Alienware Laptops

Thu Nov 18, 2004 1:18 pm by Comont54

Ok, so im about to order a Alienware Area 51m 7700 "gaming laptop" . I would like to know what you guys think of it. Here are the specs:

Exclusive Alienware Design and Color
Programmable Synaptics Touchpad
Built-In Microphone
Video-IN & OUT ports
PS2 / LPT / DVI / COM Ports
4 USB 2.0 Ports & 2 IEEE-1394 Ports
56K modem and Gigabit Ethernet
1 Type II PCMCIA Slot / Infrared port
1 S/PDIF output / 1 Microphone jack
1 Speaker-out jack / 1 Line-in jack
Full Size Keyboard with Numpad
Dual Smart Bay Optical Drives
Dual HDD Support with RAID
7-In-1 Media Card Reader
Enhanced 4 Speakers + Subwoofer
Full Range 180Watt AC Adapter
Standard Smart Li-ION Battery
Dimensions (W) 15.6" x (D) 11.7" x (H) 1.95"
Weight ~ 12.5lbs with Battery
Area-51m 7700 Case with 17" WideXGA+ 1400 x 900 LCD Display - Xeno Grey
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 530 w/ HT Technology 3.0GHz 1MB Cache
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
100GB 4200 RPM ATA100 Hard Drive
Optical Drive 1: 24x10x24 CD-RW / 8X DVD Combo w/Software MPEG2 Decoder
Optical Drive 2: 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
Zalman ZM-RS6F Surround Headphones
Microsoft® IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 - USB - Space Black

So what do you guys think, again its a laptop so I doubt ill be upgrading from that too much in the future. Oh and the Video Card, is that any good??? and I also forgot the Motherboard, which is a Intel® 915P Chipset Supporting PCI-Express . So I dunno if thats any good at all, I would like to know before I buy the damn thing.

"Dain bramaged"

Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:23 pm by Wizard

If we say it sucks, whill you change your order?

Where're you going to use it for? Work or somthing else?

Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:28 pm by Comont54

Actually yes I will, I didnt order it yet, im about to, I want to consult the tech experts here first

. Oh and I was gonna use it as a portable gaming machine just pretty much anywhere I need it cause I travel alot. I have 2 optical drives there but for some reason I am getting the feeling im getting the same thing in both so I dunno I was hoping someone could tell

.(if my calculations are correct, i should be able to run Doom III at full detail with that kinda setup)

"Dain bramaged"

Edited by - Comont54 on 11/18/2004 2:30:31 PM

Thu Nov 18, 2004 6:17 pm by Indy11

Opticals are redundant, sort of. Stick with the dual layer DVD one and drop the other one.

If you can swap out the HDD for less gigs but more rpm speed, you might want to do that.

Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:51 pm by Alpha-Leader

Get a normal Toshiba Laptop, Dell or IBM. Dont waste money on a alienware. It is no good for gaming and a complete waste if you use it for work.

Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:54 pm by parabolix

Supersnipa,

Have you lost your mind...Alienwares are 100X better than any Dell crap. Toshiba's are nothing special, they are reliable but not as powerful as Alienwares, and you'll end up spending about 3 million dollars on an IBM.

Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:39 pm by Esquilax

For a gaming laptop you can't go much better than Alienware. The only problem is that they can become quite hot if being used for a while, and for this reason it is best to use them in a ventilated environment.

Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:58 pm by Sirius

It all depends on what kind of video card you have in there. You could play HL2 on a 1Ghz machine, if you had a Mobile 9700 in these laptops. (I don't know when the mobile 9800 comes out though.)

Sure Proc is important, but beware, they sometimes skimp on the vid card.

Sat Nov 20, 2004 8:41 pm by Glitch

I'm assuming you're american, but I'll just bring this up anyway. I bought a Voodoo PC Envy M360 (2 Ghz Centrino, Mobile 9700, 1GB RAM, 60GB 7200RPM drive) and it rocks. It's a canadian company, so your dollar (or anyone else's for that matter

) is worth more. Also, it may just be me, but I can't find your graphics card in there. Umm... one more thing, Centrino beats mobile P4 for damn near everything, and it runs games just as well. If you're looking to play games on the road consider switching to a Centrino, they're lighter and they run a hell of a lot longer on batteries than any P4. Just my 2 (or less, depending on the conversion) cents.

