Alright, just got my Aurora, so I figured I should write a nice little review about it. So, let's start at the begining... (Apologies for spelling errors)
The Phase Game (*que dramatic music*)
So, as you may know, my phase game was long. Very long. As in, 66 days long. Yep, 66 full days. I placed my order on January 8th, 2006, hit phase 10 on March 14th, 2006 and recieved my lappy today, March 15th, 2006. This, for those who are worried, is extremely unusual. Far more likely is a wait of a week or two. I admit, I was considering cancelling and ordering a different laptop from somewhere else (Hypersonic, Dell, etc). But, I've had my heart set on an Alienware, so I waited. And waited. And waited. But, in the end, it did arrive. And all was well in the world.
The Machine Arrives
I, unfortunatly, wasn't home when the FedEx guy showed up with my 3 boxes from Alienware. I had made sure that someone was there to sign for the box, though, so I knew when I got home my Lappy would be sitting and waiting for me. And, lo and behold, I came home and there it was, sitting in the front hallway. I was so excited I was nearly hopping foot to foot. I carried the boxes downstairs and commenced the openning
The Openning + First Impressions
Grabbing a knife, I carefully opened up the first big black box. Inside was my owners manual, the case for the mousepad, and another, smaller box. Inside that, sitting quite snuggly, was my laptop. Now, this has been said before, but it needs to be said again, this thing is BIG. You cannot truly appriciate how big this laptop is until you see it. It's huge! For those of you thinking of using this on your lap/in bed or something like that, I'd advise against it. Get an m5700 instead. This really is a desktop replacement, it should be set up on a desk with a cooler, speakers, etc.
That being said, I have already dragged it to my friends house and back, and it was not a problem. I got the Oddesey (Spelling?) Knapsack, and it fits in quite nicely, power brick and all. And, as someone who has been carting around a laptop + books in a knapsack at school for the past 6 years, it was really quite natural to carry. Definatly far easier than dragging around a desktop. Heavy as this thing is, it's still lighter than a tower.
Anyways, moving on. I took it out of the cardboard and placed it on a wooden table, where my brother and I just admired it's sheer size for a moment. Have I mentioned that it's big? I must say, though, the blue colour is absolutly beautiful. Pictures really don't do it justice. It's a very nice, darkish blue. I love it, and it matches perfectly with my Razer Copperhead. I can definatly see this turning some heads.
Plugged in and turned on
So, I plugged in the power brick, turned on the spare nuclear power generator to provide power for the laptop, and turned it on. Wow. The screen is absolutly lovely. It's huge, but it's perfect. Flawless. If there are any dead pixals, I can't see them (And I'm not looking, because if I find one, I'll know it's there it'll drive me nuts). I went through the windows set up, easy, no problems, boot everything up...Wow this is nice. Everything fast, no problems. Hmm, wait...Hmm, it isn't picking up any wireless signals. Weird. I fiddled with it a bit, hit fn+11, turned the wireless radio on (Ahh, aha!), problem solved. After fixing that little problem, I continued to install some drivers and such, getting everything set up. I bought the Creative PCI Sound Card, which is brilliant so far.
Of course, after setting everything up, choosing my desktop theme (Go Darkstar!), downloading some requiset programs (VLC, Firefox, WinRAR, OpenOffice.org, etc), it was time to get down to the fun stuff. Games.
So, right now, I've installed: Half Life 2 (With CS and DoD), Vampire the Masquarade: Bloodlines, Battlefield 1942, Silent Hill 4, AOE 3, Doom 3 and Guild Wars, and of course that's just the tip of the iceburg, and I havn't even made a dent into my HDD yet. 200 Gigs is fun, heh
I havn't had a chance to really tax this yet, but I started playing Half Life 2 on basically max settings, and it seemed perfectly fine. When I get F.E.A.R., that should *really* tax it, and I'll let you guys know how it goes. Should be fun.
Random Other Thoughts
1) The keyboard takes some getting used to, but that's just because I've been using an odd keyboard for the past little while (My old laptop had a tinny keyboard, so this is taking some getting used to). For example, I'm used to the fn key being on the other side of the ctrl button. But I'll survive. In terms of feel, the keyboard is great. I'm already mostly used to it, and I love it. Only thing is it's a little far up. I wouldn't mind it being moved down a touch. But, that's a minor thing.
2) The touchpad. *shudder* Bleh. I *hate* touchpads. I can't stand them. Can't use them. This one, unfortunatly, wasn't really any different. This isn't really an Alienware issue, though. I just can't stand touchpads. I'm really glad I have my mouse.
3) The glowy lights at the bottom of the screen. They're really bright, heh. An option to turn them off might be good (...Is there one? Does anyone know?)
4) The Omza headphones are amazing. Worth every penny, 'nuff said. I mean, I'm hardly an audiophile, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think they're great.
5) The Backpack is great. It really is. If you're planning on carting this beast around, I'd reccomend it. Makes things much easier.
6) This screen is lovely, but it really is huge. The 1900x1200 res takes some getting used to, but it's completly usable. After just a little adjustment, I like it.
Conclusion
So, in the end, was it worth it? Yes. This laptop has, so far, been worth every penny and every minute of waiting. I'm quite happy with it.
I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of it.
I'll see if I can borrow a Digital Camera to take some. I havn't really done any benchmarking, but I'll get around to that eventually, heh, but there's gaming to be done.
