M11x Revisited

I had briefly mentioned the M11x once before when Alienware first announced it, noting it was an interesting product. Then shortly after its debut, NVIDIA launched Optimus, which is the leader of the Automatic power-saving faction fighting the evil forces of the Deceptively power-hungry opposition. What the power savings actually are I'm not too sure, but I think the main point is that it's about twice as convenient as the manual switching types from before, and it'll be getting all the driver support going forward. So current owners of manual switching discreet graphics laptops are pretty much screwed, and that includes early adopters of the M11x.

It was only natural that people started hoping for an updated M11x that supported the new technology, and while they're at it, updated to the new Core i-series CULV CPUs, and maybe given some tweaks to the aesthetics. But of course there was some fear that we'd have to wait until the next wave of products to see such changes, if they ever came at all. It seemed silly to release the M11x as it was, so close to the introduction of Optimus technology, when surely they must have been informed by NVIDIA ahead of time of its approach. A lot of tech companies will do that to ensure early adoption of new products. It reminds me of a time several years ago when Alienware put a lot of R&D into making a custom multi-GPU graphics system, complete with custom motherboards with multiple AGP slots and software hacks, touting it as the return of SLI. Then about a year later NVIDIA announced the actual return of SLI, coinciding with the launch of PCI Express. Alienware just has a history of doing things at just the wrong time.

Those IPS Reports

Remember when LCDs first came out? They all had like 16ms response times, they all topped out at 1280x1024, they all cost like $500...and they looked like crap. That was when they first started hitting it big, sort of like where solid state disks are right now, and for some people it was enough that they were flat and didn't take up a quarter of your desk, or produce as much heat as your tower. For most people, the fact that you couldn't (or perhaps just shouldn't) change resolutions, there was a crap-ton of ghosting, and the colors and viewing angles sucked for like twice the price of a more capable CRT was enough to deter any thoughts of early adoption.

Funny enough most of those disadvantages are still there, but LCDs have caught on nonetheless. Manufacturers must have seen the potential in it because despite the lack of initial demand, they continued investments and advancements in the technology, and eventually we got to a point where you could have high res LCDs for as much or cheaper than CRTs (right before they completely disappeared from the face of the planet). The contrast, colors, and response time were good enough that people were satisfied with them once they factored in the other advantages LCDs have. And at least now they finally found an aspect ratio that makes sense.