some pre-sales questions on the inferno 11.6 laptop

[danmid]

Hi,

I am seriously considering buying an 11.6" inferno to replace my Alienware M11X. I sent a few pre-sales enquiries to the email address but thought I might benefit from posting them here as well

My m11x r3 whilst being a great machine, has a couple of minor issues with it which I am hoping are not the case with the inferno.

1) Booting USB 3.0 devices from USB 3.0 ports? My M11X is capable of booting from USB 2.0 devices in any port of it's 3 ports, but does not like booting from USB 3.0 devices (on the occasions where it does work, it only boots in legacy 2.0 support mode? Does this work with the Inferno?

2) USB charging. Does the inferno have an option to allow one or more of the ports to be used for charging USB devices when the laptop is switched off? The M11x has this and it's a great feature.

3) 2nd Mini-PCI express slot cannot be used for bootable SSD in the M11X.
- Does the inferno have 1 or 2 MiniPCIe slots?
- If two, is one of them free?
- If I get a MiniPCIe SSD drive, will the BIOS allow me to use this as the boot device? (i.e. 256GB SSD for boot, and large SATA for storage?)

4) TIM. When I got my M11X it was prone to overheating. This was because of very badly applied TIM on the heatsink for the CPU and GPU.
- If I opt for the higher grade TIM in the build configurator, will this be applied to a high standard as part of the build?

5) Battery life. The M11X battery life is superb. With the spec I have chosen (detailed below), can anyone advise how much battery life I might expect for normal usage / gaming usage?

6) If I opt for the two battery option, and the two AC 120W AC adaptor option - is there any way I can use the second AC adaptor to charge the spare battery?

Many thanks

Dan

The spec I am going for is:

Chassis / Display - Inferno Series: 11.6" Matte HD LED Widescreen (1366x768)
Processor (CPU) Delivery Intel® CoreTMi7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3840QM (2.80GHz) 8MB
Memory (RAM) Build Time 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Hard Disk 750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
GIGABIT LAN & KILLERTM 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Genuine Windows 8 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)

 

[danmid]

For anyone else interested in the same questions that I asked, I got the below reply from PC Specialist (and have now ordered one!).


Hello there Dan,

Let me answer these queries for you.

1. As it uses a built in Intel controller the USB 3.0 is natively supported, it uses Legacy USB 2.0 for any DOS bootable applications however.

2. The USB’s can be set to remain active, although I’d need to check if this provides enough power for charging, it only allows it when connected to the mains.

3. Unfortunately the Clevo chassis only allows 1 x mini-PCIe so we cannot have one of the mSATA devices, unless you drop the wireless entirely.

4. We are very cautious of overheating and all laptops are temperature tested before dispatch, we manually apply all thermal paste ourselves and it is double checked before the heatsink is applied to ensure that too much or too little is not applied.

5. The battery life on this laptop averages at about 3-4 hours depending on use.

6. Unfortunately not, the battery can only be charged when it is in the laptop, but you could always charge one up, then swap it out once its full without having to turn off the machine.

Kind Regards,

 

[mav1420]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for posting those answers. I've been looking at the Inferno over the past couple of weeks - the only topic I've not seen answered properly (and I think that's a good thing!) is how is the overall gaming experience? Not from an FPS side but just the practicality of gaming on an 11.6" screen. Any feedback you could provide on that side would be much appreciated. From my perspective its main use will be as a World of Warcraft / Football Manager machine for the living-room, whilst I could get away with a larger screen it's the value from a spec / price perspective that interests me the most - a direct result of the smaller screen / resolution.

Cheers!
Mike

 

[danmid]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for posting those answers. I've been looking at the Inferno over the past couple of weeks - the only topic I've not seen answered properly (and I think that's a good thing!) is how is the overall gaming experience? Not from an FPS side but just the practicality of gaming on an 11.6" screen. Any feedback you could provide on that side would be much appreciated. From my perspective its main use will be as a World of Warcraft / Football Manager machine for the living-room, whilst I could get away with a larger screen it's the value from a spec / price perspective that interests me the most - a direct result of the smaller screen / resolution.

Cheers!
Mike

Hi Mike,

I am still waiting on mine to be built, sadly...but will follow up on this when it arrives.

In terms of gaming on an 11.6" screen, the Inferno would be my third 11.6" laptop which I will be using for media and gaming during my 4 hour daily commute (yes, 4 hours!). The one I am using at the moment is an Alienware M11X R3. I predominantly play FPS/Action type games and for this it works really quite well. The 1366x768 resolution is not a problem, and in terms of the small keys (I am a fairly large guy at 6ft5) theres not really a problem as I don't really lift my hand from my chosen layout very much whilst gaming. I use a Razer Orochi as my mobile mouse and the combination is pretty good IMO (and yes I do use it in bluetooth for gaming.... I would imagine the train movements offer more of a hindrence than whatever fractional difference bluetooth makes).

I do play the odd game of Starcraft 2 and this is where a resolution higher than 1366x768 would be preferable. You can still play a good game, but seeing more of the map etc, would be a great advantage.

In terms of other shortcomings - can't comment on the Inferno as yet, but the M11X suffers very badly with screen glare... (I have read the Inferno is better as it's screen is matte, but will let you know). Also, the heat is a real problem (or at least it was when I purchased it). Maintaining airflow underneath is very important. I recently rebuilt the M11x and re-did all the heatsinks with high grade TIM. This has pretty much sorted the issue. I am hoping by specifying the high grade TIM at build with PC Specialist, I won't have to do this!

Battery life on the M11x is fantastic (something I suspect will not be as good on the Inferno as it's quite a lot smaller and the M11X's size is largely due to an enormous internal battery, so I ordered the Inferno with 2x batteries!). I can get nearly 3 hours of COD MW3 on battery if I turn of wireless and conserve screen brightness at ~80%... and ~5-6 hours of movies/TV on full brightness.

In terms of other usage. I don't find keyboards on 11.6" machines to be especially restrictive. It's what you are used to I guess, but I do a lot of written work on these things too. Again, I can't comment on the Inferno as yet, but this has not been a problem for me to date. Bear in mind though, that I am an IT guy... so what I write a lot of tends to be code rather than language.

Hope that all helps. I will add a follow up when it arrives.

Happy new year.

Dan

 

[mav1420]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the very detailed reply, I look forward to your update once your system arrives. Regardless I think you've completely cleared up any concerns I may have had about the screen size with your prior experience on the M11X and decision to stick by the same size for a third time; as I suspected it seems I've struggled to find a clear answer on this before because it isn't a problem. Thanks again for your detailed followup and a happy new year to you too!

Cheers!
Mike