Dell Unveils Powerful 11-inch Alienware M11x Gaming Laptop Discussion

I don't think it will be Asus, if I had to take a guess, it would have to be LG based on their previous machines, like the P/X100, and the P310.

 

Alienware has always been a bit too flashy for my taste, but maybe....maybe.

 

Kill the Alienware ugly, change the processor to a Core i5-520UM, enlarge the screen size to 13.3" and I'd be all over this thing.

 

LG has completely retreated from the high performance laptop market. The P380 is a giant step backward. The x120 "Levis" netbook is a pedestrian 10" netbook in a pretty cover. A lesson from Dell? And, its new x300 ultrathin, shown at the CES, uses a Menlo Atom and Intel integrated 4500 graphics. Don't expect anything like the x11 to come from LG. My guess would be HP by upgrading the procesor/graphics on its envy 13 (I3? Would an I5 fit?).

Bronsky

 

Cute machine, but an SU7300? The CPU's a gonna be a huge bottleneck, and below most recent and upcoming system requirements.

 

There's been no confirmation that's what will be in the final model being released in spring, theres rumors it will be one of a few CPU options...Considering it can be configured to <1k I assume i3/i5 may become one of those options.

 

I leave for 3 weeks and this comes out? Interesting...

 

Gaming on an 11" screen is difficult. Eyestrain sets in after about 20-30 minutes.
A 12 or 13 is a better way to go. People will buy it, but don't know how long they'll game on it.
seer

 

Perhaps, but the same was said of 1080p on a 15 incher, it is a matter of taste. I am in love with my beautiful screen and I am not changing back to WXGA again.

 

Hey! You're back.

 

Hopefully there will be an updated processor. The day of the Core 2 Duo should be over. That said, why a plastic-y chassis? I'd much prefer some thing nice in classy metal. I suppose for the price it isn't so bad. Oh, I checked sony's webpage and right now I don't see a "new" Z series, only the old Core 2 Duo variant? However, their new 16" looks really promising and powerful.

 

I have no problems gaming on my N10j, which is a 10 inch screen at 1024x600. Sure I have to dial down the graphics to ultra low, but I'm moving all over the place (ride a train to downtown Chicago almost every day) so the extra mobility is a +++ for me. This laptop, if it REALLY maintains that 6.5 hours of battery life (which is ehhh-ish, since my N10j lasts nearly 8 hours with it's 9-cell option) will be a dream come true for me. I'm gonna wait for a review.

People who aren't mobile though, I can't see why they'd want this (aside from the nice GPU). They could probably get a bigger screen with similar/better specs for cheaper/same price. Also the Alienware glitz isn't really my thing, but whatever.

 

Yeah, it's just announced in CES but has not made it to the SonyStyle page yet. Here is our own discussions and you can find a lot of links to different reports and pictures.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=447505

The price is steep, though, compared to M11x, at least at the lowest configuration, but then again, you get SSD and everything else. Z and M11x are not really competing for the same market, but computing power wise they are similar for the people doing ultra-portable gaming.

 

No optical drive and no expandale battery. Nice to see switchable graphics though.

 

It is an 11 inch gaming laptop, I think some can live without those...using steam to play?

 

I don't see what's to "preposterous" about playing games on a small screen. Mobile "gaming" has existed for a long time; just to name a few examples: Nintendo Gameboy, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP etc. The fact that these machines exist(ed) and sell means that the demand/market is there. Now, a mini gaming laptop is arguably different from those machines, but it's in the same line of thought.

 

Wha?

Wonder why they did this?

 

Probably because the battery is Li-Po and weirdly shaped to be able to shoehorn it into the already-stuffed chassis.

 

I am all for mobile gaming. I just want Blue-Ray if I'm paying that much. I was in the Sonystyle store a few days ago looking for the T model. I know it's hardly a gaming machine. The sales person says they are returning though in March. Would like to wait it out just to see what they come up with. Also have my eye on the next generation Macbook Pro. Nice to know we will be having quite a few new choices early this year.

 

Serg, you missed my point. I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking the physical size of the screen. It's harder than hell to see what you're doing in a shooter on an 11 inch screen. Especially if you're trying to locate say a sniper or machine gun nest off in the distance. A 'microdot' has terrific resolution, you just need a chit load of magnification to tell that its something other than just a mote of dust ....

oh, and what happened? you leave the water running? heheheh

seer

 

Div 03 you're a better man than I am LOL. I worked over a 10" MSI for over the road WOW which is not a high detail game and tho i could pull (finally) sufficient fps to make it playable, my 20/17 - 20/15 eyes couldn't take it for more than 20 minutes at a time without giving me hellacious headaches. I know about 7 other guys who have reported to me that they experienced the same thing. Having traded my 10" wind for a 12, and having goosed the hell out of that, tho its quite a bit better, after an hour or so I find myself wanting to find a dark room and lie down LOL.

