My impressions on the i7 after having it for about a month:
PROS:
- Best LAN machine ever. I go to friends/girlfriends place all the time and it's so easy to transport. It's with me everywhere in my backpack. It's smaller in real life than it seems in pictures/video.
- If you're building a computer around a graphics card like the 750 TI, you can't beat the price currently (at least in Canada - best I could do was get a system at around $900 bucks but without Windows/360 controller/super awesome case). When I want to upgrade GPU, I'll take the parts I can take from this and put it in a new motherboard. Or build something entirely new and keep this as a portable LoL/SC2 machine - undecided.
- Power efficient
- COLOURFUL LIGHTS! Plus Alienware interacts with games like Shadow of Mordor and Payday 2 (lights are context sensitive ie. flashes red when you're on low health)
- Runs everything I've tried on high settings at least at 1080p 30fps. Tweaking can get any game to 60fps.
- Quiet, if you sleep in the same room as your computer while it's downloading from Steam or something you don't even notice it's on (besides the light that you could turn off)
- It's cute... My girlfriend thinks its adorable like how she thinks babies are adorable, haha
CONS:
- Currently you have to get a custom unofficial firmware from Alienware for the GPU
- Not running Borderlands 2 at all for some reason (crashes during character select, tried deleting save, tried deleting local content and redownloading)
- Can't upgrade GPU (but see my point on that above)
- The i7 may be underpowered. The 4765T was chosen for its power efficiency, so it's understandable. In hindsight, I may have just gotten the i5 model or upgraded the CPU myself but at the time of considering purchase I was unsure if a 4770k or something would work in here so... I decided to be lazy and just go with the i7 upgrade through Alienware
- Alpha OS is kind of useless, I uninstalled it and just run as windows.
- No multi-monitor without the use of an external video adapter (would have preferred two HDMI outs instead of an HDMI in, but the pass-through will probably be convenient for some)
- Only optical output/HDMI for audio. No 3.5mm input for audio (I have a USB head set as well as an adapter to plug 3.5mm jack into USB, so I have servicable solutions)
- Not enough USB slots without a USB hub (I have one so I'm good there too)