airplaneman

After the long one month wait I've finally received my Alienware laptop. Let me put this out right away: it was a grad gift from my grandparents and parents so I personally haven't paid anything, I couldn't order from American websites like Xotic PC because the customs fees would be ridiculous (I live in Canada), also our dollar is terrible right now so the exchange rate wouldn't have been very good either.

That being said, I paid $2,611 CAN including taxes (free shipping) and everything else, $2,309 CAN before taxes. That is approximately $1,980 USD before taxes, $2,240 USD including taxes.

From what I had available to me in Canada this seemed like the best bet, I know I could have gotten laptops that are "almost as good" for less, but why would I do that when I didn't have to pay to get this one.

Sorry for that rant, but in my other thread people kept telling me that so I wanted to try and prevent that in this thread..anyways on to the review!

I've divided it up into 6 Parts:

1. Specifications
2. External
3. Under the Lid
4. Binary GFX
5. Box Contents
6. Benchmarks
7. Conclusion

I ordered it on June 12th from a dell sales guy and it was expected to be delivered on July 15th, but I had them expedite it for various reasons and it arrived on July 10th.

1. Computer Specs

CPU: Intel C2D P8700 2.53GHz 45nm
GPU: NVidia 1GB GTX 260M (yeah yeah, I know re branding = 9800GT or something) SLI'd with 9400M integrated
RAM: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 @ 1066MHz
Chipset: NVidia 730i
HDD: 320GB 7,200 RPM WD
LCD: 17" with 1440x900 resolution

I thought the specs were pretty good but this laptop can do a lot more, you can get 2x HDD in either raid 1 or 0, 2x GTX 280M or 260M in SLI, a quad core CPU which enables an unlocked multiplier in the BIOS (yes, you can overclock through the bios).

2. Externals

This laptop is..well, to put it bluntly: huge. It measures 15.98"x12.65"x2.11" and weighs 12.5 Lbs which was part of the reason I didn't want to add a second GPU or HDD as I will be using this for school and didn't want the extra weight.





It comes in a Lunar Silver or Space Black colour with some Grey accents, a shiny black illuminated alien head on the lid and 2 speakers on that light up with the AlienFX lighting system.

There are 4 USB ports (2 on each side), an HDMI port, displayport, VGA port, Ethernet jack, eSTAT port and a 1394 audio port as well as 5.1 surround sound capabilities and a 7 in one card reader.





The bottom has 3 vents (1 for the CPU, 2 for the GPU's) and a removable battery cover as well as the nameplate. The battery cover has a button you can push that will display the battery life if the laptop is turned off so you don't have to turn the laptop on just to check battery life. It comes standard with a 9-cell Lithium-Ion battery that has a life of around 3.25 when you are in stealth mode and just browsing around. If you turn off the lights, you get an extra 6 minutes haha.



3. Under The Lid

This comes with a fully illuminated keyboard as most 17" laptops do nowadays except this one has a few extra special buttons.

The F keys also serve as function keys which will do the following when pressed in addition to the FN key:

F1=suspend
F2=enable/disable battery when plugged in
F3=mute
F4=brightness up
F5=brightness down
F6=switch to external monitor if plugged in
F7=switch between integrated (9400M) graphics and discrete (GTX 260/280M) graphics
F8=nothing
F9=Turns the camera on or off
F10=Brings up the MSMC (Microsoft Mobility Center)
F11=AlienFX lighting on/off
F12=Touch pad on/off

In addition to these function keys, there are another set of touch controls in the top right. These include standard media controls (play,pause,next, previous) as well as an eject button for the slot-load dual layer DVD player/burner, volume up, volume down, wi-fi antenna on/off, Alienware command Center (More on that later) and stealth mode (Limits power usage to 65W to conserve batter, best used for light browsing or IMing).



The screen Boarder is outlined in shiny fingerprint-magnet black and houses the 2MP web cam and stereo mic.

The laptop comes with whatever version of Vista you select pre-installed on it, you just have to configure it when you first turn the laptop on. It comes with some web cam program as well that I promptly uninstalled because of it's uselessness. There are lots of other options you can get installed, but that isn't really important, what is important is the Alienware Command Center.

