All about Notebooks
 Latest Notebooks articles
All Notebooks articles

Newsletters


  • Ask your question about IT issues
  • Post

Partners

The Games selection

violent : More Mindless Violence Basic shooting game, but still so powerful! Use the mouse to take aim and shoot at the little beasties before they get to you. Use Space to reload....
action : Yoyo the Star Yoyo is a young girl who recently graduated and dreams to become a movie star (don't we all). You'll have to guide her on the path to stardom,...
Ads

Sponsored links

Alienware’s m17x: Look and Feel

Previous Next
1:30 AM - 09/24/2008 by Chris Angelini

Of the four notebooks included in our roundup, Alienware’s Area-51 m17x is the most professionally put together. It’s all-black design and lighted Skullcap lid offer just a taste of how far gaming notebooks have come.

On the outside, the chassis’ lines are smooth. The ventilation screens in the front and back look similar to what you might find on the grill of a supercharged R-series Jag, be it the XK, XJ, or S-Type. Available bays sit flush with the notebook’s body, and each externally-accessible port lines up precisely, also flush to the chassis.

The 17” screen does not latch to the body when it’s closed, but there’s enough resistance upon opening the screen that you won’t have to worry about the body accidentally falling open as you carry the m17x around.

Once open, the Area-51 is turned on in much the same way as a PS3—with barely-there pressure on the power button, in this case an alien head. Though we despise touch pads, the m17x’s is at least well-integrated, laying flush with the keyboard palm rests. The full-sized keyboard is also welcome. And while the numeric keypad off to the side helps demonstrate just how much room there is on a 17” chassis, you’ll still find common functions like Home, Page Up, Page Down, and End sharing keys, unlike most desktop keyboards.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Alienware’s experience—if you want to call it that—is its AlienFX system lighting, which comes standard on the m17x. When you fire up the Command Center software and enter the AlienFX lighting controller’s setup, a graphical representation of the notebook lets you pick and choose colors for a number of different lit zones. What results is completely customizable lighting that goes beyond a conventional single-color scheme, and if you want something like this, Alienware is your only choice. The closest competitor is ASUS, which lets you control a handful of LED effects but doesn’t yet offer customizable colors.

Weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 pounds, the Area-51 m17x is no lightweight. However, everything about the machine is classy despite its gaming heritage. Solid construction is conveyed by parts that fit very well together. And everything—even down to the quality of the notebook’s onboard speakers—is clearly intended for a premium audience. Early on in the game, Alienware’s m17x is the notebook to beat.

At-a-touch battery readingSound from the m17x is surprisingly strong

The flush touchpad

Talkback
kitsilencer 09/24/2008 11:05 AM
Hide
-3+

From a money point of view, it's never going to make sense buying a gaming laptop. Scaled down performance and inability to upgrade are issues.

But it sure as hell feels good having one ^___^

Anonymous 09/24/2008 12:57 PM
Hide
--3+

Hey, that aint green...

neiroatopelcc 09/24/2008 1:24 PM
Hide
-0+

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 023-6.html
"shipped the system with a 64-bit copy of Vista Ultimate (Alienware included x32 Home Premium)."

ap90033 09/24/2008 2:01 PM
Hide
-2+

4 Grand? Are you guys nuts? I would say that right there would rule out about 90% of us normal gmaers..

Besides the gaming scores looked weak imo..

I personally thought it was a better idea to go get a Gateway P7811FX with a single Geforce 9800GTS. It plays Call of Duty at 1920x1200 max settings around 50FPS. AND it cost me ONLY $1249 (Plus Best Buy let me pick any game I wanted for FREE!)

jas39 09/24/2008 3:01 PM
Hide
-0+
Anonymous 09/24/2008 3:07 PM
Show
ap90033 09/24/2008 4:10 PM
Hide
-0+

oops cant spell "gamers" lol

ap90033 09/24/2008 4:13 PM
Hide
-0+

Not true my "Gmaing Laptop" is great at LAN Parties and I play it for 6-8 Hours straight there...

I think maybe you had a bad experience with a laptop that claimed to be a "gaming" laptop. I bought one before like that and it have an 8600M Geforce and it Sucked bad... If you get a good laptop with say a 9800gts or so you would be suprised...

GlItCh017 09/24/2008 4:15 PM
Hide
-3+

ap90033 :
4 Grand? Are you guys nuts? I would say that right there would rule out about 90% of us normal gmaers..


