Alienware M14x : Review

Price: 94,500

Rating: Excellent

4.5/5

Features:

Performance:

Value:

Design:

PROS

• High-end performance
• Unique style and design
• Vibrant screen

CONS

• RAM, HDD is limited

Summary

The new Alienware M14x gaming laptop is the successor to Alienware M15x, the now defunct 15-inch laptop option. Sitting between the tiny Alienware M11x and gargantuan M17x, the Alienware M14x offers gaming enthusiasts a middle ground that's easy to drag to a LAN party without compromising on high-end performance.

• REVIEW

The new Alienware M14x replaces the Alienware M15x for high-end enthusiast gamers looking for a slightly more portable gaming laptop that continues to deliver uncompromising performance. Sitting between the M11x and M17x, the Alienware M14x is a 14-inch gaming laptop with a widescreen form factor and enough firepower within to bring the latest and greatest games down to their knees. Let’s take a closer look at the Alienware M14x gaming laptop.

Design and Build:

The Alienware M14x sports a unique style and design which if famously synonymous with Alienware machines, be it laptop or desktops. The 14-inch, widescreen laptop’s chassis is made of magnesium alloy and the laptop looks and feels rigidly built with metal almost everywhere (except the glossy screen). But the laptop’s slightly curved spine restricts the screen and chassis’ central hinge to a small section near the centre, giving the screen a slightly flimsy air. Nonetheless, the M14x’s thick, brawny profile with angular edges adds to the premium appeal of the laptop.

With an 8-cell in-built battery, the laptop weighs just about 3 kg -- heavier than most 14-inch laptops -- and it doesn’t win any awards for being slim and trim. But the Alienware M14x is the way it is for a reason and that’s to accommodate all the high-end hardware that sits within. It has huge heat vents along the chassis edge and the screen spans edge-to-edge -- much like an iMac -- which blends in well with the Alienware M14x’s charm.

Features:

The new Alienware M14x has a 14-inch widescreen WLED display screen that’s glossy in nature. And unlike most 14-inch laptops that make do with a 1366x768 screen, the M14x’s glossy screen houses a 1600x900 pixel resolution display -- a true 16:9 aspect ratio screen. This enables the M14x to play games at higher resolution resulting in more fun. Its screen has a tiny webcam hole at the top bezel, it’s barely visible but the thing comes in handy if you do a lot of videochats over Skype, Facebook or Google+. The Alienware M14x’s screen is one of the brightest, most vibrant display’s we’ve seen in a laptop for some time -- the brightness and contrast levels are high, colour reproduction very good, and there’s very little motion blur which augers well for high octane gaming.

Alien FX Command Center

The Alienware M14x, like all previous Alienware machines we’ve reviewed, comes with an Alien Command Center software that among other things allows you to customize the gaming laptop’s glowing LED lights in a variety of colours and patterns. You can have just the keyboard split in three different sections with unique light glows, the same for the laptop’s logo and front vents. No other laptop comes anywhere close to offering the array of LED customization options that Alienware M14x does. It adds to the laptop’s overall appeal, no doubt.

Apart from a very good 14-inch display and Alien FX console, the Alienware M14x laptop sports an Intel Core i7-2720QM 2.2 GHz processor, 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive and 1.5 GB Nvidia GeForce GT555M graphics. Quite a potent hardware combination for a laptop. The Alienware M14x has three USB ports, a VGA and HDMI port, 9-in-1 card reader, gigabit ethernet, headphone and mic for connectivity, apart from Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth for wireless communication. The laptop ships with a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. All good but the only minor complaint we have is that the manufacturer should’ve offered more RAM and a larger capacity hard drive with the Alienware M14x at its asking price.

Performance:

The Alienware M14x’s performance is in line with the laptop’s high-end hardware parts. With a PC Mark Vantage score of 9,181 and a 3D Mark 2006 score of 12,556, the Alienware M14x has achieved one of the highest scores among laptops we’ve tested till date. It’s a testimony to the gaming laptop’s high-powered Core i7 processor, oodles of RAM, fast-spinning hard drive and discrete Nvidia graphics. At this level, most of your day-to-day apps will work well and multitasking will be a breeze. Even 3D video editing and high-end graphics rendering applications can run well on the Alienware M14x’s hardware.

