My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

I love this thing...a little review I posted to the geek boards:


First, I'd like to thank the following folks at AW:

Assembler Initials: RR

Tester Initials: AI

You made an OUTSTANDING product and I'm an EXTREMELY
satisfied customer.

Now...to the short and sweet review.

I ordered my lappy on 4 Oct and it shipped on 16 Oct, reaching
my home in Los Angeles on Saturday, 21 October 2006 @ 1145am.
I've had it for almost a week and all I have to say is this
thing ROCKS!!!!!!! Pics can be found HERE.

What I got:

Conspiracy Blue
Aurora m9700
AMD Turion™64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache
Genuine Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2
17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology
2GB Dual Channel DDR SO-DIMM at 400MHz - 2 x 1024MB
60GB Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s 5,400 RPM w/ NCQ & 8MB Cache (have a 500GB Western Digital MyBook External HD )
8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW & 24X CD-RW
Dual 512MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS - SLI Enabled
Internal 802.11b/g WiFi Card
Integrated 10/1000Mb Gigabit Ethernet & 56K V.92 Modem
Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit

These are my stock benchmarks (below) as run by the good
folks at AW.

3DMark 2005
Burn-In/Benchmarks
Doom 3 97.0 fps

3DMark Score: 9,847.00 3DMarks

GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 37.39 FPS

GT2 - Firefly Forest: 29.66 FPS

GT3 - Canyon Flight: 55.09 FPS

CPU Tests

CPU Score: 4,448.00 CPUMarks

CPU Test 1: 2.23 FPS

CPU Test 2: 3.94 FPS

I actually ran 3DMark05 on the laptop when I got
it and I scored over 10K, but I didn't do a screen shot before
I started loading up my programs/games. The screen shots you
see are 3DMark05 & 3DMark06 with all the stuff loaded on my lappy.

I have the following main games/programs loaded:

1. F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon)
2. Half-Life 1 & 2 Game of the Year Edition
[includes Counter-Strike: Source;
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch; and Half-Life: Source]
3. Doom 3
4. Quake 1 - 4
5. Risk II
6. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
7. Soldier of Fortune
8. Steganos Security Suite SE--good stuff for encryption
9. Office XP
10. Norton AV Corporate Edition v10.1
11. Various DVD ripping/editing programs
12. Flash Professional 8
13. FrontPage
14. Dreamweaver 8
15. Photoshop
16. Zone Alarm Professional

This is my first experience owning an AW and I look forward
to being a long term customer. Excellent product!

~Stephanie

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

17 inch screen on a laptop? How big/heavy is that mother? I recently bought Sony's new FE series Viao as my new comp with the standard 15.4 screen and find it the perfect mix of portability and power. My old desktop had an AMD processor and i liked it, but Intel's Core 2 Duo chips are awesome.

I dont CPU game as much as i used to, but this thing handles them better than my old desktop. Definitely not as well as yours, though. You cant beat Sony's screen, however, they are certainly the best out there.

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

yeah i have been waiting patiently on the market to come out with everything i want in a laptop. i currently have a desktop puttin up a 9946 3dmark05 score and 4966 score on 3dmark06. my deal with the laptops now is, dell has the best processor.period. and i am a amd guy. and alienware has very good cards, but could be a lil better and run the gtx's. and i like the dell for its ram options of 4gb's. and another thing is when the new windows comes out they are going to have to make (which they already are) new video cards to support directx 10. only a few select cards can run it now..but will not use it to its max. so im waiting for vista to come out and hoping that the new alein ware will have the 7950 sli'd cards with a very strong intel precessor. but very nice computer you got there over all..have fun with it.

steve

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

Sony markets the laptop as "Vista Ready", whatever that means. It came with XP Media Center, so i assume a flat upgrade software purchase is all i'll need and not need to mess with any hardware.

I like AMD's, too. They are better for gaming and are much cheaper. When i build my old desktop i went that route and everything worked fine all the time.

All i cared about for the laptop as far gaming was to run HL2 (and my other steam games) and luckily it does with good performance, i dont have the benchmark software so i'm not sure what it would score. No where near your numbers, though.

Looks like we fit both our needs, laptop variety is endless out there!

EDIT:: Oh yeah, and i hate Dell and their XPS laptops. They are huge, chunky, and ugly. Plus, I think Dell skimps out on thing like keyboard durability, touchpad quality, and i've never seen a Dell harddrive last longer than a year and a half.

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

Actually, it's lighter than I expected it to be. As for portability, I don't think the AW laptops are marketed for that....strictly gaming. I only took it to work with me to load up some encryption programs so I can access secure DoD sites with my ID card. Other than that, it's either going to be at home with me or at the local coffee shop for gaming night.

The AW screen is pretty good...the screen shots don't do it justice. The 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology screen is far beyond the capabilities of some of the games I have (some max out at 1600x??). When I enable the dual video cards, it gets pretty interesting.

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

Yeah, there were some folks waiting for Vista to come out so the new AW's can run it. From my experience with Microsoft, I never purchase any of their products the first year it comes out. I wait until they at least plug up most of the massive security holes inherent to their products. By the time a decent product rolls out, I'll be ready for a new AW as their products, like most computers, are constantly being updated. I plan to have a LOT of fun with my M9700....I've already got a group together that I'll host. A couple of the games allow me to run a dedicated server with password join option. I've got a 1GBps connection and I think this lappy can handle it so I'm looking forward to the next frag party :D

P.S. For Flip...Dell bought AW earlier this year, but Dell is marketing the AW line as strictly gamer desktops/laptops.

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

2 things. how much was it. and why no World of Warcraft

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

A little over $3,500.

Because until I saw that South Park episode, I didn't know what the heck WoW was :D The last time I played a fantasy type game like that, it was Diablo. I'm more into first-shooter, military strategy type games....gonna get Day of Defeat and Tour of Duty next :D

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

no bf2 or 2142?

i have not played 2142 yet, but bf2 was off the chain. i need more ram in my comp before i try to play again.

RE: My New Toy--Alienware Aurora M9700 Laptop
 

I'm a WOW crackhead, but I am weaning myself off it slowly. My thirteen year old got me hooked, and we play together (he lives with his mom). Anyway, that AW sounds like the ticket...but I sure can do a lot of F4i mods with $3500! Corbin seat, devilbikes undertail, vortex sliders, winter gear...I could go on and on! Stephy, your my kind of gal. Sportbike rider and a gamer...sweet!