Personal Reflections

I don't usually do personal writing let alone a reflection but here its goes.


When I started blogging this year in mid-September, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew what blogging was but I had no idea what it would exactly involve and how much work it would take. I had the idea that the writing would be personal writing, kind of like a diary, and thus wasn't too interested in the whole idea. I had no idea that blogging could include thing like Gizmodo and Engadget, sites that I love to read.


In beginning, most of my posts were amateur, summing up articles that I liked from sites like Gizmodo. They looked amateur as well, using one of Bloggers standard template. All in all, I couldn't take the writing i was diong seriously. However things got a little more interesting when two of my friends suggested that we combine our efforts into one large blog. Then one of the suggested that we change our default template to a custom one that looked really nice. This is the the one that you see before you. This resulted in a much more profesional looking blog which drastically changed how hard I worked to write.

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Reflections

As I reflect on my blogs I realize that I have learned a lot about blogging and it has enhanced my blogging experience. I have learned a lot about what I have blogged about regarding phones and devices. I think I will continue to blog through these upcoming years just maintain the blogging mindset I so much enjoyed. I think that the class should give an opportunity for student to conglomerate and make blogs that have more than one writer, this way it is easier to write and encourage other group members to write as well.  

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M18x makes its arrival

As stated earlier, alienware was set to release its m18x, and it finally hit the store in the last few days. As stated in the previous article, I gave a list of possible specs that had been leaked on the net a few weeks ago. Now that it is up, here is a list of what will be the approx. specs and cost of a very high end version of the system, with only a few different softwares pre-installed, no virus protection in this set-up, but 4-year warranty, and office installed.

PROCESSOR	Intel® Core™ i7 2920XM Overclocked Turbo Boost to 4.0GHz (8MB Cache) This is a factory over-clocked i7 as it says, that runs at 4.0, but i'm sure that if this case is good enough with a good enough fan, you can easily push it to around 4.3 or 4.5 without it like setting fire to your favorite pair of pants
OPERATING SYSTEM	Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate, 64bit Pretty standard with this, just ultimate so that you get the added ram support, with standard you only get 16GB ram support
MEMORY	32GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz (4DIMMS) Ok, this is insane, no matter what you are running, you will never absolutely need this much ram, speaking that some of the most intense games only really max at like 6GB, meaning you could have like 5 of them open no prob
VIDEO CARD	Dual 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460M – NVIDIA® SLI® Enabled This is basically the graphics cards you would get if you were a high-end desktop PC gamer, and seeing them in a laptop almost made my heart stop, these cards are literally the best of the best, and you will be able to play everything with ease, with its 5+ billion p/s fill rate on each card
HARD DRIVE	1TB RAID 0 (2x 500GB) 7200RPM Solid State Hybrid This is different than most RAID configurations as stated in the Hybrid in its name. It is in fact what is now being called the RAID 10 or RAID 01, in which it gives the speed of  RAID 0 and the data protection of RAID 1.
WIRELESS + BLUETOOTH	Intel® Advanced-N 6200 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO Technology and Bluetooth 3.0 This card isn't completely necessary if you use an ethernet cable, but if not, its worth spending the little extra to get it, because the smaller your ping rate, the faster and better your gaming experience
WIRELESSHD	Internal 60GHz WirelessHD Transmitter and VIZIO XWH200 Universal Wireless HD Video and Audio Kit This is something relatively new, these cards allow you to remotely connect to any HD projector or TV without having to use an HDMI cable
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE	Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW) with Roxio Creator 2011 Explains itself
SOUND OPTIONS	Internal High-Definition 5.1 Performance Audio with SoundBlaster MB Software While not absolutely necessary to have a super mega nice sound card in a gaming laptop, its always nice to be able to immerse yourself in the game better, and having a nice stereophonic grade sound card is a nice way to be able to do it

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Alienware M18x Landing Imminent

When anyone thinks of high-end, gaming laptops, Alienware is the first name that usually comes to people's head. With the companies long standing history, and its reputation for building the most advanced computers on the consumer-end of the market, the release of information on a new line of laptops has created quite a stir.


However, the reason that this is so important, is just the insanity of this laptop in particular. While alienware, as stated prior, is known for making the best of the best, I feel that with this, they are taking it to a new level. Here's some of the specs on it: (high-end)

• Intel i7 processor, 3.6ghz factory, probably the 6-core model that you can get factory overclocked to ~4.1ghz
• NVidea or ATI dual graphics cards, 3GB cards each, using the SLI and CrossFireX connection configuration
• Dual or Tri 2TB hard drives that run on 7.2k or 10k rpm that can be set in raid 0 or raid 1,probably factory set for a 2TB main and 250gb second in raid 0 for that fastest, or if available, a 125gb SSD, but so far, they haven't released the exact model of what will be available for the hard drives
• Independent Soundcard, probably similar to the ones that they have in the rest of their laptops, not exactly the greatest out there, but these aren't for studio musicians, they're for gamers
• Here's the nice part though, on the base its got 6GB of DDR3, Tri channel RAM at 1666Mhz, but, that can be raised up to 32GB, which not only a insane for a high end desktop, but this is in a laptop, which makes it even more impressive
• Also, this laptop has the largest of any alienware laptops, coming in at a whopping 18.3" diagonal, and comes in at an outstanding 23+ lbs. truly exemplifying the gravity of the situation.

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