Gaming was decent as well — Far Cry 2 at 1600x900, Ultra, 4xAA averaged at 31 fps, while Crysis 2 at 1600x900, Ultra averaged at 22 fps with bit of framing. But importantly, with the Alienware M14x, you will be able to tackle most latest games as and when they release. Not only a contemporary gaming powerhouse, the M14x is also a very good multimedia and entertainment machine, its screen is nice and bright for watching HD 1080p videos, the onboard speakers surprisingly good for pumping out music at acceptable audio levels. As expected, the Alienware M14x’s battery life isn’t great compared to a mainstream 14-inch laptop — just under 90 minutes while looping a music video. But expect between 3 to 3.5 hours of battery backup while browsing the Web on a conservative power plan.

The Alienware M14x gaming laptop sports a backlit keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard has closely packed flat-top keys that are different from isolated, chiclet-styled keys. All the same, the keys are a delight to type on and great to use, day in day out. The keyboard deck has no flex to speak of and every key’s feedback is very good. Even in complete darkness, the keys are visible under a variety of backlighting options. The laptop’s trackpad has an LED strip illuminating along its four edges, and its very good for use -- even while gaming. The trackpad’s two isolated mouse buttons are good to use as well.

Verdict:

The Alienware M14x manages to fill an important gap in Alienware’s mobile gaming offerings, with a laptop that’s easier to carry around than the bulky M17x and performs as well. The laptop has a pretty formidable hardware setup, is very well built, and offers all the regular connectivity features. And of course, none come close to matching the Alienware M14x’s unique aura and charm that is one of its kind. Overall, a very good gaming machine well worth its price.

Microsoft Security Essentials

Installation

It takes very little effort to get going with MSE. Microsoft politely does not opt you in to the program's customer experience improvement program; you must choose to opt in or stay out of it before you can finish the installation. It also lets you choose whether to run the Windows Defender firewall, and whether to run a scan once installation is complete, although both of those are opt-out.

Overall, the installation time ran around 4 minutes on our test computer. That's not as blazing fast as some of the paid suites, which can complete installation in less than 60 seconds, but it is respectable for a free program.

Interface
MSE 2's interface adopts a different color scheme than the previous version, going for various shades of gray to replace the vibrant blue and white look. It doesn't pop as much, but it also looks far less like a Windows XP relic.

For those unfamiliar with the design, MSE has four tabs across the top. The Home tab contains your security status and scan options, and you can run a Quick Scan, Full Scan, or Custom Scan. A link at the bottom of the pane lets you change the scheduled scan.

The second version of Microsoft Security Essentials changes its plumage to gray, and adds better heuristic detections and deeper hooks into the Windows firewall.

Update is where you manually get new virus definition files and program upgrades, History logs only detected threats, and Settings is where you go for advanced tweaking. The program looks simple, but don't be deceived: there are quite a few advanced options in Settings--just not as many as many competitors offer. Security Essentials uses labels imported from OneCare: green for all good, yellow for warning, and red for an at-risk situation.

Features and support
Under the clean and uncluttered interface, Security Essentials wraps up antivirus and antispyware engines, rootkit protection, and real-time detection courtesy of Microsoft SpyNet, the unfortunately named cloud-based service that anonymously compares file behavior across computers running various Microsoft operating systems.

When you install MSE 2, it will automatically run a scan unless you opt out. Note that it will not consider your computer secure until that first quick scan has completed.

Microsoft Security Essentials 2 uses both definition-file and real-time defenses against viruses and spyware, and also offers rootkit protection. Along with the quick scan and the full scan, there's a Custom scan option that lets users select specific folders or drives to scan. It doesn't allow for customizing the type of scan used. For example, you're not going to be able to choose to scan only for rootkits or heuristics, as you can with other security programs. However, you can set USB keys and other external devices to automatically get scanned. The program installs a context-menu option for on-the-fly scanning in Windows Explorer, too.

The Update pane manages the definition file updates, with a large action button, and History provides access to a spreadsheet-style list of All detection items, your Quarantine, and items you've Allowed to run. Although it's a basic layout, this no-frills approach to security has proven appealing to people who are overwhelmed by more detailed security choices.

New in version 2 is integration with Internet Explorer so that downloads get scanned, and Windows firewall hooks so that your personal security net is tighter. For Windows 7 and Vista users, the Windows Filtering Platform that those two operating systems come with gets a boost from a new network inspection feature.

The Settings window allows you to further customize the program by scheduling scans, toggling default actions to take against threats, adjusting real-time protection settings, creating whitelists of excluded files, file types, and processes, and choosing from the aforementioned SpyNet options. There's also an Advanced option that is still fairly basic: here you can set Security Essentials to scan archives and removable drives, create a system restore point, and expand user rights to allow all users to view the History tab.

