m11x r2 - after 3 days (my opinion)

Ok so, at the begining of december, i decided that i needed a new laptop as my acer aspire was about 3 years old, and really isn't up to doing anything now...

Firstly, i thought to myself, how much can i afford? i set myself a target between £800-£1000.

So i started to browse the internet looking at reviews, prices etc... just to clarify, i was looking for a small laptop, portability was important, 3D work a must, quite a fair bit of gaming as im getting fed up using controllers on the ps3 for fps! lol, and various other uses. basically an *all in one portable for £1000!*

I was struggling to find something small with decent gaming really, just couldnt decide. There was a few laptops that i liked, the sony z series looked really nice! but way too much, and too big really.

Then, i thought to myself 'oh, i remember back in the days when i was desktop gaming, a company called Alienware'

So, i google Alienware, and much to my disappointment, Dell popped up!
tbh, i had bad experiences with Dell in the past, there computers really sucked! (but thats coming from someone who used to build them for half the price)

Anyway, i started to show an interest in the m11x, but there was customisation involved, and two releases of them!

After much research over the hinge issue, i5 or i7 etc... i chose the R2, i7, 4gb ram, 500gb hd, black case.

Im not too worried about the hinge, as im pretty good at looking after my stuff, but even if it is something that does develop, i'll send it back.

I was getting the i5, because the cost upgrade to i7 is ridiculous! (£190!)
but i got a discount (ESL version) which includes the i7 (awesome).

Decided to go with 4gb which is the minimum for the ESL, its sad but Dell are charging a fortune (£300!) for 8gb.

Wanted a SSD, but the price is too high atm, but definately an upgrade when they are much cheaper. Had to have the 500gb, no option for the hybrid with ESL, which later on i'm happy i didnt go with one after reading up on them.

Ordered it on the 11th December, and was given an estimated date of 3rd Janurary, after Christmas and New year the day i go back to work! how disappointing!

A few days later my order status changed to shipped! wow!
So i start tracking it... long story short... in about 4 days it goes... China-Germany-China-South Korea-China-Kazakistan-China-Germany, then our weather in the UK was terrible, so it stayed there for a couple of nights! really looked like i wasnt getting it for Christmas! then Tuesday morning it arrived in the UK!!! absolutely amazing considering the weather had made all transport utter chaos! It arrived first thing wednesday morning.

I just want to say overall, Dell did a superb job of getting it shipped that quickly, ups wanted to waste some fuel getting it here, but did a great job at the last minute lol.

One very pleased customer!

So far my opinion with the laptop is brilliant, does the job perfectly, very fast, great for gaming and 3d work, sound is excellent, screen could be better but its ok.

A great bargain for £999. would definately recommend for people that are asking the same questions i was.

If anyone wants... i will post benchmark results, just ask.

Wabbit

 

oh yeah, just to note...
BFBC2 works great at high settings
Fallout New Vegas works great high settings
Starcraft 2 works great on high, although haven't played too much yet.

I'm using the drivers from nautis thread.

 

Hey Wabbit,

Nice post, glad to hear your enjoying your purchase. A few thoughts:

Best not to get the 8GB ram from Dell, it is a rip-off. For half the price of the upgrade you can get 8GB of better memory from NewEgg.

As for the SSD, you can get a 120 GB from NewEgg as well for a good price, the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB is not huge, but it's a good price.

Either way, you will enjoy your new toy!

 

What do you mean the Hybrid is ??? I've got a Momentus XT hybrid and its the fastest HDD in the world! I've never had any problems, Windows loads within 24 seconds from pressing the button and everything runs super quick and smooth, much much more so than any HDD I've ever had, perhaps apart from my WD Raptors which are on par.
It won't beat an SSD but then again you're not paying insane amounts for less than stellar capacity but just a tiny amount more than normal HDDs.

DEFO worth every penny, best decision I've made with the hybrid drive!

