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Alienware MX11 for school?

B

BoBoish

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
67
Hi all. I'm on the hunt for a smallish laptop for school. I'm of course looking for the most bang for the buck in a smaller package that's easier to lug around. Does the MX11 fit the bill? It's a little smaller than I was originally wanting (originally looking at 13-14" laptops). Is it hard to type on? I've read the battery life and everything is fine, so no concerns there...but how about the noise factor? If I'm just taking notes and doing general net surfing, will the fan kick on?

I honestly don't particularly care about the gaming aspect of the laptop...but figure if it's there, it doesn't hurt and I may eventually use it (already have a desktop for gaming, but I could see times I might want to play on the laptop).

Currently, there's a Dell outlet 20% coupon...so I could get an R1 MX11 for $560 (after tax, live in TX) with a 1-year warranty or $670 with a 2-year in-home warranty (might pony up the extra $60 and extend it to 3-year just to be safe). Is there anything else for that price that would compare?

EDIT: Forgot about the additional cost for an external DVD drive...so tacking on an additional $40 or so for that drives the cost up to $700-ish. It just seems like there should be more options in that price range for a smaller but decently powerful laptop, but I'm just not finding many that don't include integrated graphics (and I figure I might as well go for the laptop with dedicated graphics if prices are equal). The Envy is appealing to me, but that jumps up to $900 and is more than I'm wanting to spend. Dell has the XPS 14, but again that's more than I'm wanting to spend. They have the Studio 14 in their outlet (one with a dedicated graphics card, and it looks appealing...but I'm not finding much in the way of real reviews).
 
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Well, if you're not going to game there's really better options elsewhere that are lighter and have better battery life.

Some others to consider would be a used Thinkpad X200 (however, no touchpad, Trackpoint only), or look for a Dell Latitude E6410 in their Outlet.
 
Thanks guys!...I hadn't even thought about looking at the business laptops.

I wound up ordering a Vostro 3300 from their business outlet, which fits the bill perfectly with a 13-inch matte screen, a weight of 4 1/2 pounds, Core i5, 4GB RAM, 320GB 7200 hard drive, dedicated 512 MB Nvidia 310M (not great, but better than integrated), upgraded 8-cell battery, 8X DVD drive, Wireless-N, backlit keyboard, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I added on a 3-year on-site warranty and it all totaled out to $670 with a 15% off coupon (before taxes).

From reviews, the Vostro's not quite as solid as a Latitude, but still better than the consumer-grade laptops...and I got the specs I wanted without the compromises I would have had to make to get a Latitude in my price range.

Thanks again!
 
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