A nice feature in the scheduler forces MSE 2 to be respectful of your computer's processor usage.

Security Essentials comes preconfigured to run a scan weekly at 2 a.m., when Microsoft thinks your system is likely to be idle. New malware signatures are downloaded once per day by default, although you can manually instigate a definition file update through the update tab. Attachments and downloaded files will be automatically scanned by Security Essentials.

Help is only available in the form of the standard offline Help manual that comes with all Microsoft programs. There's nothing fancy here.

MSE abandons the additional heft of a firewall, performance tuning, and backup and restore options to focus on core security. However, the new version does include a system restore option, to back up your computer before you remove any detected malware. Most of the changes in MSE 2 are under the hood, but it's still a worthwhile program in terms of features, especially on lower-powered Netbooks.

Conclusion
Microsoft Security Essentials 2 will protect you, and it will generally do it well. However, its impact on system performance could be improved, and it's still a bit light in the tool belt.

Download Microsoft Security Essentials

MediaInfo

MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file. It provides general information for multimedia files like: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration, etc. It also provides more specific information for audio files such as: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate and more, and information for video files such as: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate and more. This information can be exported as text, CSV or HTML.

The program's interface is plain and easy to navigate, with menus across the top and buttons down the left side. You can select either an individual file or a whole folder of files to view. There are eight different views to choose from--Basic, Sheet, Tree, Text, HTML, XML, MPEG-7, and PBCore 1.2--each of which provides a variety of different information, such as file size, duration, bit rate, compression mode, and color space. You can export metadata information in a CSV, sheet, text, or HTML file. MediaInfo doesn't have much in the way of documentation aside from an FAQ on the publisher's Web site, but the program is really pretty self-explanatory, at least for users who already know what all of this metadata means. MediaInfo is definitely a program that's meant for people who already have substantial experience working with audio and video files, not because it's hard to use, but because what it does will be of little use to amateurs. But if you need a simple tool that can quickly give you the lowdown on your media files, MediaInfo is definitely worth checking out.

Quick Specs

• Version:0.7.53
• File size:2.38MB
• Date added:January 25, 2012
• Price:Free
• Operating system:Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

TuneUp Utilities 2012

Pros 
Unique features like TuneUp Program Deactivator improve a PC's speed and performance.

Cons 
This application’s repair features need improvement.

The Verdict

TuneUp Utilities provides a variety of tools to effectively maintain your computer.

The well-rounded feature set and flexible interface in TuneUp Utilities make it one of the best PC system utilities around. You barely have to lift a finger in this PC system utilities application to keep your computer optimized with unique features like Live Optimization, Turbo Mode and Automatic Maintenance. Plus, you can take advantage of TuneUp Program Deactivator, a feature that’s one of the best at indicating which applications are taking up the most memory.

Management/Diagnostics    

At the bottom of TuneUp Utilities, there’s a status bar that keeps track of your computer’s optimization progress, how many optimizations you’ve completed and tasks this PC system utilities application recommends you perform. Once you have accomplished what TuneUp Utilities suggests, you will receive a notification that your computer is 100% optimized.
This PC system utilities application provides recommendations for increasing performance and fixing problems in its Status & Recommendations tab. Live Optimization runs in the background while you’re working on other tasks, silently increasing the response rate of your system and loading applications faster. Automatic Maintenance performs a series of maintenance tasks when your computer is idle. The only drawback is that your computer has to be idle for a certain period of time before this feature does it job. If your computer generally isn’t idle long enough, you'll have to set it to enforce maintenance tasks after one week, regardless of how long your computer has been idle.
This application’s best repair, defragmentation and optimization features are merged into the 1-Click Maintenance feature, forming an effective overall solution. You just have to click a button and the feature will do the rest automatically.
TuneUp Process Manager lists processes that are currently running. You’re given the option to terminate processes that may be hogging too much system memory. The Open Files tab lists open files and lets you find and view more information about each of them. In the Performance tab, there are graphs and data to help you track how your processor and memory are being used.
TuneUp System Information displays data about your system’s hardware to help you understand what components make up your system. With this information, you can more easily find information on repairing your system because you will know the specific model number and manufacturer for every piece of hardware and software.
TuneUp Styler lets you adjust the appearance of your Windows operating system while TuneUp System Control allows you to customize Windows settings. We liked TuneUp Styler because it provided more options for customizing the appearance of Windows than we were able to find within the operating system itself. TuneUp System Control gives you a similar level of flexibility. If you adjust something incorrectly, you can quickly restore its default settings.
Some of the changes you can make with TuneUp Utilities can dramatically alter how your computer operates. If one of these PC system utilities adjustments inadvertently diminishes the performance of your system, you can undo it in the TuneUp Rescue Center.

