HARD DRIVES

Alienware M17x Guide

The M17x is Alienware’s flagship video game players laptop. It has a stealthy design, aluminum chassis, including a customizable lighting system. Our review unit comes complete to the gills with dual Nvidia graphics cards, an Intel Extreme processor, and 8GB of RAM. Does the M17x live up to Alienware’s claim to be the fastest gaming notebook on the market? Read our notebook review to uncover.

Design
Which has a brand-new look and a few of the highest-end tech for sale in a laptop, we’re semi-surprised that Alienware has kept the M17x reputation for its newest 17-inch laptop (even if it loses the X-Files-esque “Area-51″ moniker). While the system starts in a reasonable $1,799, you will have to configure something better our $4,849 review unit to actually get the selling point of Alienware’s a lot of experience making high-end gaming PCs.We appreciate the evolved design of the new M17x, which eliminates many of the dorm-like qualities of past Alienware systems, creating a (slightly) more sophisticated-looking package. The somewhat goofy custom lighting system remains, but the automotive-inspired front-end grille and edge-to-edge glass on the display offset that.The previous M17x created few procedures in the right direction, de-emphasizing the brand’s iconic glowing alien head design and offering an intelligent matte black finish.This new version continues the march toward modern minimalist design, with fewer distracting flourishes on the keyboard tray, and a slick edge-to-edge glass overlay on the display. The front edge has additionally gotten a change, having an angled automotive-inspired grille which enables you the look and feel from being too slablike. The anodized aluminum case feels heavy and substantial–but entails you simply will not be taking it on so many trips outside the house (unless you like carrying almost 15 pounds of computer equipment).

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is really untouched since the last generation of the M17x; then again, you’ll find nothing that needed changing. The keys are large, employ a nice feel, and are very responsive. Clearly there was some flex in the keyboard, but Alienware told us that production models would’ve more support.While the previous M17x were honeycomb pattern on its touchpad, the newest iteration is smooth, but is really a spacious 3.9 x 2.2 inches. The surface offered virtually no resistance as our fingers glided across it, this is a a valuable thing. Powered by Synaptics, the touchpad can be able to multitouch gestures, though Alienware turns them off by default.

Display and Audio
The 17.1-inch wide-screen LCD display gives a 1,920×1,200 native resolution, and that is what we’d expect at a high-end 17-inch laptop (cheaper desktop replacements can have 1,440×900 displays). The screen looks crisp and bright, and the edge-to-edge glass overlay adds a seamless feel, but it’s susceptible to glare from light sources. We also wouldn’t mind seeing Alienware embrace the trend toward 16:9 displays.

WirelessHD Streaming
The M17x incorporates a WirelessHD (WiHD) transmitter built-in, which streams data at as much as 4Gbps on the 60GHz spectrum, and has a good collection of around 30 feet. Unlike Intel’s WiDi technology, WirelessHD has no latency and will stream protected content like Blu-rays movies to the compatible receiver (although WiDi 2.0 will support DRM with the upgrade).consumers who wanted such type of capability must purchase a device for instance the ASUS WiCast EW2000 or HP Wireless TV Connect, which involved connecting a bulky transmitter with a notebook. These accessories use an additional technology called WHDI.the M17x came bundled using a Vizio XWH200 receiver. (Vizio sells a transmitter and receiver separately for $229). The triangular receiver, which appears like a large Toblerone bar, measures 7.4 x 2.5 x 1.3 inches. The front can be a sleek glossy black, and the back, sides, and bottom are vented. The only connectors are an HDMI port and power on the back.The Vizio receiver worked equally well as third-party WHDI devices; we used the HP Wireless TV Connect and the Asus WiCast EW2000 with the Alienware, and found that most three worked basically the same; videos (both Blu-ray and from the disk drive) streamed smoothly, and there wasn’t any lag whatsoever when playing games. Like those other two devices, though, we discovered that by trying to relax and play a Blu-ray with the displays cloned, it will eventually only be visible on one screen.

Ports and Webcam
The M17x provides a wide selection of ports particularly when it comes to video out. HDMI is useful for connecting to HDTVs and Display Port to monitors that support it. All picture descriptions are left to right.When it comes to operating-system and software, Windows Vista 64-bit comes standard on the M17x; at the time of publishing, Alienware is providing free Windows 7 upgrade coupons. Alienware computers in the past attended totally free of junk software and this trend continues with the M17x.The laptop posseses an automated recovery feature, Alien Respawn 2.0. Pressing [F10] on startup initiates the procedure; it could possibly save files and re-install the OS known as, or start a complete wipe.

Performance
In contrast, we had a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, in addition to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics card, which moves the M17x to the top of our laptop performance list. One laptop we recently reviewed used a desktop PC 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Quad Core processor, and was technically faster–but putting desktop parts in a laptop chassis is usually an entirely different animal. The quad-core Extreme-edition CPU helped in the multitasking tests, but the real-world difference between this and the non-Extreme Core 2 Quad Q9000 found in other high-end desktop replacements isn’t enough to call it a must-have upgrade .The real star suggestions the SLI configuration of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX280M. With two of these powerful GPUs working together, we have got 168 frames per second at 1,920×1,200 in Unreal Tournament 3, thus, making this our gaming laptop performance leader with a wide margin. Anecdotally, we fired up F.E.A.R. 2 at 19×12 and hang a lot of the graphics options to medium or high for any smooth,impressive experience. Needless to say, with almost no high-profile Computer games currently in development, there might stop that lots of titles that deserve this type of high-end treatment (one exception might be Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, certainly one of the few buzz-worthy upcoming games that’s being developed for the PC and ported to consoles, rather then the other way around).

Battery life
The M17x features a feature called Stealth Mode which turns off the high-performance GTX 280M graphics cards and switches to a integrated GeForce 9400M graphics card. This configuration reduces power usage and so, I was able to utilize the M17x for just two hours and fifteen minutes in Stealth Mode with the display at one-third brightness. That’s a respectable number for the gaming notebook. Our test unit has some power-hungry components like two 7200RPM hard drives running in RAID 0 and the Intel QX9300 quad-core processor. Which has a power-saving SSD (Alienware offers a couple 256GB SSDs) plus a dual-core processor, We’ve little doubt the M17x could select no less than another half hour. Read the comparison with Alienware M11x.

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