Hammerhead's m9700...

I'm sitting here waiting for my Alienware m9700, the first one with 512m 7900gs's in SLI...

It was shipped with FedEx guaranteed before 10:30 AM delivery by Alienware, and it was to arrive this morning by... uh... 10:30 AM.

Well, 10:30 rolled around, and no FedEx...

11:00 rolled around, and no FedEx...

11:30 rolled around, and no FedEx...

11:45 I decided to call FedEx to see what's the dilly-O...

11:50 finished the dang online menu stuff, then just decided to say "operator" into the phone, and magically I got connected to a real person. I asked her about my status, she took my tracking number and put me on hold.

11:52 she apologized that they were unable to get ahold of the driver, but would have him call me as soon as they could.

11:54 I got a call from a gentleman in customer service. Seems the FedEx driver on my route today is a temp as the regular driver called in sick. Apparently the new guy locked the keys in his truck and was waiting for someone at FedEx to bring him another set. He also locked his cell phone in the truck so FedEx had no way of contacting him...

I can't believe my luck. All this time waiting, and the thing is sitting in a locked truck a couple miles away from me...

I'm starting to expect the driver to show up and give me a Dell, and then see Ashton Kutcher show up and tell me I've been punk'd...

Sorry for the delays guys... Here's some pics for you... I'll be saving the best for my review.



Schwing!!!





Mugshot.





Strike a pose... vogue...





I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Demille.





Windows XP Media Center Edition is perfect for organizing family photos...





Keyboard is full size, and fabulous... work it girl!





The obligatory lit headshot.





Glossy screen. When I first looked at the screen shut off, I saw a monkey looking back, I swear...





Really bad picture of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion playing at 1920 x 1200... Yes, my character has a helmet and armor, but no pants...





I'll be back... with a review to pump *clap* you up...

I also just realized my camera is in the trunk of my wife's BMW, so I won't be able to take pics of the guy... Too bad, he'd be famous at NBF with a couple pics of me giving him a noogie.

LOL!

He just got here and apologized, then said his truck broke down.

I said I'd heard there were problems with keys running low on oil so some drivers were getting locked out of their trucks, and he blushed...

Busted!

Anyway, time to open the box.

C'ya in a bit.

I asked the driver for a copy of his ID, and this was the picture on it...

I'm typing on it now!

First impression, it's lighter than I'd expected. Very elegant and clean in design. I've got to get used to the resolution, scaling down makes the text fuzzier than I'd expected. I'll play with that more later.

Beautiful screen, no dead pixels.

Hardware profile shows dual 512m 7900gs in SLI. Sound is good for a laptop, but fiddling with settings in wmp helps. Enable WOW and the equalizer and you're in business.

Alienware has come a long way from the m5500(766).

I'm downloading 3dMark05 and 06 right now. I'm not expecting the benchmarks to be any different than the 256m card version. The onboard memory increase shouldn't affect benchs at standard settings.

More later...