At 4:45 pm PST last night my Alienware M11x was delivered by Fed-Ex. I apologize that I was unable to do a live unboxing for it as I did not have the equipment nor the time to do so where I was and I had to use it at a meeting.
(pardon the cord mess) All of that aside, I have spent the last evening and morning testing it and putting it through its paces. I am in the process of running the battery down for the first time and I never thought I would actually sit here and wish the battery would die so I could charge it back up to take with me. To give you an idea what I've been doing to run the battery down. I did want to test the longevity with lots of things hooked up, so I set the power to battery saver, turned the brightness all the way down, but left Bluetooth, WiFi and fancy system lights on. I also plugged in 2 external hard drives, a flash drive, a secure digital card, an external monitor, a Logitech g15 keyboard, and a Razer DiamondBack 3G mouse. With all of that going, transferring files, streaming pandora, and writing code for a website, I have been here for over 4 hours waiting with about 30 minutes remaining. Just think how long it might have gone had I just had the laptop.
My initial impression from the feel is the weight gives it a sturdy feel, much like the Motorola Droid, which I also use heavily. The AlienSense software (facial recognition login) has been very reliable in my testing and has logged me, and only me into the system. I had a couple friends try to login in using the facial recognition, however it locked them out. I could see potential problem if you didn't want an identical twin getting in, but in that case I don't think you'd be using facial recognition anyway. The system on battery saver is still incredibly quick and responsive. Turning up the power and doing best performance and switching on the dedicated Nvidia GT335M gives a great boost and Portal looked great. I am going to head over to the game shop and pick up Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2, and maybe some other games, right after I go gank some noobs on World of Warcraft.
Keep checking back for more reviews and information!
(pardon the cord mess) All of that aside, I have spent the last evening and morning testing it and putting it through its paces. I am in the process of running the battery down for the first time and I never thought I would actually sit here and wish the battery would die so I could charge it back up to take with me. To give you an idea what I've been doing to run the battery down. I did want to test the longevity with lots of things hooked up, so I set the power to battery saver, turned the brightness all the way down, but left Bluetooth, WiFi and fancy system lights on. I also plugged in 2 external hard drives, a flash drive, a secure digital card, an external monitor, a Logitech g15 keyboard, and a Razer DiamondBack 3G mouse. With all of that going, transferring files, streaming pandora, and writing code for a website, I have been here for over 4 hours waiting with about 30 minutes remaining. Just think how long it might have gone had I just had the laptop.
