Alienware m11x Notebook Review

Introduction

I want to devote my review to the Alienware m11x laptop. As many probably know, Alienware specializes in productive PCs and laptops. Until recently, in their park there were models with a 15-inch screen and 17, and now they decided to take the 11-inch line. What they did I will tell.

In general, I always felt a weakness for such devices, at first I even wanted to take the HP Mini 311c-1010ER on ion, but when I was announced alienware, I was stupefied. The announcement talked about 8 hours of battery life, a full-fledged discrete graphics card capable of pulling most games, at maximum settings and small size, what else can you dream of? :)

Configuration

Processor :
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.3 GHz, 800 MHz, 3 MB) (via BIOS, it officially accelerates to 1700 MHz)
RAM:
4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 800 MHz
Video card:
1) NVIDIA Geforce GT 335M ( www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA -GeForce-GT-335M.24060.0.html )
2) Built-in, on the Intel GS45 chipset
Hard disk:
Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb / s 500-GB Hard Drive
Screen:
11.6 inches (29.5 cm) glossy, with LED backlight 1366x768 pixels
Size / Weight:
(Width x Depth x Thickness): 285 x 233 x 33 mm, Weight: 2 kg.

Appearance

The top is made of matte plastic, which nonetheless catches fingerprints. True, it is enough to wipe 1 time and they will not.


The left side is rich in connectors, left to right: Kensington lock, vga, usb, lan, hdmi, display port, card reader, IEEE 1394a (why it is needed in 2010 is a mystery)


On the right side: 2 usb, 2 headphone outputs and microphone input. If you turn on multi-channel output in realtek sound drivers, the ports will become: the front pair of speakers, the rear pair and the center.

At the back there is only the cooler exhaust port and the power adapter connection.



At the bottom, there is a sticker with a servisteg (by which you can download firewood from the Dell website for your config, as well as get service support), a battery indicator, as well as a cooler air intake.


Having removed the cover, we get access to the hard drive, RAM, 2m mini pci boards and battery. Pay attention to how the speakers are located.


Rough plastic inside, which can not but rejoice. Fingerprints do not remain, does not get dirty, hands do not slip. The touchpad is made of "pimply" material, fingers do not cling (like on a glossy wheelbarrow at HP) and generally it is a pleasure to use it.


The keyboard is made of a kind of soft touch, slightly marking, fingers do not slip. I have no complaints about the layout, but I am unpretentious in this regard, except that the arrows could be larger.


But the screen, in my opinion, is not very successful. Glossy and covered with clear plastic.

- Backlight

It is also worth noting the highlight of Alienware laptops - the backlight. Almost everything shines here: cooler, logo on the cover, logo inside, name of the laptop, keyboard, “eyes” on the front panel and notification icons. The color of some of these things can be configured in the complete Alien FX utility, the interface looks like this: i6.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/31/6f71475c8004dc30a3052bf882fde731.png
Video demo:

I must admit, in a simple case, this control center constantly loads the processor, so I found an alternative written in java:
ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1403399
Demo:

The computer performs its functions and does not load.

In general, I can say that the laptop is assembled in good conscience, no parts of the case bend, the bottom is generally made of aluminum, nothing hangs and does not creak, in general - solid brick.

Testing

The laptop was bought for games away, so almost from the first minutes of my acquaintance I went to test the games. I deleted the pre-installed Windows by rolling a clean seven home premium 64, and also overclocked the percent from 1.3 to 1.7. Drivers are all official.
For clarity, I shot the gameplay on the camera, the format is simple: the first seconds of the video are the settings menu, and then the gameplay with fraps turned on.

Left 4 Dead 2

It goes great at maximum settings, in fact it is the source engine.

Half-Life 2 - Episode 2

The same source and again great performance. Sags a couple of times, but then I went over with the FSAA.

Fallout 3

It goes fine, even on ultra settings, in the end I found a place with 20 FPS and reduced it to high quality, the picture almost did not change, and the FPS became 40.

Bioshock 2

The unreal engine, as always, is democratic towards system resources, so the game runs smoothly.

Battlefield bad company 2

Here, the maximum settings were too tough, 23 FPS on average, but people are squeezing a playable frame rate, I have not delved into it yet.

TES Oblivion

It goes without subsidence.

The sabouteur

The maximum graphics settings and high CPU dependence do their job, the frame rate sags.