Repair/Recovery    

TuneUp Registry Cleaner scans your registry for invalid or erroneous entries in 14 categories of registry keys. We appreciated how fast this feature scanned the registry and repaired errors it found. It even gives you the option to check the registry again to ensure it’s free of errors. This feature doesn’t try to wow you with the quantity of errors it finds; it does a thorough job and only returns registry errors that are the biggest threat to your system’s performance.
TuneUp Shortcut Cleaner deletes shortcuts that link to applications that no longer exist or have been moved. You can choose to keep or delete the invalid shortcuts this feature finds. If a shortcut has stopped working because its application was recently moved, you should repair it rather than delete it.
In the Gain Disk Space tab, you’ll find options for removing unnecessary files, old backups and unneeded Windows functions. This feature doesn’t update its findings until you restart TuneUp Utilities. This feature is useful, but it would’ve been even better if it looked for duplicate files and offered a button to update its results whenever you wanted.
TuneUp Disk Space Explorer analyzes the data on your hard drive and presents it in the form of a pie chart. With these results, you can determine how your hard drive space is being used and free up space in overloaded areas. As always, you should look at each file thoroughly before you decide to delete it.
TuneUp Shredder securely deletes files and overwrites the free space they once occupied, preventing identity thieves from collecting your sensitive information. On the flipside, if you want to restore files you haven’t permanently deleted yet, TuneUp Undelete quickly recovers them.
TuneUp Repair Wizard corrects problems users commonly experience with the interface of their operating system, including issues with icons, toolbars and programs that no longer display or start. Even if your computer is not currently experiencing any of these problems, issues can sneak up on you, and it’s good to have readily available solutions.
TuneUp Disk Doctor checks and repairs errors in your drives and file systems. While other disk-error checkers take several hours to repair your disks, TuneUp Disk Doctor accomplishes this feat in minutes.

Optimization    

One of the premier optimization tools in TuneUp PC system utilities is Turbo Mode. This feature disables unnecessary Windows services, configures computer resources for optimal performance, limits the connection your computer has with external devices, turns off background functions and visual effects that are resource intensive, and postpones scheduled maintenance tasks and automatic updates.
TuneUp Program Deactivator is another great optimization feature offered in this PC system utilities application. This feature uses a measurement called load points to assess how fast your system operates, shuts down and starts up. Applications that are currently running or installed on your system are listed in this feature alongside evaluations of their usefulness and the amount of system resources they consume. When you disable an application with this feature, the amount of load points goes down. If you lower the amount of load points, your system is going to run, start up and shut down faster.
The Accelerate System Startup and Shutdown feature disables Windows services, settings and applications that were set to open when your system’s operating system starts up. Removing these default Windows settings can improve your computer's startup speed.
TuneUp Registry Defrag reduces the amount of fragmented entries in the registry, repairs structural defects and recovers unused memory space. TuneUp Drive Defrag organizes the data blocks on your hard drive to increase system performance. Both of these features analyze your hard drive and the registry faster than most defragmentation tools.

Ease of Use    

TuneUp Utilities’ ease of use comes as a result of its flexible interface. While other PC system utilities might force you to use one interface, TuneUp Utilities lets you choose between its tabbed and overview interfaces. The overview lists all the features TuneUp Utilities has to offer in a single window, eliminating the tiresome task of searching for the feature you need.

Help & Support    

TuneUp Corporations provides a user manual to answer any questions you might have about their PC system utilities application. They also have a frequently asked questions section as well as information on error messages and general installation or update problems. The resources on their website are primarily for installation and activation issues. We would have liked to have seen the customer service section on their website provide more information about the application's operation to enhance what’s included in the user manual.
If you can’t find the answer you need in any of these resources, you can fill out a contact form or call TuneUp Corporation. In our experiences with them, they either met or beat their promised response times.

