Alienware m5700
Well here it is fellas. I am please to give my report in on the Alienware M5700. I will start off with the ordering. Their website is one of the best laid out and easy to get around on that I have ordered from and surfed.
Initial phases/experience:
I placed my order on January the 10th. The website gave me a est. ship date of January 17th. According to their website it sat in Phase three till the mid afternoon on the 16th. But when I called in they said it was actually in phase five as of the 12th. They just don’t get much time to update the website. So for all you new order people, don’t freak out, be patient and maybe call them after a few days if the website doesn’t move any. Anyways mid afternoon it hit phase 8 on the website. Then Tuesday morning it went from 8 to 10 that day and shipped. I received it on the 19th.
8/10 (They need to work on web updates if they are going to offer this info, it should be accurate daily. Maybe not to the minute but atleast at the end of the workday)
Packaging:
As all the pictures I have seen on the net and my original 7700 a year ago the packing was superb and almost to pretty to cut open. Everything was laid out and had form fitting foam and cardboard to hold everything in place.
The only thing that was left out is any and all information about the mail rebate for free shipping, I will be calling them Monday.
9/10 (because i have ot chase down rebate stuff)
OS and system load:
The best install on a built machine ever. It has the bare essentials installed and that’s it. No junk, spyware, crappy custom auto updating stuff. The OS was loaded, installed and did the initial owner setup very quickly, Doing the initial Windows Update it found 13 critical updates to be installed. Not to bad as most only do a slipstreamed sp2 install leaving all updates past that point to be installed. I am sure this is due to a image server they have on the network that gets updated images every so often. Other basic eseentials such as Nero Express for cd/dvd burning was installed, AlienGUIse and that’s about it. Leaves you time to un-box do a quick Windows Update and be one your way not really having to uninstall anything or reload from scratch.
10/10
Configuration:
1] Area-51® m5700
Processor: Intel® Pentium® M 760 2.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache 533MHz FSB
Operating System (Office software not included): Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Warranty: 2-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
Display: Alienware® m5700 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD - Xeno Grey
Motherboard: Alienware® Intel® 915PM + ICH6 Chipset
Wireless Network: Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 b/g Wireless Card
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Hard Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 240GB (120GB x 2) 5400 RPM SATA
Video Card: 256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 6800
Sound Card: Intel® High-Definition Audio
Optical Drive: 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
Ethernet NIC: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Modem: 56K Modem with V.90 Technology
Mobile Transport : Alienware® Odyssey Backpack
Alienware Exclusive Offers: Gamespot Complete - Free 90-day Trial (a $20.85 value)
Alienware Gear: Alienware® Hat Black
Alienware Gear: Alienware® Clear Acrylic and Stainless Steel Tumbler
Apparel: Alienware® T-Shirt - Black - Price Includes $5 Instant Rebate
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
Alienware Mouse Pad: Alienware® Mousepad
AlienRespawn: Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit
Casing/Ports:
It seems to be a very solid and well built machine. The new inset alien head is a very nice change. It now glows all around the head and the eyes. The word Alienware is also lit now which looks very nice in the dark. The lights are not over powering or to bright to annoy any other people around you.
The quick launch buttons do not seem to be programmable but are preset well. There is a “SILENT” mode button that is suppose to slow everything down enough so the fans don’t kick on etc. The other htree are standard Email, browser, and music.
On the left side corner just under were your wrist would sit is a hole with a picture of a microphone. It is a AWESOME feature to have a microphone built in. With a little tweaking it got it to work decent with Ventriloquist while wearing my headphones.
The power plug on the left hand side is GREAT! Every laptop I have ever owned seems to be week, move and wiggle a lot when the ac plug is inserted in. I don’t think I have had a laptop with a very sold feel power plug as this one.
USB ports are set just right to me. One on the left and three on the right along with the firewire port. It seems that maybe it should have been the other way around as 99% of people use a mouse on the right hand side and the wires kind of tug on the mouse tail as you move it. If you use a notebook cooler it sets the laptop high enough the mouse tail will be under those plugs anyways OR just get a wireless mouse if it is a issue.
One thing I am personally glad to see is they used a LITE-ON SOSW-833S dual layer DVD burner. In my experience Sony notebook DVD burners aren’t that great. This Lite-On spins up fast and does not pause but for a couple seconds allowing almost instantaneous access to the disc.
The memory card reader is like all other notebooks, very lacking in my opinion, simply because it doesn't have the most commonly used card of all time the compact flash. I would just prefer they didn’t offer it personally, but a nice feature nevertheless.
PCMCIA slot is AWESOME, it is spring loaded. Not little tiny button to try to flip out or push try to push in as the card slides out. VERY COOL FEATURE!!!
10/10 (all the above)
Screen:
This is possibly the best laptop screen I have ever seen. The ONE slight gripe and that is even at full brightness it seems to be a tad dim compared to others I have seen. The sharpness and consistency across the screen is superb. Not sure of the ms response time. But playing COD2, Quake4 and a couple flight sims I play did not show ghosting whatsoever. You can very easily see the screen at any angle you look at it.
9/10
Keyboard:
The keyboard is very comfortable to type on. It has a tinted transparency to it, really cool look. The only issue I have with the keyboard is it has a slight bow on the right hand side (diagonal between 8-9, i-o, k-l, ,-.). This causes a slight issue when typing for me as my right hand fingers seem to grab corners of the keys every so often, this might lead to a bad thing in time.
9/10
Touchpad:
Simply the best touchpad on any notebook I have used. And the BEST feature is a button at the top to turn the touchpad off. This seems to be absent on most other laptops. It is smooth and very accurate.
10/10
Final Thoughts:
Overall the system a little warm. I attribute this to having two 5400 hard drives in it. Generally P4-M chips runs fairly cool. I did all my testing and initial playing with the factory installed drivers. The video drivers installed from AW are version 76.10. I did try the latest official drivers from Nvidia with laptopvideo2go .inf file. When I tried to do a manual overclock and had it do the auto test the screen flickered flashed and went right back to the default clock speeds. This leads me to believe the GPU is locked from overclocking. I will update with more detailed pictures then my other initial pictures thread and a few benchmark scores when time permits and my webspace host is updated.
Update:
Thanks for the rebate info. Found it ont he second page of my invoice in tiny letters where to go get the rebate.
Benchmarks:
These are the frist benchmarks. These were permormed on the factory load with my installed apps on top of that. Their is 38 processes running, i did not kill any of them. I wamnted to run the benchmarks with real world daily usage of the machine out of the box. This is also using Alienwares factory installed 78.10 driver. No overclocking as this card is bios locked. I iwll do newer drives at a later date. Soon to follow better pictures and couple in game benchies. PLus current screenshots and pictures will be moved ot my webhost company soon as the new sever is complete.
