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Alienware Aurora m9700 17-inch Notebook
Page 10 of 12 General Use Using the Aurora m9700 for day-to-day computing was no different from using a desktop, and a high-end one at that. I cannot think of a higher compliment: this really is a portable, full-size, desktop computer. The high-speed hard drives in a striped RAID are probably the main reason for the Aurora's snappiness, and almost make that part of the configuration mandatory. It's not all that easy, though. My primary gripe is the resolution of the display. What I'd normally say is an optimal workspace resolution (I really like 1920x1200) was compressed by the rules of scale; given that a 1920x1200 display is normally 24" across, shrinking down to 17" made reading stuff an annoying, squinting affair. The display also adds a lot to the price of the computer, so there's a doubly-good reason to stick with the default, lower-resolution 1440x900 display. The display is the high-contrast-high-gloss variety, which has a bright enough lamp in it that it was still very visible outside, in the sun. I bitch about how it's implemented, but the display itself is outstanding; there weren't any signs of ghosting, shadowing, or other artifacts. The full-size keyboard was comfortable, and having a real numpad was a constant reminder of how nice it is to have one. The touchpad area, smooth and flush with the wristrest area, is very large and easy to use. The mouse button clicked without too much force, and even though there was one physical tab to operate left- and right-click, I didn't have a problem left-clicking when I wanted to left-click and vice-versa. Incidentally, the laptop's wristrest is large enough to accommodate a mouse like a mousepad and type on at the same time. The row of media and function keys at the top looks great, and has buttons for running the browser, email client, and Windows Media Center, and also has play/pause, skip forward, and skip backward media keys. It took me a while to figure out that the battery life was gauged by the frequency at which the power light blinked. When it starts blinking fast, it's in trouble. The computer doesn't have battery-monitoring software; it just uses Windows XP’s included power management. This is fairly innocuous, because the computer isn't exactly made to go far on battery life alone; it should be plugged in at all times. For kicks, I tried using it on my lap. That lasted a whole of twenty minutes. Even if the bean-roasting was tolerable, the weight of it almost numbed my legs, and drove up my blood pressure dangerously high. Just...just keep it on the desk. Gaming Surprisingly, gaming wasn't exemplary with this computer. Depending on SLI to deliver the frames is not as good as simply including a better video card. Unfortunately, right now, the Aurora is only available with GeForce Go 7900GS video cards, either the 256MB or 512MB versions. This computer really needs the much more powerful Go 7950 GTX, one of which would outperform two 7900GSs in SLI, and with two in SLI, this "laptop" would have the gaming potential to match its looks and, perhaps more importantly, its resolution. In order to achieve decent framerates, even with the best possible set of video cards, I had to drop the resolution quite a bit. For that reason, I'd also recommend going with the lower resolution display. I have to assume that Alienware is working on adding 8-series video cards, or making a new model Aurora with them, which should improve things to a certain degree, however, if they don't offer a high-end video card configuration, the computer will still not be able to play intensive games at the display's native resolution. It's worth mentioning that by default, SLI was disabled. A little silly, but practical in that it extends the battery life by a few minutes.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks Page 3: Test Setup Page 4: Testing - HL2 Episode 1 Page 5: Testing - F.E.A.R. Page 6: Testing - Company of Heroes Page 7: Testing - Prey Page 8: Testing - Need for Speed Most Wanted Page 9: Testing - 3DMark 06 Page 10: Performance Summary Page 11: Performance Summary, Continued... Page 12: Conclusion
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