Edit:

Site is at voodoopc.com, also if you do want to keep that setup, drop on of those drives. They do basically the same thing and you could take that money and upgrade that disk. A 4200 RPM drive was standard about a year and a half ago

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

Edited by - Glitch on 11/20/2004 8:42:49 PM

Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:28 pm by Comont54

Damn, i skipped the vid card?? wow lol, thats dumb, thats like the single most important thing i look at when buying a comp, btw the video card is a:

NVIDIA GeForce™
FX Go 6800 256MB

Unfortunately, I would have switched to centrino but they dont have that option.

"Dain bramaged"

Mon Nov 22, 2004 12:59 am by zazie

The specs of this Alienware-Laptop are excellent (at least ...) - for a machine REPLACING a desktop computer.
But as you wrote you travel a lot.
So ask yourself: do I want to have a comp with good specs that can be transported easily ?
Or:
Do I want a mobile computer for gaming/working during an extended time without power cord ?

Glitch and Esqui gave some explanation concerning power consumption: playing with a P4 sucks the battery(ies) empty in no time (one hour). And that's why the comp gets hot.
Trust me: if you travel a lot (and you want to play longer than one hour) there is no alternative for a centrino (in the Intel-World). If Alienware does not offer it try another company.
Of course the companies tell us that the batteries/accus will last for three hours. And this may even be true in the first two or three weeks. But after some time even the best (and best treated) Li-Ion-Battery (or similar) will degrade.
One hour - that's what you can trust on. But are you able to finish every mission in one hour ?

edit: spelling

Edited by - zazie on 11/22/2004 12:59:41 AM

Mon Nov 22, 2004 1:41 am by LordFjord

wow thats quite a nice gaming laptop.
may i ask how much you need to pay for that?

Im pretty happy with my laptop.
Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A 1630
15.4' widescreen 1280*800 display (im very happy with its quality)
ati modiblity radeon 9700 w 128MB
AMD 64 bit 3400+
60GB HD w (5400)
1GB RAM

batts last for ~2 hours of gaming (accidentally tested this

was playin Doom3, then after 2 hours it went black, lol - i accidentally pulled the plug while gaming)

all in all (with a laptop backpack) it costed me ~2000€ (in august 2004)

i use it for both work and gaming (have 2 seperate XP installations on it)

Fjord

Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:25 am by Indy11

What others have said, heat is your enemy in any case but especially within the confined spaces of a laptop.

If you have the money to burn, you can actually buy a portable external cooler to keep things less hot.

But, zazie's point is very critical. How mobile are going to be?

Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:26 pm by Comont54

2,800 something just about, not including shipping (no sales tax for nevada however) I actually dont think power will be that big a problem. What with you know, I actually didnt go into detail as to how I would use it, well, actually, most likely I wont be running it on the battery for very long at a time (unless i absolutely need to) most places I plan on using it have a open source of AC Power, so I dont think the power requirements will be a problem.

"Dain bramaged"

Tue Nov 23, 2004 7:00 am by LordFjord

heat is indeed a problem, but i made some very successful stress tests with my laptop.
the CPU, graphic card and the HD become pretty hot when under nonstop stress.

my personel top-stress-test was running Dawn of War on 1024 resolution and max details, being server in a LAN for 8 ppl and playing at the same time. all went SMOOOTH

- even in the one and a half hour lasting nonstop battle with a LOT of units in action.

The powersupply is very bulky compared to the ones from laptops that have a mobile CPU - now i know why... it became VERY hot - i guess something ~50-60°C.
The laptop case itself was also heated, especially in the area where the HD sits.
The air coming outta the fans (2 - one side, one bottom) was also pretty warm.

Fjord

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