I didn't say anything afterward but smiled. But every move she made had to be confirmed by hersupervisor. Every discount she gave me had to go through her supervisor.
It was like she got laid that day by her supervisor for me to get such an awesome spec'ed machine at that price.

 

ROTFLMAO!

Just a side note, the e-value code didn't include any discount to begin with. So, I believe you just got the normal 7% (it's what I gathered from reading your post).

Anyway, you got a steal in the end. I had that config ordered but DFS locked my DPA acct and it took a couple of weeks to unlock it.

 

Excellent review. +1 bud.

Did you install another driver or stay with the 179.85? Did you happen to test the 179.85 with L4D?

 

WOW! I just got my second hard drive caddy right now! My M17x didn't come with the second one so I called Dell/Alienwae up yesterday and asked for it.
Link that I called yesterday: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5214854&postcount=175
And I just got it no more than 5 minutes ago!!

THAT WAS SUPER FAST!

It came with 4 screws already on, 1 metal tray, 1 interposer, and 1 extra screw (Just in case, I guess?)

I am posting up pictures right now!
Look at the order date and the shipped date!

 

I stayed with the stock drivers and did a futuremark test shown here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5212567&postcount=51

then i overclocked it as well. I haven't installed new drivers yet.

Do you recommend your drivers?

 

The one screw that came in the bag is to hold the HDD to the cradle. lol same issues as most of us.. they just sent 1 and not 4

 

lol. 10 char

 

I'm actually testing them now... depending on how it goes, I might revert back to stock until I can come up with a better driver.

 

Out of curiosity BatBoy, what is the advantage of using your drivers? Aka, why should I use them over Dell/NVidia drivers?

 

Excellent review and great pictures - thanks for taking the time to post this!

 

Thank you. My goal was to take pictures of the system in many different angles other than the normal angles you see in all other reviews.
This allows a person who is thinking about buying this system know what they are buying.
Plus, it adds to making the new M17x a machine to drool all over even for those who already have one in their own hands! Admit it guys!

 

Alright alright, I admit it. I still have trouble putting my M17x down at 2:30 in the morning to go to sleep .

 

You easily beat my review ....

Great review and you grammar and pictures smoke mine


1 I can't write
2 my camera sucks

 

Yeah man, excellent review! You have amazing photography skills.

 

No real advantage that I can think of - Mandrake seems to like them for 3DMark06 results. The reason why I did the INF was that Dell released the 186.24 about a month after the 186.12. The .24 was released for the 8800M GTX SLI on the XPS M1730. It had native support for the 280M just not the 9400. I figured, hey - newer driver version why not make it available to all of the M17x owners. I'm running them now and have not decided if I want to return to the 179.85 or move to the 190 series.

The .24 scored a bit less than the 179.85 for me. For me, all I want is a decent recent release driver that supports HybridSLI with no glitches and plays well with my two favorite games, TF2 and Left 4 Dead (in TF2 today I noticed a 4-5 second drastic drop in FPS with 186.24). If its possible to do this with a current driver then great - if not, I'll move back to 179.85.

 

Awesome review. Great pictures.

One silly question: What do you mean by:

"I plan to stay plugged in (But not charging)"

+1

 

Ahh OK. Thanks for the explanation! I will try out your next set then and see how they go .

 

The M17x automatically knows when it should charge the battery and when it should stop.
For instance, if the battery is full while it is plugged in, the M17x automatically stops charging the battery, leaves it alone, and runs the system completely off the outlet power supply.

The good thing about this is that your battery is not constantly charging even when it is full (Unlike most laptops *Ahem)!
And also, if something happens to your outlet power source while plugged in, your M17x automatically reverts to using the full charged battery.

Thanks! It was a camera phone that took all those photos you see. A japanese keitai. Can anyone guess what it is?

 

Dual GTX 280 cards and you tested L4D? lol. Load somthing like crysis/gta4/fsx.

 

no idea but if it takes pictures that well I want one!!

 

@Lethal: I only have time for those two - I know, I know... get some 'real games'. Those are the only two I enjoy at the moment. A buddy of mine is tired of Crysis and is going to pass it over to me. I haven't played Crysis since it first came out and that was on the XPS M1730. So I'm looking forward to seeing it on the M17X.

 

Wicked review, and I agree entirely- got mine yesterday afternoon and it just pwns everything I've thrown at it, and I haven't OC'd or put the QX9300 in yet.

Great pictures too- does the chassis justice.

Out of curiosity, what was the part number you asked for when you ordered that spare caddy?

 

Part# TRDD2
Description: SERVICE KIT..., BRACKET..., HDD, SECOND..., M17X 1

Mention to the tech/rep that you need 4 screws sent out. People are reporting the kit only comes with 1.

 

Thank you sir- will give 'em a call tomorrow.

 

This picture demonstrates that the edge to edge glass display literally stretches and goes until the glass runs off the edge. The image I've taken below shows the reflection of the keyboard lighting.

​

 

The Keyboard back lights floods the entire system when you're not sitting directly in front of it! AWESOME!








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Nice discount, excellent review.

 

nice pictures my iphone 3gs actually takes better pictures then my digital cameras ... it will be my nice new tool for recording video guides

 

Hey, do you mind taking a close-up picture of the left corner of your laptop?
Thanks in advance..

 

Hey this was by far the best photo review i've found online! Great job!

I will be placing the order this week but i was looking into finding some coupons or discounts since this is quite a pricey notebook!

I know alienware is currently offering free shipping but i want something better like 7%

What is the EPP deal? Anybody know a coupon code?

One more thing, do you guys think i should order online or on the phone? Is it easier to get discounts while on the phone? I've always ordered online...

Thanks!

Alex

 

I believe that I have taken one of it in the front page.

 

Awesome awesome review, this made me fall in love with the M17x! Ordered and in production now.

 

Thanks great shots. : )

 

NIce review... So many pIcc XD