Dell Alienware M11x Review: Portable Gaming Heaven?
When I was considering taking a year off, I started looking around for a computer that I could take with me on my travels around the world; a laptop. I started with the tiny and cheap eeePC, the first of the netbooks, and I was happy with it. That is until I tried to run my camcorder software, which stubbornly refused to work with such a low end graphics card. So I turned to a Samsung Q45. The provided me with a machine that covered my travelling bases. However, since returning from Japan, I have been getting tired of it. I need a new machine. I need a (little) monster that can do everything.
Requirements.
So, I need a new laptop, one that covers all my specific bases. What those bases are has an influence on what I think of the machine in this review so I list them here.
1. It must be portable. This is the most important thing in a laptop. The machine must be light enough for me to be able to carry it to work every day. I have an 80 minute journey on the intercity train into London from Ipswich so a laptop cannot be too large in size or I will not be able to fit it in the small space afforded. Sometimes I see a person with a 17inch Macbook on the train. If someone sitting next to them wanted to use a laptop as well, they can forget it. Fur will fly before you manage to squeeze two machines into that space. Then, I have a 1.5 mile walk from Liverpool Street to London Bridge. So any machine of mine must be light enough to not hurt my shoulder after this distance. These are the portability tests I will be using. They are a little more “real world” than just weighing the machine, as would some other reviewers, but that it how we roll on the OC.
2. It must be powerful. My passion is being creative in my spare time. I write, I paint, I make films, etc. My current laptop runs Office just fine, but it struggles when rendering films in Sony Vegas. In fact I often have to leave it overnight to complete a high quality version of a film and it crashes with alarming regularity. So, my new purchase must be able to power through rendering in Vegas and in my new suite of Adobe Première. The other aspect to this is that I used to be a gamer, a big gamer. As raid master of the Hooded Nomads guild I ran a high end rig to support operations in Star Wars Galaxies, Crysis and Eve. I need those FPS! My current machine, as fine as the processor is, cannot even run Mount and Blade. I want something that will nail both requirements.
3. It must have a long lasting battery. My Samsung has a good battery, but nothing to write home about. I can squeeze out something like 3 hours in Windows 7 (which is excellent at battery management compared to Vista). However, Cesca –my wife– can make her Macbook Pro last all damn day. Any machine I buy will have to outperform the Samsung and give a £2000 Macbook a run for its money. A tall order.
4. It must output to a TV. While small screen gaming is sweet on the go and on the lap, I want to be able to run this baby by a bigger screen for when at home. I have a LG 26 inch 1080p LCD TV, so we shall see what picture we can get up.
5. It must be good value for money. Cheap, like the budgie, is the motto. I don’t want to spend £2000 on a laptop, I don’t want to buy anything that expensive that could be dropped! The price/performance ratio is a vital metric.
So with those 5 requirements in mind, what to buy?
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There is a popular, and perhaps even factual adage, which goes like this:
“Never upgrade a Windows product; always do a fresh install”
Today I put that to the test. I have been Installing and configuring Windows since the days of 3.1. My first exposure to the product range was Windows 2, which my father had on his PC. My first professional exposure was the task of migrating 3.1 to Windows 95 at Spandex Plc in Bristol, way back when I was only a 14 year old IT intern. Since then I have developed a career in IT and now, at 32, have a Chartered IT Professional award from the British Computer Society. I say this, because it is important that my background and knowledge level is clear.
This is as much a guide as anything else, so in that spirit here is what you need to do to upgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.
Things to consider.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Rule 1: Don't antagonize alien super-robots!
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Cesca and I sat in the heat of the Mumbai movie theatre around the corner from the Victoria Station – that defining landmark at the centre of the city – and waited for the film to start. All around us were packed in hundreds of the Mumbai crowd. I scanned their faces. The film was in English with no subtitles, other than those found in the international edition, so most of the audience were those more educated types who understand English very well. None-the-less, I was sure that all over the city a large variety of people packed in to cinemas and movie houses to see this film and its greatest star.
The city of Mumbai itself.
We had wandered around this blend of rich textures and smells, that passes for a modern enlightened city, for two days now and I still found it hard to get a handle on. Millions live here of all financial levels, seemingly divided by success and yet managing to live together. To some this is a dangerous cocktail that after a few days has you tearing your hair out, but I’m from another city alike this one; London; and I know how to stop a city from getting to you.
Or at least I thought I did.
The film features scenes of the harshest looking kinds; shanty towns, rubbish dumps, concrete jungles, disgusting garbage and kids begging on the streets. It is a testament to the film’s quality and reality that the young beggars all look exactly like the little fellow that was yanking on my arm only a few hours earlier, asking for a dollar.
Not since Children of God, the film that told the story of Rio, has a film so nailed the sense of a city. For while Slumdog Millionaire is a fictional story, it has a real smell of truth about it. Make no bones, this is a movie that isn’t afraid to make your stomach turn and your heart break.
The story is simple enough; a young man is doing very well on the Indian version of “Who wants to be a millionaire?” The police however know that he is a simple boy from the rough part of town; a slumdog; and shouldn’t be able to answer such hard questions correctly. They arrest him for cheating and, after torturing him mercilessly, take him through his questions as he explains how his past enabled him to simply know the answers.
His past is relived by us in colourful, horrible, smart, loving, flashbacks that are full of loss, life, hate, pain, tears and the inevitability that a slumdog is inherently a nobody. The final question changes from “will he win the million?” to “will he win the love of the girl?”
Of course there is a girl involved. I did say that the story was simple. There is even a dance number at the end, over the credits.
Slumdog Millionaire showed me more of the soul of Mumbai than I had gleaned in my two days visiting the city as a tourist. It showed me the underbelly; the necessity of crime to survive in a place that can be so grim and yet, somehow, so beautiful. In the end the story is perfect for Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, in that it is a romantic love story and thankfully a really good one.
We both loved the film immensely, the acting is uniformly great and the romance believable and so recommend it whole heartedly. 8.
Regards,
Basho
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