Got a Gateway 14 which I can play hour after hour on, BUT...like Serg, for 'all around' I find the 15.6 by far the most satisfying "laptop" that actually gets used on your 'lap'. From screen size and readability at the 20 something inches distance, to the width of the keys and keyboard which lessens the angles on your wrists, and the ease of cooling with the larger chassis after subbing in notoriously hot running AMD TL60, overclocking/ undervolting and some rmclock tweaking of the p-state values and transitions, I get insane temps with my laptop cooler. So, not only will my eyes last longer, so will the larger puter.

As always, your mileage may vary.

seer

 

They should have went 13.3"....

 

A M13x?? Isnt that making the Alienware brand dilute?

 

I don't see the use of an 11" gaming laptop unless it's powering various external displays. The display and keyboard will be so cramped.

 

Cuz' there are some of us who don't want a hunk of a 13". 11 inches of gaming power will be a perfect replacement for my 13" SR430 for lugging everywhere.

 

You going to squint at that display or go with an external? How about the keyboard? external?

 

Since you obviously don't get the appeal, not much else to say. You're not me, I'm not you.

 

Lol...I dont recall the Sony SR series receiving this much heat for trying to appeal to people who want to run high end processes on a >13'....Seriously, either you get it or you dont, some people dont want to lug around a 15 or 17 inch laptop because they go to college or are a frequent business traveler and want to have a harmless gaming session inbetween studies or meettings. Gaming on a laptop this small isnt the end of the world and neither will you have to have to squint hard to game, ive tried a game on low settings on an Asus netbook, its NOT THAT BAD!! lol...

 

Obviously AW (Dell) wants to target the "Netbook" market and make us WOW at the fact that M11x is 1000x more powerful than the usual weak 11"er's out there. If it was 13.3" then people will compare it with the "Notebook" category which obviously will end up not receiving as much attention or WOW factor.

Another reason is obviously the affordability. $799-$999 is a really good buy for most people wanting a gaming laptop that's SPECIAL and probably has a LCD monitor or TV to hook up to already.

At the end of the day, if you say to people "HEY I GOT AN 13" GAMING LAPTOP" .....no one's gonna really care right? But HEY I HAVE A POWERFUL 11" is another story that no one has heard before.

Good job Alienware, just hope it's not a heavy brick. And probably give us more upgrade options.... I don't mind going over $1000+ for a core i3.

 

Well, I think the question is, if you have to lower the resolution to game on 11" to make your eyes comfortable, why do you need GT335M so you have the power to run high resolution? I think everyone understand there are people who like to have something smaller and lighter for gaming on the go, but when you get to this small the subjectivity of an optimum GPU/ScreenSize/Resolution becomes high.

Even if you say you can hook this one up to an external monitor to utilize its full GPU power and on the go you don't use the full GPU power by adapting a lower resolution to make your eyes feel more comfortable, there is also the alternative solution to just have a power gaming desktop and have a small laptop that only has good enough GPU to do low-resolution -- and overall it could be cheaper and better because you can use desktop CPU and GPU for the true high power job at your desk.

Anyway, I think it could be a good rig if AW does its job right, but I also think it could cater bigger market if AW goes with 13".

 

sure, but it's going to flop and set the dedicated ultraportable gaming market back a couple years... then cloud gaming and external graphics will gain momentum and that's no good because those two are more inconvenient and cost more money.

They should have gone the safe route with a 13.3" (which has a larger audience) and not this niche product. But in typical Alienware fashion there is no middleground, only extremes.

Sigh.... 13.3" @ $999 would have been decent, and they could have packed more power in there, not to mention a full size keyboard and a usable screen...

An 11" netbook for $1000 is pushing it/overpriced.

 

In addition to resolution, do not forget 3d details, with this discrete GPU you can have much higher details than you would otherwise at the "low" resolution

 

As others have said, to each his own I suppose, but I think the 11" size is perfectly fine, and I'd rather have it than a 13".... Afterall, if I'm gonna do "hardcore" extended gaming, I don't want to do that on a 13" either (that's what my Asus or LCD TV is for), so I'd rather have this for the portability and ability to take with me on the go and enjoy when I have some spare time.

For the record, I love gaming on my Acer Aspire One with a 10" screen, its just not very powerful... I think the MX-11 is fantastic if it works as advertised... would like a better CPU though.

EDIT: Also, had great gaming luck with a 12" HP tablet for about 2 years as well, so the size really doesn't bother me... portability is the key to small gaming IMO.

 

ill laugh if the power brick is the usual Alienware monster

 

This seems just like the M1210, the same notebook that everyone believed Dell should have made into a 13.3'' notebook, because the chassis was built for a 13.3'', but the screen was only 12.1''. The notebook still exceeded expectations and offered a dedicated graphics card (7400 Go) for a reasonable price. Don't doubt the M11x out before it even gets distributed. Although, I am dissapointed that this one won't feature an optical drive, but you have to make sacrifices.

Ironically, I've been thinking what has happened to Dell's ultraportable XPS series and I guess this is the answer to my thoughts.

