I got my new laptop earlier this month, and have got it finally setup just how I want it. It took ages because I'm very fussy, and windows 7 took absolutely ages to get right, and even died once for no apparent reason and I had to start all over again, reloading gigs and gigs of games! The continuous restarts were absolute torture, and then hours of updates and reboots, each time praying that it didn't mess itself up :
I don't understand how businesses can take that OS seriously, I really don't!
I use windows to play certain games that unfortunately don't work under wine or emulation, and use Linux for everything else, and especially Internet related stuff because of the security it provides.
PCLOS was an absolute breeze to setup and looks (in my opinion) absolutely stunning, and works perfectly. The only "interesting" bit was getting my speakers to mute when I plugged the headphones in, but I got fast and friendly help from a user here on the forums and all is now perfect
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So here are a few shots of my desktop using a wallpaper that came with my "games OS" because I happen to like it
...and for anyone who is interested I took some pics of both my old HP laptop and the new Alienware comparing the two side by side.
http://christiane.homeip.net/screenshots/alien/I spent months researching which laptop I would buy, because as anyone who has bought one will tell you, you have to buy what you want as you will be stuck with it for a very long time. Two and a half years in my case because my wife says it has to last me at least that long
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I wrote down what features I needed, and what I wanted, then went about fitting a laptop to those specs. It was a very hard job, as no company makes exactly what I wanted, and there are quite a few models out there that came so close, but no cigar. Mostly failing because they only provide ridiculously small screens (big in size, but small in resolution - what is the point of a 1680 x 945 18.4 inch screen? Ludicrous!!).
It's a real shame that laptop manufacturers don't actually ASK their customers what they want
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My criteria were:
1. Good gaming video card.
2. Big screen with useful resolution (1080 pixels minimum height).
3. Minimum two hard disks, so I can swap one out later for an SSD.
4. Backlit keyboard. This is extremely important as I like to play games or watch movies/TV shows in bed/the dark.
5. No "dust collector" screen. We all know how irritating it is to have to constantly keep cleaning dust out of that awful gap around the screen, don't we? A lot of newer laptops have a nice flush edge-to-edge one-piece screen with no nasty joins
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6. Slot loading DVD drive. I bought a pioneer slot-loading drive way back in 1997 for my desktop, it was the best experience I ever had with an optical drive (hate the things!). Pure luxury in my book, and I wanted it again.
7. Maximum €1500.
The Dell Alienware M17X fitted the bill almost perfectly. I could have got a better video card, but fortunately these beasts have MXM type 3 slots (yes, two of 'em
), and so I can possibly swap it out at a later date when I have some spare cash. Although the ATI 4850 works very well at the moment and is good enough for my needs.
I really wanted an 18.4 inch screen, as found on my second choice, the Acer Aspire 8943g. But after seeing the low quality of the screen (and the laptop in general), I compromised here with the Dell's 1920 x 1200 pixel 17 inch. This is an LED screen, and the colours are amazingly bright and vibrant, and text is razor sharp at full res, something that non-LED's can't even get close to. Although you can't really see how amazing it is in the pictures I took, because my camera is not so good.
The wireless card is a cheap Broadcom BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n, but it works out-of-the-box with PCLOS, and I mostly get around 6 Megs/sec downloads from my wireless router, so it's just bearable. I will be swapping it out soon for an Intel 5300 which should beef me up to 9 Megs/sec. Quite a difference when you try to transfer 2gig files!
So all in all I'm extremely happy with my Alien, sorry for ranting on, it's a bit like being a proud father I guess
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Regards, Kev
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