Looking at m11x r3, some questions...

Hey, I posted in the "Which laptop should I buy?" section, but I figure this section could answer some of my more specific questions about the m11x. I've been looking at the Alienware m11x R3 for its portability/gaming capabilities and with the current deals I can get one with the i7, 8GB ram, killer network card, and ssd for about $1300. I have a couple questions though.

1. How durable is the the build quality?

2. Will the ULV processor be fast enough to handle music production software? I'll be using Cubase and Reason with an external sound card. For comparison, I currently use a MBP 13 with a C2D (P8400 I think?) with Logic Pro and Reason. Will the ULV at least be comparable?

3. What is the brand/model of the ssd that Dell uses?

4. Lastly, how is the heat and fan noise on the m11x r3? I'm looking for something that will be quiet under light multitasking (office software, web browsing, etc). It can be loud as it wants to be under load though, but is it more or less MBP-esque quiet at idle?

Sorry, if these questions have been asked before. I'd appreciate any help you guys could give me, thanks

 

I had the r2.

1. Build quality was solid, the hinges were fine after they were replaced.

2. In Passmark(CPU benchmark):

P8400: 1550
2357M: 1660
2467M: 2322
2617M: 2917

Even the slowest m11x processor is faster than your C2D

 

Good afternoon, I just got mine 2 weeks ago almost the exact specs as you are looking at.

1. The build quality seems pretty good with a combination of metel and plastic casing, better than I expected it will probably survive some small drops and bumps.

2. I don't know for sure but about music production but the i7 is plenty fast I can rip a dvd or convert a file format to another format about 10x as fast than on my old toughbook (1.6GHZ pentium M), so it should be at least as fast as your Mac.

3. Samsung SSD PM830 2.5" (I get approx 260Mbits/sec read/write on mine)

4. There are no heat issues while using the integrated video card and intermittent low fan noise I can hardly hear it, but while gaming with it in turbo mode with the 560M graphics it gets quite loud and to start with and even louder after you run it at 100% for a couple hours but it seems to stay nice and cool as long as you don't block the fan on the bottom.

Hope this helps you all in all I am very happy with my purchase

 

Thanks guys, those answers were really helpful. I'm pretty much decided on the m11x at this point. I did have one last question though. I read somewhere that notebooks (besides macs) would be getting the thunderbolt port this year. What exactly will be using this port and do you guys think it'd be worth it to wait?

 

The thunderbolt port will be much higher speed than usb 3.0 about 27x faster transfer capability. I think the most usefull thing to connect would be an external ssd hard drive to get maximum transfer speed. I personally would not wait for this port before buying a laptop and I think it will mainly be used by apple and not be overly adopted by pc's for at least a few years.

 

I don't think it's worth waiting for, as there aren't many devices that support TB.