99.90%

ap90033 09/24/2008 4:22 PM
Hide
-2+

PS gaming laptops hold value much better than desktops. I had one I paid 1250 for, had it for a year, then sold it for $1100 and bought the newer "upgraded" model that just came out for $1250. I got an Upgraded CPU (From Core 2 1.67 GHZ to Core 2 Centrino 2 2.26 GHZ), Memory (from 3 Gigs DDR2 667MHZ to 4 Gigs DDR3 1066MHZ), Hard Drive (faster), Video Card (from 8800gts to 9800GTS), Screen (from 1440x800 to 1920x1200) and OS (From 32 bit to 64 bit). Not bad upgrade for $150 or so!

frozenlead 09/24/2008 4:43 PM
Hide
-4+

Yeah, I'm a student at a university, and I find my laptop invaluable. Saves tons of space on my desk, and can play any game maxed out - save crysis, where I have to lower the res - with 60fps or more. I payed $2500 for it, too. It gets 2 hours on the battery. I haven't ever run into a situation where I needed it and it was dead.

Groo 09/24/2008 5:50 PM
Hide
-1+

There are many types of people that I can think of that would be better off with a gaming laptop.
Truck driver's, students, profesionals on the move or frequent travelers.
then there are people who like low electrical bills.

and most of these people can use thier laptop plugged in.

Anonymous 09/24/2008 7:00 PM
Hide
-1+

"Although they come from a previous generation of named graphics processors, the GeForce 8800M GTX GPUs used in Killer Notebooks’ Odachi are actually better than the 9800M GTs used in Alienware’s m17x. Again, chalk it up to poor naming on Nvidia’s part.

From an architecture standpoint, the two mobile components are similar. Both center on the G92M GPU manufactured at 65 nm. Both include 96 unified shader processors fed by 512 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit bus. Where the components differ is clock speed. The 8800M GTXs boast 560 MHz clocks, 1,400 MHz shaders, and 900 MHz memory. All three figures are faster than what you’ll get from the 9800M GTs."

These are overclocked, it has nothing to do with poor naming by Nvidia.

theworminator 09/24/2008 8:07 PM
Hide
-1+

Gaming laptops have their niche in the computer world. It's obviously not as big as a gaming desktop, but it's definitely there. This is also a competition of which laptop is the best (in performance, value etc), not if gaming laptops are viable.

Either way, it's always fun to watch Alienware's overpriced creations get thrashed. Go Killer Notebooks :D

Anonymous 09/24/2008 8:48 PM
Hide
--1+

Well, the review does a great job of pimping Alienware & one of the most expensive Clevo resellers (Go KillerNotebooks? They're way overpriced too). You can get equivalent ones cheaper at other resellers, and no, it's not $4k at these places, for the same notebooks.

Try $1800ish for the 15inch Montebello equivalents (same as Eurocom's price or thereabouts), with a much better cooling design than cheaper systems (Gateway 7811x's - which should have also been reviewed in here, as well as a few others). Ah well.

Anonymous 09/24/2008 8:54 PM
Hide
-1+

Base price for the D901C at other resellers (Power Notebooks, XoticPc - Sager resellers, ProStar, Lynnbay, Eurocom) is $2090 starting. Sure you can put in overpriced (currently) dual cards and tack on $1200, and put 3 overpriced RAID'd hard drives and pay a lot more, or you can do it yourself, save money and/or put one card in and upgrade later. So yeah, pretty over the top pricing estimates (And I've priced KillerNotebooks, at least for the M860TU 15.4inchers, and they've come out to $700 more - ouch).

Decide what's worth the price. $850 extra for an extreme CPU? No.

Anonymous 09/24/2008 10:31 PM
Hide
-2+

Um, isn't the point of all this to build the fastest notebook? Money no object?

Well Done Killer Notebooks!

The Silk Pigs

radguy 09/24/2008 10:55 PM
Hide
-0+

Its nice to see these charts but I watched prices at bestbuy on the gateways P-6860FX all summer and picked it up when it hit 1150. I wanted something that could play games on the go and I think the 1000-1500 dollar gaming notebook range is about to really open up. As price is really an issue for most of us and while they sacrafice some specs they can play games. Maybe we can get some more reviews on cheaper gaming notebooks hint hint.
Side note: I really wanted something smaller so I'm hoping that the 15.4 inch gaming notebooks become more affordable.

Luscious 09/25/2008 12:34 PM
Hide
-0+

The Gateway P-7811FX is a useless piece of trash. I went through 5 bad units from two different BB stores because they would all lock-up and freeze 5-20 minutes into any game I played.

About the only positive I could say about it was that the CPU, RAM, HDD and optical drive were all user-replaceable. The WUXGA screen had backlight bleeding problems and the GPU gave decent framerates in Crysis at 1920x1200, until the damn thing froze...

I find it difficult to see that there is no viable option between a $1300 Gateway and a $4000 boutique build. $2000 could get you all the parts for a top-performing 17" gaming laptop. Why those wingnuts haven't figured it out yet is beyond me.

jtnstnt 09/25/2008 12:45 PM
Hide
--1+

Well the 6860-fx is now $809 dollars at select best buys with 1.83ghz dual core and 8800gtx gpu and a 320gb hard drive


Comments are closed on this page.

Sponsored links