Alienware M11X - the first ultra-portable gaming machine!

[Covenant]

According to a HUKD-er the Ferrari is going down to £199 @ Tesco from tomorrow....http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/68182...e-laptop-199-9

That's an amazing deal - basically the best netbook you can buy (excluding the m11x that is). I have one, upgraded to 4gig ram and have had no complaints at all. Excellent build quality, good battery life, and it's tiny yet has a full size keyboard, decent 11.6inch screen (1366x768) and dual core processor.

Saying that - I've just upgraded to a MBP to play games better, so i suspect my Ferrari one will start to gather dust now!

[baius]

According to a HUKD-er the Ferrari is going down to £199 @ Tesco from tomorrow....http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/68182...e-laptop-199-9

Plus enter TDX-CCB2 for £10 off a £100 spend.

Deal's expired, according to that site. Shame.

Does TDX-CCB2 apply to "£100+"? I think that's what you are saying...

[Covenant]

Deal's expired, according to that site. Shame.

Deal never existed. Tesco's never stocked it anyway - and Tescos Direct (online store) continue to sell it for £399 - there was never an offer. If you read the HUKD thread it was completely made up.

[baius]

it was completely made up.

I thought it was real. Shows how easily we can be misled.

[Covenant]

I'm getting the M11x, just waiting for it to go back on special offer. Saw one in John Lewis at the weekend and it's awesome! The keyboard isn't great and the screen is very glossy, but it looks fantastic, feels well made and is exactly the right size/shape for carrying around.

You're bang on with the Acer and the Asus, just too big. It was just the i5 processors tempting me, the M11x is very CPU-limited and it really struggles with CPU-bound games (like GTAIV).

Looks like your wish came true - Dell now selling the M11x with i5 and i7 cpus:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home...=dhs&cs=ukdhs1



Curious to see gaming benchmark for the i5 520UM (3M Cache, 1.06 GHz) / i7 640UM (4M Cache, 1.06 GHz). From memory these turbo boast to 1.86Ghz and 2.26Ghz, respectively, so that must go some way to removing the cpu bottleneck of the old Core2 1.3Ghz (o/c to 1.6Ghz or whatever) configuration.

Still very happy with my not-much-larger MBP 13inch though

[McPhee]

The i7 lacks an IGP apparently, so it kinda fails as an M11x. Pay day is a week on Friday, might be ordering me an early birthday present

[Covenant]

The i7 lacks an IGP apparently, so it kinda fails as an M11x. Pay day is a week on Friday, might be ordering me an early birthday present

Nice ;-)

Although something to consider - for the same price you could pick up a 13inch unibody MBP which will give longer battery, better screen, a quality keyboard and won't weigh much more even with a DVDRW built in. Spec wise pretty similar except for gfx is the 48core G320m (instead of the 72core GT335m). Anyway, something to consider ;-)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you are using the notebook for gaming avoid the MBP. The fact that the Alienware has a much faster graphics card makes it a better choice for gaming. OTH, for non-gaming use the MBP is a better choice.

[Covenant]

If you are using the notebook for gaming avoid the MBP. The fact that the Alienware has a much faster graphics card makes it a better choice for gaming. OTH, for non-gaming use the MBP is a better choice.

Yeah, agree with Cat-the-Fifth in that the Alienware with i5 or i7 is the a better choice for purely portable gaming. You can see how well it benchmarks on games here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.24060.0.html
vs.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.28701.0.html

...But I wouldn't go as far as to say avoid the MBP for gaming - the G320m GPU is just a GT330m but using the dualchannel system ram, which i suspect is sufficient for your portable gaming needs, especially as you'll get more battery life while gaming on the integrated G320m (smaller power draw then the discrete GT335m which switches on through Optimus).

Anandtech also ran a few benchmarks on it:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3762/a...ugpu-balance/2

And I'm using mine regularly for Racedriver Grid, COD4 MW, and COH and it's excellent. OSX / WinXP dual-boot was very simple to setup (all the Windows drivers were installed automatically through the bootcamp process) and means I can 'hide' all my games from my girlfriend (she doesn't know anything about dualboot ;-) )

Just making sure McPhee is best informed to make the right decision ;-)

go for the less nerdy option

[McPhee]

Good point about the MBP, never even considered it. Price through the HE store is very tempting, roughly £850 with a 3 year warranty. I think it might be too big for what I'm looking for though and gaming performance is quite a bit below the M11x. There's also OS X to factor in, don't think I can be bothered with it to be honest, hate fixing stuff on my parents' iMac. Still, it's one heck of a curve ball and I'll look in to it, the price with that warranty really does show the M11x up!

[Covenant]

Good point about the MBP, never even considered it. Price through the HE store is very tempting, roughly £850 with a 3 year warranty. I think it might be too big for what I'm looking for though and gaming performance is quite a bit below the M11x. There's also OS X to factor in, don't think I can be bothered with it to be honest, hate fixing stuff on my parents' iMac. Still, it's one heck of a curve ball and I'll look in to it, the price with that warranty really does show the M11x up!

So how did you get on? Did you eventually take the plunge? See waiting to see how the M11x stacks up!

[Covenant]

Anandtech's first look at the new M11x:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3800/a...-r2-first-look

Quite interesting.

[CrazyMonkey]

John Lewis were doing this in my store for £810 i believe (last thursday). Was considering getting one as i'd get it for £700 what you guys think?

[Covenant]

Full review now:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3808/alienware-m11x-r2

For those who can't be bothered to read all 8 pages. Summary is:
In games, it is a little faster (although not much, bottleneck for games is the GT335m)
In other apps it is noticeably faster.
Drivers now updated more regularly because of Optimus (instead of switchable gfx)
Don't bother with overclocking the bus, just leave turboboast do it's job on the default bus.
Battery life takes a hit of 15% (eek!)
Still uses substandard 11inch screen, even though it's the same size and weight as other 13inch laptops - (Sony's 13inch VaioZ is actually the same size but lighter AND includes an optical drive).

So no need to worry if you picked up the first M11x - there's not a huge improvement. Still a good ultra-portable gaming system.

[McPhee]

I got a loan of one for a few days and decided against it. Great device, bang-on what I wanted but the screen is awful. Bad backlight uniformity, colours were a bit washed out and it's far too reflective. In a £500 device it'd be acceptable, in a device that costs the best part of £1k it's not.

Faffing about a bit really, but it's just too much money to drop on something I'm not happy with. Picking up a netbook instead and I'll keep that until the right device comes along. A bit of Sam & Max and Monkey Island will do for the moment.

[baius]

A bit of Sam & Max and Monkey Island will do for the moment.

Don't forget Bloons. Some of the later levels (50+) go a bit slow, unless you minimise your browser window.

(Hope that helps... )