SagerMeister's m7700 Aurora & Odyssey Backpack Review - Page 5

There have been some posts in the Alienware forum about freezes, but not what I'd call a deluge. My recent thinking is that it has something to do with Cool 'n Quiet. So far I haven't had a spurious freeze since I've turned off CnQ almost 200 cpu idle hours ago (100 per core).

Can't answer your Xeon for personal use question. I have two Xeon chips in a server at work running Win 2003 server and it's been pretty decent.

Again, my big thing with the Intel chips inside of laptops is the heat issue. Having owned a laptop P4, I know I was living on the edge. The AMDs are much more laptop friendly in both power consumption and heat. Excess heat can ruin stuff in a hurry, and I'd rather have a healthier design margin there. I'm willing to sacrifice a scant amount of raw computing power for the added safety, and I'm not sure I'm really sacrificing anything given the AMD vs. Intel chip comparisons.

Heh...we have passed into a dimensionless dimension. Well, the dim part is right anyway...LOL.

BTW, hulioni, I've got VMWare up and running on my rig and it works grrrrrreat! I can't believe how seamless it is. I had run an earlier version of it on my old lappy and, while it worked ok, it was pretty hiccuppy. That is no longer the case. So, I've got Win2k3 server running as a virtual machine to do development and testing in isolation, protecting the Aurora's core system from my deadly "experiments"...hahahaha...

What shenanigans have you been up to with your notebook lately?

Wow...the backlight took a siesta? That would be scary. Maybe it just wanted a break from the intense gaming sessions.

Well, I'm not banking on my leapfrogging your 3dMark score holding up for too long. I got lucky as I gave the lappy a steroid cocktail b4 my inflated score. Hey, is Yang still posting scores, or has he gotten tired of it? I notice my post is still the last one there and nothing's been updated since...and I worked so hard for that score too...LOL.

Just thought I'd chime in and say that I really hate my Aurora now.

The damn thing is so fast that I finish up my work too quickly. There's enough time left over that my wife makes me do housework. What a cruel world.

LOL...the thread lives after being in a coma for a few months! Oh well, getting pushed to the back of the pack is inevitable with the timeless march of technological innovation. In other words, freakin' newer and cooler toys are orgasmic, man!!!

Shiftee, glad my review helped calm your nerves a bit. I had a lot of fun writing it and am happy it has served some useful purpose.

Now more good news for you: I'm coming up on 9 months with this machine, and "buyer's remorse" is not a phrase appearing in any dictionary that I own. I'm amazed each and every day I open this beast's lid and power it on. I'm sure eventually this feeling will wear off as I continue to cram my disk drives with crap and Windows does its usual implosions. Even so, to feel like this thing is brand new 9 months after I placed the order is a testament to its superior performance and design margin.

I'm most happy about the excellent heat dissipation. Clevo-based DTR machines have long been known for their heating issues, but I haven't come close to experiencing anything bad that's heat related. Also, the fantasterrific screen remains 100% dead pixel free.

It's rare that a product matches the high expectations originally envisioned in his/her mind before purchasing and using it. I must say that my Aurora has done exactly that and deserves a hall-of-fame stand all its own in the uncrowded pantheon of products that beat all expectations.

Now, tune in next month when I rant about what a piece of crap this thing is...

Yeah, like icweiner sez the blue lights are persistent little buggers. I just put a business card in front of them. Black tape will work even better.

The lid will lay back about...what...at a 140 degree angle maybe? It does not lay flat. I don't have a geeky protractor in my pocket at the moment, so I'm guessing.

The 8 buttons on the front deal with cd audio. You can control music playing via cd by using those buttons, including volume, pausing, seeking, etc. This is exactly what the Audio DJ thing is. You can control all that stuff without lifting the lid.

Good luck with the rest of your stages. Staging is a pain in da butt, but it was certinaly worth the wait in my case (about a month from ordering to delivery).