after reading wiccan's review i am remembering that my haedphone/mic ports were hard to plug thins in, but after i worked on them, things just slide in with ease, and stay in.

damn, I don't like the sound comments, is it really that bad? just like in apple macbook?

I don't think the sound is that bad at all. Sure it could be better, but it's good enough for me. I turned up the CD volume all the way, and the sound on AOE:III is fine too.

You have to go through a lot of settings to get it to work better and sound a bit louder. It could be better, by far. But hey, its a laptop.

so will it be loud enough to see movie with about 10 people?
will that be enough to use the laptop during car drive?

If the car isnt loud it should be. If not you could get an adapter to hook it up to use your car speakers. The DVD drive works great, no issues with that.

As long as you go through the settings and get it to work correctly it should be. Just be sure to turn up the volume for the correct settings in Volume Control, as well as the volume control of the program you are using for the DVD.

But it should be fine.

I'm praying mine comes tomorrow. If they truly deliver before 10:30 I'll be worried. I'll be gone to class from 9:30AM to 11AM on Tuesday, if I miss it I'll be really dissappointed.

I'm happy with the grey color. The cyborg green is pretty nice and has a great look to it, but I can't see myself bringing a green laptop into a presentation or work meeting.

I have my USB powered folding speakers, so that should take care of the sound quality for me. What settings did you fool with to increase the quality? Intel's site says the 945GM chipset supports 7.1 High Definition audio, which is what the Sentia is supposed to have.

You said the speaker/mic jacks take some force. Sounds like it's a nice secure fit, or it really takes some pushing making it inconvenient?

hey, can you give me a link to the folding usb powered speakers you have? thanks
and also I don't understand too about the sound quality, on web site it does say 7.1 Surround System

http://www.si-technologies.com/front...p?productID=39

Those are the ones I have. I love them. You can use a USB with a power adapter or it takes 4 AAA batteries. They fold flat and snap together face-to-face to protect themselves.

The USB adapater cable:

http://www.si-technologies.com/front...sp?productID=4

Those are "Gen 3", there's another "Gen 3" that are black and other cheaper versions.

It takes some force to get them in. Kinda like having to "rape" the port to get them in xD But yeah, once they are plugged in, they arnt going anywhere which is a good thing. After a few times of plugging things in it starts working out so its a bit easier to use.

The speaker issues are just the laptop sound itself. I adjusted the main volume controls and the programs I was using. Ventrilo still needed to be boosted all the way using their sound booster for some reason. Dunno, some programs run more quiet then others.

Windows Media Player did fine though, that was nice and loud.

As for the 7.1 High Definition audio, Id say its only from the headset jack to get the full ability of that. The speakers arnt the best sounding things in the world, not that they should be on a laptop anyway. But they work, guess thats fine lol.

I'm going to post some more pics up soon of the ports, and dimensions. Doing something on game in my MMO so cant work on them yet. Havent installed anything since my reformat on the Sentia except a few small things so I still havent gotten a chance to test any games out.

>.>

I also wanted to ask about the processors,
the stock one is 1.6 and there is 2.0 but for 200$, which you think I should get?

I'd suggest the 2.0GHz processor. It's another $200, but it doubles your cache from 2 to 4MB. 2.0 is the "sweet spot" for the Core 2 Duos. A lot of review/benchmarking sites say the boost from 1.66 to 2.0 is much more noticable and worthwhile than the 2.0 to the 2.33.

I forget the actual benchmarks and percentages, I'll find them and post a link.

If money is a concern, I'd say go for the 2.0GHz and cut back to the stock 512RAM and then order a 1GB stick later. Or even a pair of 2GB sticks to dual channel later down the road.

This is exactly what I did, had that "budget limit" sign over my head with wife, so opted to skip the ram (for now - ill add it later and for a much better price thru newegg vs alienware).

I got the 2.0 c2d but I did add the 100 gig 7200 rpm drive and dvd burner, overall with that limited time on the 29th that the 3450 with core2duo was showing for $749 base price (lasted only about an hour total) I just said BUY ME and never looked back...

I had to pass on the back to school bundle too since I got the faster larger hard drive but I figure now im set processor and hard drive wise, ill add a backpack flash drive and ram as time passes and money recoups.

My wife was really against me buying a laptop I had never seen in person before, I know shes very picky over the keyboards and touchpads on her laptops, I hope she doesn't like my 3450 or maybe if she does i can get the next model up and give her this one in a year LOL

Bill

More pics please!

I see, thanks, so the sound is not bad shit, I mean the alienware would still worth the money even with that sound?