If you have any questions, just fire off a PM or post.
Until later,
The Phase Game (*que dramatic music*)
So, as you may know, my phase game was long. Very long. As in, 66 days long. Yep, 66 full days. I placed my order on January 8th, 2006, hit phase 10 on March 14th, 2006 and recieved my lappy today, March 15th, 2006. This, for those who are worried, is extremely unusual. Far more likely is a wait of a week or two. I admit, I was considering cancelling and ordering a different laptop from somewhere else (Hypersonic, Dell, etc). But, I've had my heart set on an Alienware, so I waited. And waited. And waited. But, in the end, it did arrive. And all was well in the world.
The Machine Arrives
I, unfortunatly, wasn't home when the FedEx guy showed up with my 3 boxes from Alienware. I had made sure that someone was there to sign for the box, though, so I knew when I got home my Lappy would be sitting and waiting for me. And, lo and behold, I came home and there it was, sitting in the front hallway. I was so excited I was nearly hopping foot to foot. I carried the boxes downstairs and commenced the openning
The Openning + First Impressions
Grabbing a knife, I carefully opened up the first big black box. Inside was my owners manual, the case for the mousepad, and another, smaller box. Inside that, sitting quite snuggly, was my laptop. Now, this has been said before, but it needs to be said again, this thing is BIG. You cannot truly appriciate how big this laptop is until you see it. It's huge! For those of you thinking of using this on your lap/in bed or something like that, I'd advise against it. Get an m5700 instead. This really is a desktop replacement, it should be set up on a desk with a cooler, speakers, etc.
That being said, I have already dragged it to my friends house and back, and it was not a problem. I got the Oddesey (Spelling?) Knapsack, and it fits in quite nicely, power brick and all. And, as someone who has been carting around a laptop + books in a knapsack at school for the past 6 years, it was really quite natural to carry. Definatly far easier than dragging around a desktop. Heavy as this thing is, it's still lighter than a tower.
Anyways, moving on. I took it out of the cardboard and placed it on a wooden table, where my brother and I just admired it's sheer size for a moment. Have I mentioned that it's big? I must say, though, the blue colour is absolutly beautiful. Pictures really don't do it justice. It's a very nice, darkish blue. I love it, and it matches perfectly with my Razer Copperhead. I can definatly see this turning some heads.
Plugged in and turned on
So, I plugged in the power brick, turned on the spare nuclear power generator to provide power for the laptop, and turned it on. Wow. The screen is absolutly lovely. It's huge, but it's perfect. Flawless. If there are any dead pixals, I can't see them (And I'm not looking, because if I find one, I'll know it's there it'll drive me nuts). I went through the windows set up, easy, no problems, boot everything up...Wow this is nice. Everything fast, no problems. Hmm, wait...Hmm, it isn't picking up any wireless signals. Weird. I fiddled with it a bit, hit fn+11, turned the wireless radio on (Ahh, aha!), problem solved. After fixing that little problem, I continued to install some drivers and such, getting everything set up. I bought the Creative PCI Sound Card, which is brilliant so far.
Of course, after setting everything up, choosing my desktop theme (Go Darkstar!), downloading some requiset programs (VLC, Firefox, WinRAR, OpenOffice.org, etc), it was time to get down to the fun stuff. Games.
So, right now, I've installed: Half Life 2 (With CS and DoD), Vampire the Masquarade: Bloodlines, Battlefield 1942, Silent Hill 4, AOE 3, Doom 3 and Guild Wars, and of course that's just the tip of the iceburg, and I havn't even made a dent into my HDD yet. 200 Gigs is fun, heh
I havn't had a chance to really tax this yet, but I started playing Half Life 2 on basically max settings, and it seemed perfectly fine. When I get F.E.A.R., that should *really* tax it, and I'll let you guys know how it goes. Should be fun.
Random Other Thoughts
1) The keyboard takes some getting used to, but that's just because I've been using an odd keyboard for the past little while (My old laptop had a tinny keyboard, so this is taking some getting used to). For example, I'm used to the fn key being on the other side of the ctrl button. But I'll survive. In terms of feel, the keyboard is great. I'm already mostly used to it, and I love it. Only thing is it's a little far up. I wouldn't mind it being moved down a touch. But, that's a minor thing.
2) The touchpad. *shudder* Bleh. I *hate* touchpads. I can't stand them. Can't use them. This one, unfortunatly, wasn't really any different. This isn't really an Alienware issue, though. I just can't stand touchpads. I'm really glad I have my mouse.
3) The glowy lights at the bottom of the screen. They're really bright, heh. An option to turn them off might be good (...Is there one? Does anyone know?)
4) The Omza headphones are amazing. Worth every penny, 'nuff said. I mean, I'm hardly an audiophile, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think they're great.
5) The Backpack is great. It really is. If you're planning on carting this beast around, I'd reccomend it. Makes things much easier.
6) This screen is lovely, but it really is huge. The 1900x1200 res takes some getting used to, but it's completly usable. After just a little adjustment, I like it.
Conclusion
So, in the end, was it worth it? Yes. This laptop has, so far, been worth every penny and every minute of waiting. I'm quite happy with it.
I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of it.
I'll see if I can borrow a Digital Camera to take some. I havn't really done any benchmarking, but I'll get around to that eventually, heh, but there's gaming to be done.If you have any questions, just fire off a PM or post.
Until later,