Summary

TuneUp Utilities excels in the areas of maintenance and computer optimization. Our favorite features in this PC system utilities application were Turbo Mode and TuneUp Program Deactivator. Turbo Mode improves your computer’s performance by streamlining system settings while TuneUp Program Deactivator increases how fast your system operates, including shut-down and start-up speeds, by disabling unnecessary programs that are slowing it down. These were features we didn’t come across when reviewing other PC system utilities. If you want to keep your computer running smoothly without doing any of the heavy lifting yourself, reach for this PC system utilities application.
Video Tutorial

So people if you ask me its sometimes difficult for some of us to understand some softwares so if one of you have a problem using this software, then you can refer to the YouTube video link given below, this tutorial is based on easy to follow steps that would make it all clear for you!!

Norton Internet Security 2012

Pros 

The Norton Internet Security suite provides extra layers of protection, including security for Android mobile phones, Facebook link scanning and network protection.

Cons 

This is an all-inclusive, powerful internet security suite; however, their test scores fall a bit short of the highest-ranked products.

The Verdict

This security suite rides on the edge of perfection. It goes beyond basic security to provide full-faceted protection. In terms of malware detection, they are one of the best.

Norton Internet Security can protect your computer, family and identity from all directions. It can protect from internet threats, bad links, network intruders and Android mobile phone malware, and it makes sure devices and discs you insert into your system are safe and social media interactions are secure. This internet security suite includes parental controls, a two-way firewall, network monitoring, a silent mode and much more to provide total protection.
We were impressed with all aspects of this suite. It has passed all major third-party tests and in some cases scored in the top 15 percent of security software products. It can even create a bootable recovery disc for you in case your computer gets so infected that you cannot start Windows. In addition, it goes beyond basic website ratings. It can provide you website reports before you click on a site, and it quickly checks file sources and age before you click on potentially hazardous links.

Protection    

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Norton has a long list of certifications and awards to back up their internet protection claims. Based on our own tests and third-party tests, we can confidently assert that Norton can protect you from the majority of zero-day and known internet threats. We verified their passing test scores with four independent testing agencies. In fact, the latest AV-Comparatives tests awarded Symantec Norton Internet Security their highest score of 99.3%. Norton Internet Security also passed all AV-Tests in the past two years running Windows XP, Vista and 7. However, similar to many security suites, their removal or repair test scores are less than perfect. AV-Test only awarded them 3 of 6 points for repair in August of 2011. However, in the past two years they averaged 4.8/6 overall, which is comparatively quite high.
This Norton security product includes all the protection tools we were looking to find in an internet security suite. It can protect from the most salient threats such as viruses, rootkits, phishing scams, Trojans, spam, spyware, keyloggers and bad links or files. They also include website ratings and reports, Facebook and IM link scanning, Android mobile phone security, a two-way firewall and network monitoring. If you are the type that likes to click on videos, images or article links that your friends post on Facebook, in emails or in chat conversations then Norton is a good security application for you. It will scan all links before you click on them to verify that they are safe so you can avoid common social media scams and viruses.

Security Features    

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Norton has everything from parental controls to pulse updates to network mapping. Their parental control tool will let you create unique profiles for everyone in your family. You can restrict what types of websites your children visit as well as when and how long they can be online. This security suite will also log the websites your children visit so you can know exactly what they are doing online. You can also restrict what applications they have access to so they cannot alter your software settings.
This suite provides numerous scan options. You can schedule scans, block files from scans, limit scans while certain applications (such as games) are running and monitor bandwidth. The bandwidth monitor can detect when you are connected to a 3G or 4G network and limit non-critical updates. This software also has a unique feature called Norton Pulse Updates that runs small updates every five to 15 minutes inconspicuously rather than larger, intrusive updates all at once.
The Norton Internet Security suite includes a password manager and tools to protect your identity and login information. The password manager is called Identity Safe. It can securely store your address, usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and email addresses. It will also automatically enter this information into forms for you so you can bypass keyloggers.

Help & Support    

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Should you encounter an internet security threat that you need help with or have a question about your license, Norton is there for you – even if you need help at 2 a.m. This internet security provider offers comprehensive support documentation and readily available support. Norton provides 24/7 support by telephone, email and chat. They also provide extensive documentation. An exhaustive 504-page manual accompanies the Norton Internet Security suite. Online Norton provides downloads, virus and spyware help, a community forum, FAQs and access to paid support services. Professional paid services include spyware and virus removal, PC tuneup and PC Power Boost.

Summary

Norton includes all the tools you need to secure your computer, laptop, network, family and Android mobile devices. They also have the proven ability to quickly identify and block emergent and known threats. Norton Internet Security includes unique tools to provide protection during social networking, chatting or email interactions. The only thing we would like to see improved with this software is its repair ability. Improved repair scores could move this comprehensive suite higher up our review list in the future.