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Intro

Well with Dell leaving the high end laptops to AW, and the apparent heat issues with the existing Dell line, I decided to make the jump from a long career of Dells into the New AW line. Sure we know Dell owns AW, but it seems the two lines have gone in different directions.

Of course the Dual GTX280 Video cards may have helped the decision, as there are few if any other laptops out there that can touch this option.

Another feature I like is when running on batteries, the laptop switched to the built in 9400 GPU to reduce the power drain on the battery.

Specs:

Nebula Red - Special Edition – Anodized Aluminum, Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) + Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Coupon

Processor Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Memory 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz – 2 x 2048MB
Mouse Pointer Mouse Pointers, Standard
LCD 17-inch WideUXGA 1920x1200 (1200p)
Video Card Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI® Enabled
Hard Drive 256GB Solid State Drive
Name Plate Standard Nameplate (Alienware M17x)
AlienFX Color Mars Red
Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) + Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Coupon

Avatar Alienhead Glow
Wallpaper Alien Cyborg
Windows Style Windows Style, Default
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0
CD ROM/DVD ROM Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Wireless Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n Wireless with MIMO Technology
Automatic Updates Automatic Updates ON
Power Plan Power Plan, Balanced
Time Zone (GMT - 5.00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Software - Antivirus McAfee® VirusScan Plus – 30-Day Free Trial (English)
Service 3 Yr Limited Warranty with 3 Yr NBD Onsite Service with Complete Care and 3 Yr Tech Support
AlienRespawn DVD AlienRespawn Image Recovery DVD
Bluetooth Internal Wireless Bluetooth® 2.1 with EDR


What's in the Box:

A double box design to protect the beast

Laptop with the cloth cover

Box with supplied accessories including AW Baseball cap. User manual. 240 watt Brick -slim line Vista Restore CD, Alien Spawn CD, System Drivers CD

Design

At first glance when i opened the box I went "WoW" the quality of the build is apparent as soon as you see this laptop, and pick it up. The second thing i said was this thing weighs a ton lol. The unit has been designed will Cooling in mind. The large air vents speak volumes to the effort put into the laptop to keep this baby cool.

The bottom access panel is the same design I saw on the M6400, which is removed by taking the battery out, and popping the two screws out to reveal the hard drives and a large fan for cooling the heat pipes. This will make cleaning a easy task.

The Red metal covers around the laptop look awesome, they look and feel high quality. Worth the extra $ 100.00 IMO

Screen:

The unit was supplied with the optional 17 inch Samsung WUXGA display. The screen is bright, and no dead pixels at this point, but I did notice a little leakage when viewing a dark screen.

Keyboard

The Keyboard is high quality, the back lighted keys look great, and of course you Can change the Color settings with the AW utility.

A separate number pad is included, along with the standard function keys, and the soft keys for the DVD drive controls, Wireless, Sound, and Multimedia Keys.

Touchpad

The touch pad works fine, but took a little getting used to, It seems almost Industrial quality, with a more rugged feel and look to it.

Features:

Multimedia Keys

there are several soft keys that control the DVD Drive, Sound, Wireless functions, and 2 programmable keys for tings like web browser and DVD player software.

LEDS

The Soft keys are all illuminated, along with the Alien head on both the top cover, and above the keyboard. The ALIENWARE name located at the bottom of the display bezel is also illuminated. Finally the front Air vents and the touch pad complete the LEDS lighting on this laptop.

Wifi –

laptop comes with built in 300 Mbit Wireless card. Windows identifies the card as a Broadcom Wireless N device.

The Wireless cards are located under the palm rest - acess can be had by removing the three screws located in the battery compartment.

The WiFi card is a half size card, the bluetooth is a full size card.

Signal levels seem good, but I will see how this does over the coming weeks in my travels.

Speakers

The laptop has 2 built in speakers which are located in the front of the laptop.

Input and Output Ports

Front:

Front panel includes the latch to open up the display, and the two lighted speaker ports on each side.

Webcam Pictures

The 2.0-mega pixel web cam and digital microphone array lets you broadcast across the web, while wireless capabilities have you up and running anytime, anywhere.

