You are browsing within the review sections of our forums. Content within these sections reflect consumer opinions of laptops. Our admins take the best and most objective laptop reviews and index them here to create a distinct selection of quality reviews with averaged overall ratings. Many of these reviews have benchmarks attached to them which allows for users to compare their laptop's performance with others, and ultimately enables us to provide a sortable list which at a glance show the fastest laptops amongst a variety of applications (gaming, video editing, web browsing, etc...). Help us build a better laptop database by submitting your laptop review.

Ok, second time of posting this since IE logged me out earlier.. grr.

So - I finally have my hands on it And now I'm back from work I can actually post my first impressions, initial pictures and initial benchmark

So, pictures first!

All boxed up - no fancy AlienWare box here, in fact the box is still badged Arima:


Opening the box:


All spread out on the floor - it was well packaged, although the CDs were actually rattling around in the large box when I got it:


Ah, laptoppy goodness! The Evesham badge is really tacky and cheap, however, which is a great shame



Ooh ooh it's out!:


Here it is, sat on my CoolerMaster NotePal:


It hangs over the back quite a way, but thanks to the NotePal's curved base area there's still an air gap:


First boot!:

(well, ok, not really.. I booted it up and played at work first )


So, my impressions:

Build

It seems well built - kinda heavy, although my only basis for comparison is my old Sony Vaio, which I specifically bought as an ultra-thin ultralight laptop, so it's probably not the greatest base for comparison

If I had to compare to another 17" laptop it would be my colleagues Dell XPS M1710, and I think this is slightly heavier, although not a great deal - but then it contains two HDDs and two GPUs so it's actually surprisingly light really!


Screen

Oh, the screen! It's gorgeous - bright, clear, great contrast, lovely glossy finish although off it has a kind of 'orange peel' surface if you see what I mean..

Not a single dead pixel, though, w00t! There is a little light leakage though, but it only appears on the lower 1/16" to 1/8", which to my mind is perfectly acceptable and a lot better than my old 14" Vaio - but then the screen tech is four years newer


Temperature

Surprisingly cool, actually. The wrist rest area stays at room temperature, and the CPU idles in the mid 40's, which is pretty good considering it's 30C in here!

I saw a peak of the mid 70's while I was at work running 3DMark, and the air out of the rear vents got quite hot, though not unbearably so. The only thing is that work is airconditioned, so it will be interesting to see the peak temperatures at home.

No GPU temps yet - when I started the nvtemplogger it started beeping (the standard PC beep) loud enough to be heard on the next floor, so I shut that off pretty quick at work!


Speed

Well all I've done so far is a single 3DMark05, however with the initial build of Win MCE complete with all the bloatware (antivirus, an automatic problem logger from Evesham, Norton Ghost etc) running I clocked a fantastic 9600 score:





So, now I'm off to run more benchmarks - which means building a minimal XP install and blowing the current MCE install away.. which means I need to make sure I have all the right drivers first! Then I'll pull the video and main board BIOS' off for you AW folks after trying coolbits and soforth, and we can go from there


One thing I have noticed - IE is pants I'm so used to Firefox now..

[edit] I thought I should probably add;

The reason this is here, and rather than in one of the general Notebook forums is that the Evesham Quest Nemesis, which is actually the Arima W830 is the same ODM laptop as the AlienWare m9700, so it's probably of most interest to those looking at the Alienware - since Evesham only ship to the UK, and the majority of members here are US based

Plus, HH said it was OK