Yeah but don't forget Docsteel that he calculates in POUNDS which probably means he's in the UK like me - we don't have Newegg

 

you can haggle the momentus xt hard drive with the esl option

I just kept saying why would you not offer the hybrid drive with the esl version is there any reason for it ? and then he said he can give me it with esl version

xD

plus military discount 6 % and i got the portfolio case all for £965

I would have said yes straight away but i am holding back for ces 2011 :C

i reckon you could gt the hybrid drive on yours if you returned and re-ordered only puts the price up by £20 when i did it

 

Ive also wanted an SSD but they are too expensive and I dont want to sacrifice storage space just for some more speed when my M11x runs amazing already with 500GB

 

If you have a R2 model, why are you using Nautis' drivers? The whole point of Optimus is you can simply download nVidia's and Intel's latest drivers, seperately, without needing specially made drivers, like in the past.

 

Nautis' drivers allow you to play punkbuster games which would otherwise be unplayable with 260.99 drivers.

 

No NewEgg.... man that would be tough... surely there is a UK-accessible alternative..?

 

umm...Amazon.co.uk? Dabs.com? Not as cheap though. We can't compete with US prices. They charge almost the equivalent in pounds, ie $1000 US, dell uk charges 1000 POUNDS! Which is about 1900 dollars....for the same thing essentially. Cause its a small island. And because dell still punishes UK for war of independece 300 years ago...

 

i would love to get an ssd, but as said, the space on my laptop is most important at the moment, after 4 days, i have over 100gb on it already. A 320 gb ssd would be ok, but ideally a 500gb, which costs a fortune right now.

And i'm using those graphics drivers so i can play bfbc2.

 

SSD's are fast. They are FAST. In the areas that actually matter (random read speeds, IOPS) they are literally 100x faster than mechanical drives. Going from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD is like going from a 56K dial-up modem to a 5Mbps broadband connection.

The two sacrifices you make for this monumental performance improvement is cost and storage capacity. The cost issue will vary from person-to-person. It all depends on how much an individual is willing to pay for the luxury of performance. But the storage capacity issue is a different story.

Anyone who has bought an SSD was forced to look at the way they store content. Everyone got so used to incredibly cheap large-capacity hard drives, that we just installed every single application we own or copied every single file we have onto a hard drive.

But when you consider SSD's, you start thinking about what you NEED to have on your laptop's internal drive versus what is simply nice-to-have. You NEED to store your OS, the apps you commonly use, the games that you frequently play, and the media (music, videos, etc) that you commonly access.

You don't need to store every single DVD rip you own on the laptop's internal drive. You don't need to install every single game you ever bought through Steam on your laptop's internal drive, especially games that you haven't touched in over 2 months. You don't need to store every single MP3 from your music collection onto your laptop's internal drive. All of that stuff can be stored on an external USB drive, where you get the benefits of a low-price large capacity mechanical drive. And you don't sacrifice performance when you do that. An MP3 or a DVD rip will play equally well regardless of whether it sits on a fast SSD or on the world's slowest 5400rpm drive running over USB 2.0.

So, if you are able to make this distinction between what you NEED to have on your laptop's internal drive vs. what is nice-to-have, and can get it down below 120GB, then you can definitely learn to live around the storage limitations of an SSD for the sake of the massive speed improvements.

 

while i understand the speed increase, the space is still far too important to sacrifice for me... ive lived in the past with computers juggling space constantly, and its such a pain in the @$$, other than gaming etc... i work with alot of huge images and some video.

120gb just wouldnt be enough... yes, superfast.. but too small.

I'm sure giving it a few months SSD's will become more and more cheaper as all products do, and i'm happy to wait

Wabbit

 

Makes sense to me. Just wanted to bring up some points that you wanted to consider, but it sounds like you're already one step ahead of me!

I think we're all waiting for the day when a 256GB or 512GB SSD drops below $200. That would be an incredible moment.

 

For those looking for a deal I used Quidco and got 10% back.

Check out Throttlestop to get the most out of that i5 (or i7)

 

I agree with the SSD, to expensive and less space with a decent price, those are great for a boot/app in a desktop, having a 64GB for boot and a 500GB for the rest, but for a laptop, IMO size is better...