Right Side:

The Slot load DVD drive is accessed from the right side. Also found are two USB ports, 8 - 1 Multimedia Card Slot, Express card slot, Headphone jack, Mic jack, and Front speaker jack, and Sub output.


Left Side:

2 USB ports, LAN port, 1394 port, E-Sata Port, HDMI Port, Display Adapter Port, Standard VGA Port.

Rear:

Power Jack. Also uses the same Brick as the Dell M6400


Bottom:

Battery, Hard Drive Access panel. and Several Vents for air flow. it should also be noted the in this design the vents have been raised so that when the bottom of the laptop is sitting on a flat surface the air flow can be maintained.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks coming soon

Size and Weight

This is the heaviest laptop I have seen, but all that sweet metal design comes with a price, Approximate weight is 12 pounds not including the 240 watt brick.


Heat and Noise

initial observations seem to reveal a quiet and cool operating laptop, Look at the pictures of te cooling solution the CPU and each GU have thier own dedicated heat Pipes and fans.

the design of the laptop has been done with cooloing requirements in mind, and it is very evident when you open this baby up and see just how well it is built.

Battery Life

Ran the laptop for over 2.5 hours before I recieved the message to plug it in. I was using a wired lan connection and browsing the internet.

Software

I installed Windows 7 - forget Vista Crap.

Accessories

Mouse Pad, Baseball Cap.


Pros:

A true gaming laptop
Excellent Cooling design.
Best Looking laptop I have ever seen
GPU Power that rivals a desktop
Support stays with AW - although M17 latops sold with the Dell Service tag will not have access to AW's Hive. Dells site is getting setup for support for the new AW laptops. I have had several "your Service Tag is not reconzied" issues aleady though.

Cons:

No RGB LED Display option.
Only 2 memory Card Slots. This Chipset supports 4.
No Blue Ray Burner option.
DVD Drive - I am not a big fan of Slot drives, and my Studio 15 been a pain with its slot drive, I though maybe a 4K laptop should be better, but a fews days old and my slot drive has crapped out. A new one is being arranged with AW hopefully # 2 is better.


Conclusion:

Over all I am very pleased with this laptop, It looks sleek, and performs like a desktop. The weight is going to be fun with all my travels, but thats a price I am ready to pay to have a Sweet gaming laptop.

Price was $$$$ but no worse than a nicely configured Precision M6400, but the GPU options put this laptop ahead of anything else.

upgrades to a QX9300 will be the next item on my list to do.

When the 4 GB DIMMS drop to a more reasonable price, a 8 GB Config could be in the works.

I can confirm that the RGB LED display from the M6400 would not work on the M17x, the video cable arrangment is different. probably to include the secondary video feed from the built in 9400 GPU

Long wait deserves a good reward from a good review! Finally

cheers ...

I will add benchmarks over the comming days

So far Windows Experiance and HDTune for both SSD drives are attached

Cool. Don't forget my requests of reviewing the flappiness - if any - comparing to many other notebooks screens/lids (please) and the pics of the keyboard when being lit (even lighting)

cheers ...

Good review Dave!

Solid review. I agree with the weight. It weighs way more than the old Area-51 m17x. Don't know why they decided to go this way with the chassis. It's very bulky and reminds me of the old P4 AW notebooks from 2002-03.

Oh yeh, review and benchmarks indexed

I tried running 3DMark Vantage, but it locks up in Windows 7.

So i will run 3DMark06 tonght along with a few other benchmarks and see how it does Stock then OC'ed.

I don't have good success with Vantage either. It either works sometimes or doesn't work at all.

I just orderd this to go with the M17x

Alienware Orion Backpack - Fits laptops up to 17"

Very sensible for lugging it around Good for your back mate ;-)

cheers ...

I have the 2006 AND 2004 equivalent. love them both.

That is the backpack that I bought for my m9750... it does the job and there is alot of space to put other things inside besides just the laptop... I will tell you that it is a big pack and it will stand out... but a good built bag indeed.

I would suggest removing the pic with the express service code and service tag number on it.

Done, thanks I knew I was forgetting something lol