My new m17x short review and opinions

Hi. New to these forums but thought I would share some of my thoughts on my new m17x that arrived yesterday.

First, Ordered on 8/8 and arrived 11 days later 8/19. So thumbs up on delivery time.

System: m17x
Extreme X9000, 2.8ghz
Dual 8800M sli
4gb ram
Illuminated Kbd
3dMark 12907
Windows index score: 5.0
Doom 3: 134.6 fps

First things first, Ording was easy. Alex from Alienware was very helpful and got me my shipment in 11 days.

First impressions; The packaging was great. Box in a box with stiff foam wrapped around the computer. Everything was there packed up real nice.

Now, I have read around and was already expecting a BIG notebook. And yes, it is big and heavy. And the power supply is huge and heavy (approx 2"x4"x8"). But I wasnt looking for a mobile machine. I was looking for a powerful machine that can be moved from location to location occasionally. Or to be able to get out of my office and work outside for awhile. So size didnt bother me. This would be a bear to pack thru airports though.

The case; I have seen people complaining about the case being flimsy, but I dont see it. I mean, there is some flex in the display if you grab each corner and twist a little, but the display is big and not that thick, so you should expect slight wiggle. It doesnt creak and feels "solid" when opening. The display doent have one of the little lock things that require 3 hands to open. It is just an open close with no locks which I like. The base I can lift from the front corners and dont see any flex in the base at all.

Power up; Turned it on and went through the ops/sys license and setup phase and the first thing I was impressed with is the illuminated keyboard. This is a great feature. I have had other illuminated kbds but sometimes certain keys are brighter than others and some are hard to see. On the m17x, EVERY key is lit, and I mean lit. No mistaking which key is which in the dark. Very nice feature. The touch pad to me feels like it is a little to far to the left. The left side is slightly to the left of the space bar, and extends to within 1/2 of the right side of the space bar.

As far as running applications, I havent done much. All I can say is the machine seems to be working great. The display is sharp and clear. No pixel probs for me.

Now so far so good, so here are some of my issues:
Small issue, the bezel around the display is made of super glossy plastic. Looks great until you touch it. It is finger print magnet.

The CD/DVD drive. I do not like this one bit. It is the lightscribe version so I don't know if this applies to other models. But this thing does not have an "open" door button. You open the thing by pressing Fn-F8 on the keyboard. The problem with this is that it ONLY works when windows is booted up. If you try to open the door during a boot, or when trying to install another operating system, you cannot open the door. You have to resort to the paper clip in the emergency open hole. If anyone has any additional info on this I would love to hear it.

My main issue though (and this is partially my fault). Is that I cannot get it to install Vista x64. I bought this machine specifically to do just that and didnt even realize it was x32 only currently. This is my fault for not researching better. So my 4gb is wasted until I figure this out.

I plan on reading through some other success stories with the m15x and Vista x64. But so far, all my attempts to get it installed have failed. I cant even get the Vista install disk to get past the "collecting device details" step (step 1). It stops and says a device driver is missing and is promting me to find it. I don't even know which driver it is looking for. I suspect Video. I am going to start another thread on this to see if the expert here have any good advice.

Hope this was helpful to m17x shoppers.

 

Good review. I hear more praise for the m17x over complaints, so that's always good. Good luck with getting 64-bit installed. I think there's only a guide for the m15x right now. I wouldn't know if it works the same exact way for both though. Sounds like it will be smooth sailing though, once you figure out your OS problem.

 

Congrats on your m17x. Could we get some pictures ?

 

they still use doom3 as a benchmark? that is such a friggin joke.

crysis and 3dmark06 are the only things they should be using for benches.

 

Michael I will try to get some pics but mine wont look near as good as you can see on AW site. Is there a particular part of the machine you would like a photo of?

And Ennea: Yes, there seems to be more pos than neg comments. As I said, my one real gripe is the DVD door. It really stinks if you restart you machine planning on booting from CD and you forgot to open the door before you restarted. Then you have to boot back into windows, open the door, then restart again

ARGH: Yes, they used doom. They actually give you quite a few benchmarks. The ones I quoted were just the first few they provided. Here is my full list they gave me:
Doom 3
Doom 3: 134.6 fps
3DMark 2006
3DMark Score: 12,907.00 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score: 5,822.00
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 6,774.00
CPU Score: 2,554.00
Game Score: 0.00 Points
SM2.0 Graphics Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 47.10 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 49.94 FPS
CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley: 0.80 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley: 1.30 FPS
HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
HDR1 - Canyon Flight: 75.16 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze: 60.31 FPS

 

3Dmark06 is the biggest joke of them all. Too old.....

3D Vantage Pro should be used instead for today's application.

This is 2008 and we didn't buy m15x or m17x so we could test it on 3DMark2006 Software.

Let's move on forward shall we? WARPING ******** ----> reached 2008. Congrats now Alienware please wake up and use 3DVantage instead.

 

After reading your review i am a bit concerned with the size and weight of the m17x.

I fly regularly to work and home, the biggest concern is trying to get on the chopper with that thing. Because i work with the heli crew I always get cheesed off when people have 3 over sized huge bags that weigh more than 10 Jenny Craigs. I don't want to be one of those idiots that do the same putting others lives at risks.

 

what's so bad about 3dmark06? seeing how it's standardized and the same for everybody, it is just as viable for comparing scores as 3dmark vantage.