Ok, I've been a member here now for just a little bit. I orderd my laptop on Oct.3. Recieved it on Nov.26th. My dvd r/w was backordered a week or so after my order. I used the Alienware credit card option...no finance for 6mos. That took forever via snail-mail. AW sends application for you to fill it out and send back. They then charge your new account and send a receipt for you to sign then send back. That whole ordeal takes about 10 days. My phases then moved up...very slowly.
I powerd my machine up for the first time and was like wow, THIS IS FAST. You can check out my desktop in my sig. My screen was bright, but I wouldn't call it washed out. I changed some settings around with gamma, brightness, and contrast. All is now super fine. I did have to update to latest vid drivers because after hibernate it awoke to a lower screen res or just rebooted. Vid drivers fixed it.
After loading Tweak UI from MS and customizing all my settings, I loaded Halo, Medal of Honor AA, MoH:spearhead, MoH:breakthrough, Norton system 2003, Unreal 2003 and Everquest.
Halo at max resolution 1600x1200 gives me sound flaws- sounds like the audio can't keep up with all the sounds going on so you hear breaking and scratching noises. I fixed the problem by playing in 1024x768. The game rocks and now no more sound problems. I did notice that under the audio setting Hardware Acceleration, I can't change it to on. Someone replied to me that it is because the sound is onboard, but my Nvidia mobo on my desk is the samething, sound onboard, and Hardware Acceleration is enabled, plus EAX audio is also on. I downloaded latest drivers from SIS, C-Media, and finally Alienware. All with the same results.
Medal of Honor Allied Assualt is the only problem game out of all the MoH. The problem is that when the auto config program runs when the game is first installed the auto config crashes. I figured out a way after some tinkering around. In the start menu, in the ea games folder there is an Easyinfo icon. When the program is run it detects my 3ghz proc as -1296??? What's up with that. So all of the video settings within the game had to be manually set, and some of them won't let me select highest settings w/o crashing. Basicly everything is maxed out including the res. The other 2 MoH are all maxed and run super sweet!!!
Unreal 2003 was installed then immediately updated to v2225. The game runs super, all maxed out!!! and the sound let's me enable Hardware Acceleration with EAX!!!! wierd!
My favorite out of all the games is Everquest. This game looks and runs so freakin' good!!! My monitor on my desktop has a high resolution of 1024x768 so to see my fav game at 1600x1200 is unbeliveable. The game did crash once to my desktop, all the while dumping down to 16 color mode in 800x600 and gave me some silly error saying that my vid card caused a fault. I have played the game total about 8hrs thus far and it only happend once, we'll see what happens.
SO this is my review of the games that I play. This laptop rocks!!!! I love it so much...shhh don't let my wife know I said that...
The dvd r/w is awesome too... I have never owned one so I have nothing to compare to. I use smartripper to backup my dvds onto my harddrive then use easyencode to convert to divx. I have done 5 of my favorite movies so far flawlessly!! I have then burned the movies onto a dvd-r, sweet 5 movies of super quality I can take on 1 disc.
I have also downloaded trialware of Powerstrip 3.47 a few days ago so I can hotkey all of my games diff settings. It's really cool just hitting a Ctl-Alt-(whatever key) to my fav setting depending if I'm playing in the dark or daylight once set it's really easy to do.
Well, overall I love this thing!!! The problems are all minor and I work around them effortlessly. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. IMHO this is one serious game machine that kicks butt. My friends are all envious cause they lug their systems around to LAN and I just roll up with my AW, not to mention the good looks!!!
Kevin
I powerd my machine up for the first time and was like wow, THIS IS FAST. You can check out my desktop in my sig. My screen was bright, but I wouldn't call it washed out. I changed some settings around with gamma, brightness, and contrast. All is now super fine. I did have to update to latest vid drivers because after hibernate it awoke to a lower screen res or just rebooted. Vid drivers fixed it.
After loading Tweak UI from MS and customizing all my settings, I loaded Halo, Medal of Honor AA, MoH:spearhead, MoH:breakthrough, Norton system 2003, Unreal 2003 and Everquest.
Halo at max resolution 1600x1200 gives me sound flaws- sounds like the audio can't keep up with all the sounds going on so you hear breaking and scratching noises. I fixed the problem by playing in 1024x768. The game rocks and now no more sound problems. I did notice that under the audio setting Hardware Acceleration, I can't change it to on. Someone replied to me that it is because the sound is onboard, but my Nvidia mobo on my desk is the samething, sound onboard, and Hardware Acceleration is enabled, plus EAX audio is also on. I downloaded latest drivers from SIS, C-Media, and finally Alienware. All with the same results.
Medal of Honor Allied Assualt is the only problem game out of all the MoH. The problem is that when the auto config program runs when the game is first installed the auto config crashes. I figured out a way after some tinkering around. In the start menu, in the ea games folder there is an Easyinfo icon. When the program is run it detects my 3ghz proc as -1296??? What's up with that. So all of the video settings within the game had to be manually set, and some of them won't let me select highest settings w/o crashing. Basicly everything is maxed out including the res. The other 2 MoH are all maxed and run super sweet!!!
Unreal 2003 was installed then immediately updated to v2225. The game runs super, all maxed out!!! and the sound let's me enable Hardware Acceleration with EAX!!!! wierd!
My favorite out of all the games is Everquest. This game looks and runs so freakin' good!!! My monitor on my desktop has a high resolution of 1024x768 so to see my fav game at 1600x1200 is unbeliveable. The game did crash once to my desktop, all the while dumping down to 16 color mode in 800x600 and gave me some silly error saying that my vid card caused a fault. I have played the game total about 8hrs thus far and it only happend once, we'll see what happens.
SO this is my review of the games that I play. This laptop rocks!!!! I love it so much...shhh don't let my wife know I said that...
The dvd r/w is awesome too... I have never owned one so I have nothing to compare to. I use smartripper to backup my dvds onto my harddrive then use easyencode to convert to divx. I have done 5 of my favorite movies so far flawlessly!! I have then burned the movies onto a dvd-r, sweet 5 movies of super quality I can take on 1 disc.
I have also downloaded trialware of Powerstrip 3.47 a few days ago so I can hotkey all of my games diff settings. It's really cool just hitting a Ctl-Alt-(whatever key) to my fav setting depending if I'm playing in the dark or daylight once set it's really easy to do.
Well, overall I love this thing!!! The problems are all minor and I work around them effortlessly. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. IMHO this is one serious game machine that kicks butt. My friends are all envious cause they lug their systems around to LAN and I just roll up with my AW, not to mention the good looks!!!
Kevin
