GAMES:
Have played: Farcry, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Half Life 2, Quake 4, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Hitman Blood Money, Battlefield 2.
All of the games look great and play so smoothly! Anyone waiting for one of these will not be dissapointed!!!
SOUND:
Onboard sound is fine for a laptop about town, although you can see from my pics that I have it wired upto my stereo and im pleased with the results. There is an optical output but I havent had a chance to test this yet.
BUILD:
The build quality is "A" class and anyone who has seen it has commented on how smart and well built this thing is. The keyboard and touchpad are nice to use, as are the function keys and touch sensitive media controls. Overall, the 9700 feels very solid and well put together.
SCREEN:
The screen is gorgeous although the reflections will drive you mad if you are playing a dark game with lots of sunlight/overhead lighting. It doesnt bother me as I mainly use it in one place in my room and have positioned the screen as to avoid any glare.
CONNECTIVITY:
Lots of usb ports, a firewire port, NIC, dvi, svideo and vga outputs. Cant complain about these and in good positions.
One thing that does confuse me is the whole media centre thing?!?! In the UK we only get a choice of XP Home or Pro.
Yet on the back of the machine it has coaxial and svideo inputs, but do I still need a tuner to use them?? Or will the MCE driver work?
Trying to capture video using Sony Vegas or Windows Movie maker only allows me to select the webcam as a capture device? Any UK heads know whats the deal?
INTEGRATED THINGIES:
The m9700 comes complete with built in wireless and bluetooth. Both of which are working great. One thing I will say is that I unistalled the utilities for both of these though as I prefer Windows to manage these.
HDD & OPTICAL DRIVE:
I opted for the 120GB 5200 option and the drive seems to work nice with quick access times. Also the UK version come with a DVD rewriter as standard which I havent tested yet but has been great so far for playing games. Also packaged with my system were Nero Express 6 OEM and PowerDVD 6.0 which is a nice touch.
Conclusion
Im very happy with my laptop and will certainly buy from Alienware in the future. They are expensive but worth every penny (or in my case £1900)!!!
IMAGES:
Have played: Farcry, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Half Life 2, Quake 4, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Hitman Blood Money, Battlefield 2.
All of the games look great and play so smoothly! Anyone waiting for one of these will not be dissapointed!!!
SOUND:
Onboard sound is fine for a laptop about town, although you can see from my pics that I have it wired upto my stereo and im pleased with the results. There is an optical output but I havent had a chance to test this yet.
BUILD:
The build quality is "A" class and anyone who has seen it has commented on how smart and well built this thing is. The keyboard and touchpad are nice to use, as are the function keys and touch sensitive media controls. Overall, the 9700 feels very solid and well put together.
SCREEN:
The screen is gorgeous although the reflections will drive you mad if you are playing a dark game with lots of sunlight/overhead lighting. It doesnt bother me as I mainly use it in one place in my room and have positioned the screen as to avoid any glare.
CONNECTIVITY:
Lots of usb ports, a firewire port, NIC, dvi, svideo and vga outputs. Cant complain about these and in good positions.
One thing that does confuse me is the whole media centre thing?!?! In the UK we only get a choice of XP Home or Pro.
Yet on the back of the machine it has coaxial and svideo inputs, but do I still need a tuner to use them?? Or will the MCE driver work?
Trying to capture video using Sony Vegas or Windows Movie maker only allows me to select the webcam as a capture device? Any UK heads know whats the deal?
INTEGRATED THINGIES:
The m9700 comes complete with built in wireless and bluetooth. Both of which are working great. One thing I will say is that I unistalled the utilities for both of these though as I prefer Windows to manage these.
HDD & OPTICAL DRIVE:
I opted for the 120GB 5200 option and the drive seems to work nice with quick access times. Also the UK version come with a DVD rewriter as standard which I havent tested yet but has been great so far for playing games. Also packaged with my system were Nero Express 6 OEM and PowerDVD 6.0 which is a nice touch.
Conclusion
Im very happy with my laptop and will certainly buy from Alienware in the future. They are expensive but worth every penny (or in my case £1900)!!!
IMAGES:
...my precious...
It is my precious