 

I've been wanting something like this for a long time. I really don't understand the point of 17"+ gaming notebooks. 99% of the time people have them on their desk, and for that I have a crossfireX desktop with an OC'd quad. I've have several notebooks, 17", 16", 15.4", 14" and neither of them were really practical for most portable pc gaming. Battery life while gaming was between 20-50 minutes, and the heat output and weight made them impractical for use on your lap.

I also don't get people's gripes about screen size, to me, it doesn't change the experience much at all on a notebook. Playing hl1 on my netbook's 8.9" screen is no worse an experience than playing it on a 17" Nor do I ever have to "squint", if you do then maybe you should either get your eyes checked out or quit using computers for awhile. I find it great that there's finally something that's small and light enough to be PRACTICAL for gaming while not stationed on a desk, powerful enough to actually play games, and also has a battery life that's actually useful.

I can definitely see myself buying one of these in the near future.

 

Same here, Arom's criticism you have to squint is innacurate IMO, wonder if he's even tried gaming on a 11'inch notebook....I wasnt going to pick this notebook up but after seeing this video I just set aside 1200 for it. It's a stunner and will be great for law school http://www.digitalchumps.com/e3-blogs/viewpost/4379.html

 

I've messed around with the Asus NJ10 (10.2") and it's just not the ideal setup. The keyboard is too small, and there just aren't enough inches on the screen while on the desktop. And if they go 16:9...? I might as well use my cell phone's browser...

You guys seem to like it, so go nuts. But paying $1000 for a netbook sized laptop with a beefed up 9600M GT doesn't appeal to me. I think a slim 13", 1600*900, with a more capable graphics card would have been a better way to go even if it cost a bit more initially.

 

3 Reasons I was really excited initially---sub 1000$ pp means I can get it day one for about 6-750

2- replace the 10v

3-Dedicated Graphics in a small form factor Finally!


3 Reasons why I'm not so excited after reading comments here and on Gizmodo link.

1-the unit weighs 4lbs(my 15" Dell w/ FullHD rez
SSD/Blu-Ray+3ghz CPU+huge battery slice weighs at a minimum weight of 5.6lbs...thats only 1.6 lbs weight difference despite having much better screen rez and far superior screen size of 15".

2-No removable Battery- If that indeed is the final build then this is an absolute deal killer(what if you needed to game for say...3.5 hours during a trip...I guess you twiddle your thumbs for the final 1.5 hours or whip out a kindle

3-Outdated parts-even though I don't plan on playing CoD2 or other shooters on an 11" screen, the fact that they're throwing a ton of connectivity ports onto this to make up for the fact that they made it thick, heavy(for its size as my 10v Dell is only .9" thick and 2.5lbs w/ 6hrs batt life)
and soon to be obsolete is annoying. The fact that Asus will have a more powerful version of the N10j for about the same price which outshines this pretty but somewhat shallow system is the real kicker. Watch for an Asus system sometime in May.

Now if they had released this system in November for a holiday sale...they'd probably have a hit on their hands.

 

I'm beginning to wonder whether the GT 335M will be in the base $999 config, or if there's a lesser GPU from which you'll have to upgrade. Dellienware rarely gives anything for free.

 

Well, I am actually afraid of bottleneck created by CPU because it is SU7300

 

Seems to have met some criticism here. I would definitely buy one if I could get it under $1500 and it had a good card and processor in it.

The reason I have a laptop for gaming is so I can sit on the couch and play games or move around to different locations in the house and game. 15.4'' sitting on the couch is ... kind of unmanageable. Especially when the cat wants to get some time in.

 

Depending on what we're getting for the "999.99", assuming there's only one GPU chipset, I think we're under appreciating the 335m, as well as the resolution on this monster.

It's not even that thick in pictures, though I honestly would say the design isn't something I prefer...

Would I want a 13.3"? Sign me up, I'd much prefer 13.3".

Is it being an 11" going to deter people from buying it? No. Sales will INCREASE. Instead of just an on the go gaming computer, it's an ultra portable console. There's an HDMI port if you want to game big, and that's the point. This is basically a console smaller than a Wii with the power of a 360.

 

WAY more powerful than a 360.

 

If it actually works as advertised, doesn't overheat like alot of previous Alienware models, maintains a reasonable price for a decent configuration..., then yes, this beautiful thing(I do love the design) will definitely be mine once it gets released.

 

Why do you think an ultra low voltage processor with a 128bit graphics card and possibly DDR2 memory would be more powerful than a 3.2Ghz Tri Core with 512MB of GDDR3 dedicated to gaming applications.

 

Well the gpu on the 360 is inarguably trash by today's standards. The games only run well due to considerable optimization for that specific core

the CPU ofthe M11x is much weaker than that of the 360 though

 

Hmm, no one mentioned the backlit-colour-changeable-keyboard? Dun tell me it's not gonna be in this machine....?

 

-__- All you had to do was go back one page to see it does http://www.digitalchumps.com/e3-blogs/viewpost/4379.html

 

thx, sorry must have missed it