Gothic 3 1.74 patch

It’s going well, but due to the curvature of the engine, there are constant loads from hard, hence jerks.

Unreal Tournament 3

It is going well, but on large-scale scenes subsidence occurs. But, do not forget that the graphics are at maximum.

Just cause 2



I play on the TV, via HDMI, on the joystick from the 360th. The frame rate is not very high, but when the frequency drops below 30, the game gradually slows down and this only creates a smooth effect, not brakes. You can live.

This is what I shot videos for. From the rest that I have tested, they are great: Mirrors Edge, Tomb Raider Underworld, Thief III Deadly Shadows, Crysis (on medium, of course, but I have not studied it yet).

Other people drive Mass Effect 2, World of Warcraft, Star Craft 2 perfectly. In general, any non-CPU dependent games go well. Any games on unreal engine go well. Total, in terms of games, there are no special problems. Somewhere, of course, the brakes climb, but they can be defeated by lowering the graphics settings.

Offline work

Another noteworthy feature is the announcement of 8 hours of battery life. I conducted 2 tests. For starters, I just worked on the Internet (youtube, surfing, played a little snes, skype). With the backlight killed, the Intel graphics and the Wi-Fi turned on, the laptop lived exactly 5 hours. Then he turned off the wifi and recorded several mouse actions (opening and paging pictures, copy-paste from one text document to another), and turned on endless repetition. In this mode, the laptop worked for 7 hours 16 minutes.
Demonstration (though in English) here:


Final screenshot: i6.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/df/e9ba5e9a7e44556ef190e0d585fb75df.png

Briefly about miscellaneous

- Using the Alien Sence utility, you can teach a laptop to log in by face, recognize you as a computer and log in, you can switch users in the same way.

- In the laptop, a hybrid video card is installed, there is an Intel video chip and there is a discrete graphics of geforce 335. Switching between them occurs without rebooting through a simple fn + f6 key combination. When switching to Intel, discrete graphics turn off and do not consume energy. If you run some application that accesses the GPU, a window pops up that indicates what kind of application it is, so it’s easy to calculate the scoundrel.

- As for heating, everything is rosy here, when surfing the Internet it does not heat up, if the cooler works, then the cool air often drives. During games, the maximum GPU warmed up to 63.

- 1080 remixes play without problems with DXVA, just put the latest Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

- The sound is traditional for such small cars, Harman Kardon does not smell here. Plus, the speakers are strangely arranged, the left speaker is in the left corner, while the right one is almost in the center. The sound does not come out of the "eyes" but from the bottom.

Price

When the review was written, the laptop was not yet on sale with us, only a brief announcement. Now there are "shuttle" copies, 50 000 rubles each. However, by the summer they promise from 35 000r models similar to my configuration. I apologize for not immediately indicating.

conclusions

What can I say? Satisfied of course. A small machine, calmly pulls everything that you can wish for, and what does not pull, you can tighten it so that it pulls. The battery life exceeded my expectations, to be honest I thought this can only be seen on frail business laptops.

Pros:
Small size
Powerful video card
~ 7 hours of battery life
Good build

Cons:
Weak sound
Marked screen
Weak, compared to the video card,

Ps processor There is also a fly in the ointment. I did not get a very high-quality sample, I found 1 broken pixel, a whole group of brightly-lit pixels and a speck of dust under the plastic. i6.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/38/8b970ae2ccc235be8c55f131f644f338.jpg
And since I bought it in Denmark, then I can count on service only there. Well, the logic of things is so. However, by calling Dell, it turned out that I can freely transfer warranty service from Denmark to Russia and even more, I can repair my laptop once, without any of these operations. So after a short telephone (!) Diagnosis, an employee ordered a new matrix and said that a Dell technician would come home to install it, so I’m waiting.

UPD
1. Photos reloaded to a more reliable hosting :)
2. The comments went rude, gentlemen, I have a desktop computer, I play and work on it with pleasure, but sometimes you find it far from a normal machine, but you want to play. As for the 11-inch and 2kg, what can I say? For me personally, this is not hard. And I, at the same time, have 8 hours and full games.

Regarding GTA 4. Yes, this is one of those dependent games that puts the laptop on its knees, but you can play more or less if you don't go too far with traffic and range of detail. An average of 25 fps, but sags in trouble. You can walk around the city without any problems :) The

laptop is not mine, I just posted a post. An invite to the person who made the review can be sent to babudzia [dog] gmail [dot] com