My m17x is here....

...and so far it's amazing.

I've had a couple days of playing around with my machine. Edited up a more formal review.
Some pictures here, I would put up some unboxing pics, but I think everyone knows what comes with these machines now








Overall Case Design: The black matte case is very sleek and focuses your eyes to the LCD. The Ripley case in my opinion is the best looking over the Skullcap design. The Alienware FX really stand out and after playing around with the setting to make them flash and change colours on different events, I can say the illuminated keyboard is the way to go. I've been asked to check the hinges, but I really dont feel comfortable removing the LCD panel. I can say however, that the hinges seem extremely sturdy. No creaking , cracking or noise. The screen itself can hold itself up at about 2 inches off the notebook and can bend backward to a 180 degree angle.

Keyboard & Touchpad & Controls: The keyboard itself is very solid. No flexing that I can find, and the keys themselves feel better to type on than my G15. However the touchpad, is just that...a touchpad. Looks nice, but get yourself a mouse. I also find that the left clicking on the touch pad takes some getting used to. All of the controls on the m17x seem very responsive to the touch. Right out of the box, the power button was a simple light press and it powered on. The volume slider reacts to the touch and adjust volume accordingly, and the bluetooth and wireless buttons turn off and on quickly with just a touch as well. All the controls react just the way I'd want them too, which is a good thing from the stories I'd heard of the m15x.

LCD Screen: Gorgeous screen. At 1920x1200, I was afraid it would make everything a little small however adjusting Vista's font DPI fixed that up. After playing Oblivion, Age of Conan and Titan's Quest on it, I have to say it is one of the best looking LCD's i've owned. Crisp colors from the sharp reds to the deep blacks. I don't have exact specs on the lcd in terms of response times, but there is no noticable ghosting or motion blur. The screen can be viewed from about a 170 degree horizontal angle. That dips with the vertical angle and you do see darkening of the LCD if it's angled too high or low.

Webcam: Not too much to say here, I tested it on MSN and it's better than my old XPS M1210 cam. But nothing to write home about. The mic does it's job, the person on the other end was able to hear me fine.

Wireless: The wi-fi and the bluetooth seem to have no problems connecting or staying connected. Speeds over the pre-N router seem to be normal and the distance I can go from the router seems normal too. I was able to head over the the neighbors with my connection still in tact.

Size & Weight: This thing is a beast. No doubt about it. It's meant as a desktop replacement, or in my case a desktop addition. It will be mainly staying on the desk, however for those times I do want to head to a LAN party, I wont need to lug out my huge desktop to play.
Alienware lists it as 10.5 lbs. I'd say mine is a little heavier than that. But if you're looking at a 17" laptop, chances are you are not too concerned with size and weight issues.

Speakers and Sound: I've always enjoyed surround sound for gaming, this laptop will be no different. The 2 front speakers and subwoofer are great, better than I expected in fact. However, I did get a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio, express notebook card. The sound from the X-Fi card does beat that of the built in speakers of course. I would not mind using them if I am out and about. But for in the house, It's the express card all the way.

Heat & Noise: Temps taken from CPUID HW Monitor - Idle GPU1: 50C Idle GPU2: 49C Idle CPU: 39C --- Two hours of Oblivion later - GPU1: 78C GPU2: 80C CPU: 60C
I have yet to go above 80C so far, I'm not sure if I am not pushing the hardware enough, but even after two hours of playing with the notebook on my lap, I wasn't uncomfortable from the heat. I like the design of blowing all the heat out the back of the notebook.
The fans themselves never bother you, when idle, you wont hear them. When gaming you will, if you mute the sound. But if you like playing with sound (most of us) you wont hear the fans.

Battery I really haven't tested too much on the battery, On high performance, you get just over an hour. I'm sure on stealth mode you could push that to 2 or 3. I'm sure you could extend that with a smart bay battery too.

Benchmarks - 3dmark 06 - Alienware Score : 11770
My Scores: 11738 - 11337 - 11338. I am not sure how AW got thier score, or if the 4gb of ram I added affected the score at all. (It probably didn't.)

Specs : (Alienware Area51-m17x)
Dual 512MB 8800M GTX
WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview
Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz
4GB DDR2 667 Ram (upgraded to 4)
160GB HDD x 2 - RAID 0 (upgraded to 2x160 Raid 0)
8x Dual Layer Burner w/ LightScribe
Intel Wireless 4965 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card
External Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Card

Overall: My experience with AW so far has been an extremely enjoyable one. I found this forum while researching the m15 and 17x. I have learned a lot here and am extremely happy with my purchase. Everything has gone well, from the less than 2 week order period. To the friendly sales staff who happily changed my order 3 times over even after I was becoming a pain in the a$$. To the unboxing and finally being able to game and show off my new AW machine. Would I recomend AW to my friends? Definately. It may be a premium price, but I have definately felt like they earned it.

Might add some videos later.

 

congrats, love the second picture.

 

Grats on the Alien !!
Thanks for the preview - the m17xers on here will love this..

The matte black looks sooooo sleek
Loved the 3rd and last pics !!!
Awaiting it on the m15x you see

 

hey make sure if you have any problems with it to talk to cs first.. my alienrespawn wouldnt work right so i had to reinstall windows and my keyboard lights are not working now...

and i have the label to ship it to the repair but trying to work around it right now

 

Congrats man,
I have 1 question, if u look at googles white background, do u see a little graininess?

Thanks.

P.s Can anyone check this for me please?
TY

 

Congrats, man. Wow, black looks really nice. It'll be a really hard decision once Alienware releases both colors for the m15x. Could we get a picture of what the m17x looks like with the lid closed?

