*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M15x Owner's Lounge

no, i saw one other guy who ordered in this forum.
so at least 2 have been sold.

 

nope.. I did also earlier today.

 

Ahh

My fellow Floridian to back me up

(My Dolphins are 0-2 )

 

haha... you got it. Don't worry, Miami will get their stuff together. I think they played great against Indy! ..ok..sorry back on topic.

I cannot tell you I am not a bit nervous about ordering this lappy, but I really do need something small and somewhat "portable". Battery life is whats killing me right now.

oh, and after talking to customer service, they said they will send me the headset once my order ships, due to another issue I had with them earlier this year.

 

Yeah I ordered mine about 5pm.
You are not alone. If the battery goes + or - three hours Ill be happy. If not Ill be sending it back asap and getting a M17x. Like I said In another thread portability is important for me so even if its not way smaller, it is smaller. I dont know what the return process is like and hopefully I enjoy my machine enough that I dont have to find out.

 

Congrats Uroboros... I am hoping with the brightness set low, stealth enabled, bluetooth off, and vista mobile profile set to balanced or lower..probably could get 2:30 give or take. If it is any less, then I agree, it maybe a deal killer for me as well. *crossing fingers*.

 

What If we do have to send them back? Is it gonna be some crazy restocking fee? Like I said I'm hoping niether of us have to find out.

 

*offtopic
how do I shrink my sig down, Its already on size 1...

 

When I had issues with my original M17x, I had no issues at all. I was reading though that some people on the forum were given a hard time and Dell would not budge on the restocking fee. Now, if you maybe want to exchange it for another laptop, they might be more lenient.

Did you try changing your font? Just throwing it out there.

 

I dont know if this already got posted but they put up a new video.

http://www.gamespot.com/showcases/alienware

 

wife gave me the okay since i can configure one plus student discount and get it cheaper then a macbook pro

 

I understand what you meant, was just funny.

 

I'm pretty disappointed honestly... Core i7 is great and all but what use is a single 280M at 1920x1080? And I don't like 16:9 screen resolutions.

 

hahaha...yeah, re-reading that, I guess I could have worded it differently.

 

I'm over the whole card dissapointment, Its the second best non sli card out there. Well probably 3rd now that the 4870 is around but besides the point look at what people using the single (not underclocked asus) 260 are saying about its gaming performance. Also considering it will probably be upgradable in the future. Nothing to bother me enough not to order mine.

 

I am glad you made your stance and you are happy about your purchase!
As for me, the issue was never the graphics card, it is and has been the battery life. I am realllly worried about that. I guess we shall see.

 

"Because of the high end components (and no switchable chipset graphic card), the battery runtime wont be sky high. About 3 hours in Mobile Mark 2007 should be reached according to Alienware."

Thats in this little snippet on notebookcheck located here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Newsentry.153+M57a0549f218.0.html

This is still pretty vague though, what settings are used? brightness, the led's, stealth mode, bluetooth, ect. adds alot of variables to the equation. Are there any 3rd party programs that help you manage system power? Could we create some powersaving schemes that could be applied? Otherwise we'll have to go through and manually disable each feature when trying to max battery life.

 

I cannot believe I am saying this, but I may have to revert back to the M17x.... oh bother. *sigh*

 

did you get the 6 or 9 cell? Also we dont know if the 6 is the one with three hours. Also isnt mobile mark for draining it under high load making the actual runtime longer for browsing/file management and other simple tasks. What is the battery life on the M17x I thought it was like 2 hrs.

 

When on the 9400M it'd go for 3 hours.

 

I got the 9 cell. I am not quite sure on the mobile mark. I do know that when I had the M17x, it ran for 3:15 on integrated. A great plus. The size of the laptop is what's killing me.

 

Which laptops size is killing you the M17x or the M15x? Having already had the M17x your gonna be the one to see if it feels noticably smaller. Im thinking when your talking weight its about 3/4 of the weight but the screen is 2" smaller, the ratio doesn't seem too far off. Im thinking 4hrs can be done in normal use but who knows. Wish I just had the thing! ...1 month.... also wish they were coming preloaded with win7 because I feel like its going to take forever to get the upgrade disc from MS.

 

The size of the M17x was killer for me, hence I went the direction of the 15x. In regards to the battery, I am almost positive we will not get anything around 4 hours, but I would love to be wrong on that...hehe. I agree on the Win 7, God only knows how long it will take them to get those disks out to us, but hey I am happy I am getting it at all!

 

You know the 9 cell adds a bit of bulk to it, right? It lifts the laptop up a bit, as is the case with most laptops' higher capacity batteries.

 

I read that earlier JWest.. thanks for informing me. I chose the 9 cell option hoping it will greatly help battery life. I guess we will see in a few weeks.

 

The pics of the bigger battery didn't bother me at all compared to some I've seen where its a big brick sticking out the back. This only adds to the bottom and doesnt change the overall profile. If battery life is your #1 priority maybe the 240 would help? Or a 40 watt 5k series

 

Or spread it out like mine..

 

I got some questions reguarding the resolution options you can choose from.

1600x900 (900p) WLED vs 1920x1080 (1080p) WLED

The two resolutions offer the same color/video quality its just a higher resolution for the other one obviously right?

They are both 16:9 ratio or 16:10?

Thanks for the help in advance

 

They're both 16:9, and they should both *technically* be of the same quality- though they are different panels so I guess results could vary. I'd go with the 1600x900 myself- gives you better gaming performance, less cost, and it's the perfect size for a 15-incher. 1920x1080 would just be too eye-strainy.

 

does anyone realize the base price for UK has just gone up by a full 300 POUNDS????!!! that's ridiculous!! there i was thinking, well, for price diff of just 1-200 Pounds compared to clevo W860, i would rather get M15x. now it's a price diff of 5-600 Pounds!! now im truly pissed.