The ACC is what controls all of the systems lighting, the power management settings (you can create profiles for what is turned on/off when it's on battery or plugged in, standard laptop stuff I think), the touch pad sensitivity options, facial recognition software settings. With the lighting controls you can set each object (4 sections of keyboard, touch pad, speakers, Alienware writing colour, power button/alien head and media controls) to it's own colour. Each of these can morph between colours, or flash at a given speed, there is a lot of versatility here. You can choose up to 19 different colours too.





Sorry for the bad quality, camera died so I had to use my phone. Just took these to show the versatility of the lighting program.





I have only played GRID on it so far but as expected, it runs smoothly at max resolution with 4x AA.

4. Binary GFX

The laptop comes with 2 GPU's no matter what you buy, you get the integrated 9400M and the one (or 2) extra ones you decide to purchase. The integrated graphics is uses when you are running on battery power so it' doesn't kill your battery life, then when you plug in you have the option to switch to discrete graphics for gaming or whatever you want to do. IMO this was really smart because the battery life would probably have been cut in half if it used the GTX 260M all of the time, and usually when you are on battery power you aren't gaming - you are watching movies/listening to music/surfing the web/in class so all that power and battery life is going to waste.

5. Box Contents

I saved this for last because I figured it wouldn't be as interesting as the other stuff. It comes with a recovery CD that will reset the laptop back to factory settings, a resource DVD (not sure what's on it) and the operating system disk. Also provided is an Alienware mouse pad, nicely made owners manual, laptop sleeve and some Alienhead sticker and an Alienware baseball hat and the low profile power brick.



6. Benchmarks

3DMark06 - 10874

3DMark Vantage - 4640

Super PI 1M = 20s

7. Conclusion

I personally think this is a pretty sick laptop, it has idle temps of around 38 degrees so it won't burn your legs, it can probably run all modern games with decent settings, has tons up upgrade options and looks sick. Only downside is you can't change the OS without voiding your warranty and losing the Alienware programs I don't think, that and it's 12.5 pounds which is quite heavy for a laptop.

If there are any other benchmarks you want to see, let me know and I will run them. I don't have Crysis unfortunately so I can't run the Crysis benchmark, but I can try to get the Crysis: Warhead one again (for some reason the benchmark didn't recognize the game was installed and I got an error). Any other tests you want as well, let me know and I will get them done as fast as I can. All in all, a great machine!

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like30ninjas

that's a beastly laptop, hopefully it lasts a while. Did you get any insurance or extended warranty for the laptop? laptops are heavy on wear-and-tear, like the keyboard for example. For a PC, you can just throw it out and get a new one for ~10$, but for a laptop, they'e alot more expensive. and the aftermarket aprts for alienware's are expensive.

either way, great review! If price wasn't a factor, i would've definitely bought one of these as well!

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airplaneman

Got 1 year, 2 years was $200 more which I thought was insane..that's dell for ya.

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Q9650 @ 4.5, 1.4 vCore (1.376 CPU-Z)

The Mad Mule

Congrats on the purchase, but I hope you plan to buy a netbook sometime soon. After carrying my Gateway laptop around for a year, I'm getting set to buy a Ion-powered netbook come August. Also, just my opinion, but bringing that thing around in public looks like major overkill, and makes the user look like a total marketing tool.

like30ninjas

nuff said.

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Foxy@OC'D

Makes me want to get rid of my dell xps m1730 but at the end of the day it is only used for work and some gaming when bored at work lol, But extremly sweet laptop!!

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airplaneman

I might get a netbook, only got this guy because I don't think I'm going to bring my desktop to university 1st year and I still wanted to play games.

I liked the M1730's, but I found them even more expensive than this :|, great laptops none the less.

Thanks for the comments guys!

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Q9650 @ 4.5, 1.4 vCore (1.376 CPU-Z)

tagurtoast

that thing looks like a tank is it bulletproof lol

airplaneman

Lmao, probably.

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Q9650 @ 4.5, 1.4 vCore (1.376 CPU-Z)

dominique120

those laptops cost like 5k with core 2 extremes and 8 gigs of ddr 3

run 3dmark vantage and 3dmark06 and post the scores

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