 

Qualao, it looks amazing... i'm now going to go get a cloth i'm drooling so much ha ha ha

The pictures are great, i can tell that the screen is already set to full freolution, it looks great.

Also 11770 with only 1Gb RAM seems pretty good, i look forward to your new score with 4 installed (",)

Thanks for the review and now at least you can enjoy your new system

OB

I want mine even more now.... Ho hum back to waiting i guess (",)

 

I'm in the same sort of situation with my m15x

anyway congrats man beautiful machine with great performance no doubt!

 

I have to give AW credit for the looks! That laptop looks just awesome!

Too bad the build quality seems shady. Hope you don't have any problems with yours, Qualao. It would be a real shame!

 

congratulations Qualao on your new arrival.

above you put AW scored 11770. is that the score from My Alienware document?
if so before you put your 4gb in could you do a 3dmark06 reading with the 1gb.
cheers and enjoy.

 

how do you say that? i have mine and it is pretty solid... and i havent seen anybody complain about the build quality or anything.... why would you say that?? trying to jinx the m17x but in all honesty the build quality (i guess you cant see it in the pictures) is great WAY AHEAD of some m15x that i have seen.

 

Can anyone enlighten us regarding the hinge system used? Is it still plastic supports holding the hinges in place or did they change to some sturdier components? Did anyone ventured removing the LCD plastic front (which can be done by accessing those little rubber round things)?

 

Looks are everything after all.

I look at this laptop though and still think it's now outdated, yeah it looks good but honestly. It's alot of money to spend on a laptop that since its announcement in Nov 2007 has only just been released 10 months later, wow computers move faster than that Alienware....:-( My m7700 I loved but i just cant imagine buying another Alienware

 

Have not seen any build quality issues with my M17X. Much more solid than the M15X but heavier as mentioned. Guess the appearance may seem outdated to some but i prefer this look to the M15X. A matter of personal choice and in the eyes of the beholder. Hinge mechanism is more sturdy.

 

Milcs The hing system on this laptop are as solid as my Acer laptop, M5550 Laptop (replaced) Pro-Star aka 8794 Clevo laptop. You do not hear noise from the laptop opening or closeing it.

The only draw back on this laptop is Cleaning it.

1 You have to take the gpus out and blow the fans out.

2 Pull the keyboard off to get to the 3 Fan for the CPU. If you grab a eye glass case screw driver you dont damage the keyboard.

But I look at it this way. You get to know the insides of your system better
Cleaning the Fans this way they can run longer then blowing the fans out. While the laptop is fully together.

 

Threw in a little review, added a closed laptop picture. Enjoy!

 

Could you post some idle and load temps ?
Nice machine, may you use it for a long time.

 

The "new" review was great, not sure what to do for mine now, if we all do the same it will be boring lol

Looks great and i'm glad you mentioned the x-fi card, i've ordered one too, did you buy the speaker module cable for it. I have so i can connect my Razer Baraccuda headphones for 7.1 surround sound lol

I hope you contunue enjoying it for a long time

OB

 

a video review

 

I didn't buy the optional speaker module cable
But instead I got one of these
http://www.amazon.com/3-5MM-TOSLINK-FIBER-OPTIC-CABLE-TOSLINK/dp/B00006LVF3
Hooks right into my Logitech Z-5550 speakers and sounds great.

 

Morning Exiled, eh, great idea apart from tha fact i don't have a video camera lol

So not counting video i'll have to think long and hard about what i can add to the growing collection of reviews lol

I have some ideas but, i don't want to do the same as everyone else, you know what i mean?

OB

 

NIce

I've only got headphones so i got it and it's simply a lead with the plug at one end and the 4 RCA connection sockets at the other. Wan't expensive either which was a plesant surprise too (",)

I can't wait to get my m17x and try all of my kit out with it... Still waiting lol

OB

 

Will Alenware have the upcoming
9800gtx Sli card or will they have it in a new model ?
thxs

 

nobody knows hopefully in this model because i dont think they are coming out with a new laptop anytime soon

 

the m17x might be able to handel the 9800m-gtx. no guarantees though.

 

Not likely. the 9800M GTX is stated to require 44W+ of power. That means MORE HEAT.

 

i am hoping for that so that i can upgrade my 8700s to that

EDIT: i think it is able to handle it the cooling system in the m17x is great the temps rarely go about 80 with mmy 8700s and i have not heard anyone complain about the temps with the 8800s either so and well the 9800 is on a smaller die correct so that means less heat doesnt it?? i could be wrong

 

Great review. I've got a couple of questions that you might be able to answer, they both refer to video and Audio output via HDMI, have you tried your set on nice HD flat panel??

Can you advise what video and Audio settings are available for connecting to a large HD screen, I'm keen to know if Blu-ray films via video card will output 1080p at 24hz and for audio can the sound card handle the new Hi-Def audio formats in either Bitstream or LPCM via HDMI. I have spoken with AW tech support and he said the HDMI port in 1.3 and will output new HD audio formats but when I checked the spec sheet again it said it was only 1.2.

Any info you can post would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

Well I didn't get the blu-ray player in the system. The specs do say 1.2, however after outputing through HDMI to my Sony TV(52W3000), it was able to accept x.y color.
I thought this feature was only available through 1.3 HDMI but I could be wrong.
Playing Oblivion at 1920x1080 on a 52" screen is pretty sweet too

 

Thank you for your comments, 1.3 does improve colour/constrast etc but it's the audio I'm really interested in. If it is 1.3 then it should pass (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) sound tracks and it would be nice to know if M17x passes the audio code either bitstream or LPCM, if it does then the M17x could also take the place of my PS3.

 

All of what I've wrote in this review is still spot on. I am still loving this laptop and highly reccomending it.