x61t vs m11x my experience

Recently I purchased an Alienware M11x under the pretense that I would transition over from my X61t. After spending a week with the m11x it has made me realize how great our thinkpads actually are.

In my line of work I heavily use graphics programs, ACAD, and GIS software. I thought for sure that the m11x would allow me to be more productive as it would render a lot of the rasters & vectors that I work with constantly quicker and smoother.

After my week experiment, its obvious that the trackpoint is the greatest pointing device ever created. I don't think I can ever get used to a touchpad. The pinch zoom, two finger scrolling and all these other "gestures" are just gimmicks. They really are not every useful for doing work. I could never get the touchpad to respond the same way twice. The screen on the m11x is horrific, I am coming from a x61t SXGA+ and its 10x more useable than the m11x's. Furthermore I am not sure if I could ever get used to a widescreen format with such a small screen size. Its sad that no laptop manufacturer utilizes a 4:3 ratio anymore, they work a lot better for smaller screen sizes.

They keyboard on the m11x is garbage, the tactile response and general key quality, feels like something on a 200 dollar EEE PC. I do like the backlit keys but I do not think I could ever get used to spending more than a half hour on that keyboard.


The build quality is far superior on our thinkpads compared to this model.

One thing is obvious my m11x will be relegated to "toy status" and I will be going back to my x61t.

 

m11x is a high powered netbook alternatives, but it is not a serious business machine. For most things you have to experiences yourself, before one could appreciate the engineering and design of thinkpads and all its components.