Alienware M11x gaming ultraportabe was 5 years in the making

OK, Alienware and Dell haven’t really been working on the recently announced Alienware M11x thin and light gaming laptop for 5 years. But according to a post on the Direct2Dell blog today, Alienware was working on a small form factor gaming rig back in 2005, a year before Dell bought the company.

Unfortunately, the tech at the time just wasn’t up to snuff. But over the past few years we’ve seen some pretty significant advances in the thin and light space. Relatively low power, high performance chips are pretty common. And the Alienware M11x will be one of the first devices to bundle an Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor with NVIDIA 335M graphics.

The laptop has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, and is about the size of an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper. Oh yeah, and it can play modern games including Call of Duty 4, Left 4 Dead 2, and probably even some games that don’t have numbers in the titles.

We still don’t have a launch date or final price for the M11x, but it’s expected to go for under $1000. You can check out a video of the gaming machine in action after the break.

Update: Engadget noticed that if you peek at the source code on the M11x page, you’ll find that it will likely have a starting price of $799.

Posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010, 5:00 pm by Brad Linder

borax99 (Alain C.)

I *almost* care.
aexley

Engadget [ http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/28/alienwares-m... ] is reporting that tucked away in the page-source is the following line:

“The Alienware M11x, with over 6.5 hours of battery life and weighing under 4.5 lbs. will start at an amazing $799! Leave it to the folks at Alienware to enable truly mobile performance gaming at an affordable price.”

Went to the page myself and viewed the source. It's still there.

Worried a bit about heat, but otherwise this seems like a pretty slick machine (looks aside).
KitchenCookiesRock

I wouldn't worry about the heat. Check out the ul30vt… and I can't imagine the 335M is going to be THAT much hotter than the 210m.
Nunya

Everybodys not printing anything useful….like specs that wont be released till Dell says so. So just keep putting your garbage out! LAME!!!!
gman

I think an 11″ computer that does gaming well, will be a big seller. It may be tough for this thing to compete against ION 2 netbooks. A lot of people want a gaming rig that they can take with them. What options are there? Next to none. Nvidia is trying but Intel isn't helping them bring that to 11″ and 12″ Atom computers.
http://www.gaminggalaxy.com/ gaming galaxy

This is really a gift. Amazing style. I just went through sites to see the customer report of this product. All positive. I give 5/5
NUNYA

CUSTOMER REPORT?????? ARE YOU SERIOUS GAMING GALAXY???? ITS NOT EVEN OUT YET!!!!!!!!! HOW IN THE WORLD COULD “CUSTOMERS” “REPORT” ON SOMETHING THEY DO NOT YET OWN???????
KitchenCookiesRock

There are lots of portable computers which will play games at low/medium quality. There aren't many laptops under $2000 that will play recent games on high/very high. There just aren't many (or very few) under $800, and that isn't going to change. You must be purposefully avoiding research for portable machines with a little bit of graphics oomph – AMD ships virtually all their low end machines with a 3200HD – not great, but enough for low/med quality and resolution.
KitchenCookiesRock

Nvidia isn't helping Nvidia bring gaming to 11 and 12 inch computers. Are you informed about why they're not licensing the latest technology from intel? It's because they're cheap, and think they should get it for free. Of course intel isn't going to give away their IP – why should we expect them to voluntarily give a competitor an edge? If anything, you should contact NVIDIA and complain to them for being frustrating.
http://liliputing.com/ Brad Linder

I believe that is what we refer to as comment spam. Removing it now.
Mikez

Although low keyed, this is probably more significant news than all of the
bandwidth wasted on the iGotta, iHave iT hype lately.

For the past two plus years of NetBooks, one of the most common questions
has been: “Can I game on it?”
Now here is a manufacturer that is going to take a shot at building such a machine.
Some other company missed the boat when they did not come out with an
iGamer rather than an iToo iBig iPhone.
http://scottsoapbox.com Scott

For $800 I'm sold… dang, and I was going to order my 1810T today… sigh more waiting.
pauli

it's (better than) exactly what i've been waiting for. it's also more expensive than what i've been waiting for. i still have to see how the ion2/gt310m stuff turns out.
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Corinn

Eh.. G 310M is basically nothing more than a G 210M with a slightly faster shader clock. Both are based on the GT218 core and there's no die shrink or anything between the 210M and the 310M.

The GT 335M in the M11x, on the other hand? Should be about equal to a Mobility Radeon 4650!
Corinn

G 310M: 16 stream processors
GT 335M: 48 stream processors, and much higher clocked.

GT 335M is equal in power to an ATI Mobility Radeon 4650… heat was probably one of Dell's biggest hurdles in designing this machine.
KitchenCookiesRock

You're assuming that dell HAS overcome the hurdles in heat dissipation. Search notebookreview for studio 15/17 and xps 16 heat problems. Hopefully it's more alienware than dell.
Adam

From a Dell insider:

he official specs of the M11x are as follows:

OS:
Windows 7

Processor:
Intel® Pentium® Dual Core – 1.3Ghz 2MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor – 1.3Ghz 3MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB

Chipset:
Mobile Intel® GS45 Express Chipset

Memory:
DDR3 1066 MHz SODIMMs – 2Gb min and 8Gb max

Hard Drive:
160 GB, 5400 rpm
250 GB, 7200 rpm
320 GB, 7200 rpm
500 GB, 7200 rpm
256 GB Solid State HDD

LCD:
11.6– inch WLED 1366×768 (COLOR TFT/HD LCD)

Video:
Switchable between Integrated Intel® GMA 4500MHD and NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 335M discrete
Integrated: 384 MB shared
Discrete: 1 GB DDR3

Camera:
1.3 Megapixel

Audio:
Realtek ALC665

Media:
External Only

Bluetooth:
Foxconn Bluetooth V2.1+EDR (Broadcom chipset)

NIC:
10/100Mbps, Atheros AR8132 LAN Controller

I/O:
3-in-1 card reader
VGA port
RJ-45 Jack for LAN(10/100)
HDMI port
Display port
USB(x3) Card Reader 3-in-1
IEEE1394a
Microphone-in
Two Headphone-out jacks

Modem and IR:
None

A/C:
65 Watt AC Adapter (Small)

Battery:
8 cell lithium ion 63WHr

Weight:
1.99 kg (4.39 lb) with 8-cell battery

Keyboard:
Illuminated

Alien FX:
Blue (Default)
Optional – Red, Lime, White, Yellow, Fuchsia, Aqua, Indigo

Dimensions:
Height : 32.7 mm (1.29 inches)
Width : 285.7 mm (11.25 inches)
Depth : 233.3 mm (9.19 inches)
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MonkeyKing1969

At 11″ and 4.39 lbs it is a huge brick of a system. I just don't think I would enjoy carrying that around even if I didn't carry it around much. Also, I'm just not a fan of the way Alienware designs ist notebook cases. They are too weird and blocky, like they are going for a neo-gothic look.
TrackSmart

Wow. Thanks for the insider specs!

The weight puts this in an awkward position. 4.4 pounds is heavy for an ultraportable of any kind. And that's *really heavy* for an 11.6″ machine. I can only hope that spec is wrong, because that really kills the portability factor. At that point, you might as well get a lighter weight 13″ machine.
TrackSmart

Wow. Thanks for the insider specs!

The weight puts this in an awkward position. 4.4 pounds is heavy for an ultraportable of any kind. And that's *really heavy* for an 11.6″ machine. I can only hope that spec is wrong, because that really kills the portability factor. At that point, you might as well get a lighter weight 13″ machine.
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Alienware M11x gaming ultraportabe was 5 years in the making

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