Edit: my mistake. base price is the same. but some individual component's price has gone up! it still ends up a lot mor expensive than before!

 

Thanks for the help/input JWest

Yeah bro, that's what I thought also reguarding the screen resolutions. 1600x900 on a 15'' is perfect and playing games would run better then 1920x1080

Another question is I OPT for the Intel Core i7 920XM 2.0GHz with the 260 GTX nVidia card it should be able to run WoW max settings no problem right?

Yeah yeah I know just wondering what you guys think.

Thanks in advance

 

WoW can run fine on far less then what you've specced your M15x for, you won't be dissapointed.

 

I just dont really understand these new i7 cores, I understand that they are all quad, however, I don't understand turbo mode. Plus with the default clock speed of 2.0 GHZ I should be fine hopefully. 3.2GHZ turbo mode, means only 1 processor is running making it a single core right?

Thanks again for the help in advance
Sry for the noobness, thanks for the help

 

I also need this cleared up. I'm just not getting it.

How would the i7 720QM 1.6GHz match up to a dual core?

 

Allow me to try and explain.

In TurboBoost, when not all four cores are being used and the processor is running cool enough, it will overclock some of the cores. For example, if only one core is in use it will overclock it up to 3.6GHz. It can go if I remember rightly up to something like 3GHz on two cores, or like 2.4GHz on three cores.

The i7 720QM 1.6GHz will match up to a dual core through turboboost easily. It'll still overclock to something like 2.6GHz. In fact, benchmarks have shown the 820 1.73GHz, which is only a little faster, to be as fast as a QX9300-that's 2.53GHz, which is fast enough in a dual or quad for almost anything.

 

The speed of the 720QM, I guess, was messing me up. 1.6GHz seems slow, but having quad cores makes up for it. If I go with the m15x, I'll probably only get the 1.6GHz. Wish I had more money!

 

Thanks for the reply Evil,

So basically if I were to get an Intel Core i7 920XM 2.0GHz (3.2GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache) then it'll be like a regular quad core at say like 3 GHZ?

Because I thought a i7 920XM Processor would be equivalent to a Q9000 due to the default clock speed.
You got the link for the benchmark by any chance?

Thanks in advance

 

it's a Nahelam core, so it's not an exact equivalent to Core2Quad. if you are working on a single thread, then a 920XM will boost itself to 3.2GHz max, and it steps down when the number of thread increases. ie. working on 2 cores, it'll be somewhere 2.8GHz (something like that), 4 cores maxed out then it'll be 2GHz flat. 920XM is shown in benchmarks to beat the QX9300 depending on application. highly threaded apps will see 920XM peform a little bit above QX9300, but light threaded apps will see a relatively high increase in performance over QX9300. hope that explain things

 

I'll post this again for comparison purposes:

1.73GHz i7 benches close to a QX9300 in 2d applications

 

Well, after following this thread from the beginning, I think I've finally decided to go with the M15x. Been using an old Compaq R4000 series for a long time here, and been trying to decide what to replace it with.

 

Well,thats me placed my order
Kind of wish I wasn't on such a budget though.

Alienware M15x Cosmic Black, Genuine Windows Vista SP1™ Home Premium (64 BIT) - English
Base: Alienware M15x Cosmic Black
Memory: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
Keyboard: Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard
Video Card: 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX260M graphics card
Hard Drive: 250GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista SP1™ Home Premium (64 BIT) - English
Optical Devices: DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read and write) Slot Load Drive
Wireless Networking:Intel® WiFi Link 5300 a/g/n Wireless LAN card
Standard Warranty: 1 Year Premium Warranty Support
Enhanced Service Packs: 1Year Premium Warranty Support
Bluetooth: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
Primary Battery: 6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB L3 cache)
Dell System Media Kit: Alienware M15x Resource DVD
AlienFx Colour: Quasar Blue
Accidental Damage Support: 1Yr Accidental Damage Support
LCD: 15.6-inch Wide HD+ (1600 x 900) WLED display
Protect your new PC: No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English
Power Supply: 150W AC Adaptor

And now I play the waiting game.

 

Thats exactly what I think I'ma order. I gotta wait until the first week of October. Come on GI Bill payment!!!

 

good god!!
what as dell done !!
i thought the M17x was one of a kind lol well it was nice till they released the 15" model.

and in the M17x and M15x they both state that the 2 possessors are the fastest lol .

mind you the 15" is only 1 gb of gpu power.

but why both the same shape ? have they ever done this before.

rant over

 

They have done same shape several times, but I expected to use this model with the m15x since the m17x was popular

I noticed in the alienware e-mail I got they no longer state fastest 15 inch notebook evar but fastest 15 inch notebook AW has produced, maybe they have been reading our clevo/aw discussion haha

 

Nice build but for on a budget I thought about that as well, may go for the faster processor and take the 240, or do what you did and take the 260 with either the 9 cell or 1920x1080 screen

 

I figured I'd probably end up needing an extra battery at some point in the future (for extended periods of travel and all that ) so I decided just to get the 6 cell for now and get the 9 cell when I can afford it.

Was pretty tempted to go for the 1920x1080 screen (only like £20 more???) but then I noticed it wasn't WLED

 

Wait really it is not LED I thought that was a major difference between this and the m17x or maybe I was terribly mistaken :/

 

I also thought about the 240, but was worried about it not being able to keep up.

Does anyone know how it would do with Call of Duty: World at War/Modern Warfare 2?

 

I think the UK website wasn't showing if it was or wasn't.

 

Dell Europe is not offering LED for the FHD screen? That seems odd, I wonder why they did that?