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    Alienware 17 Major & Minor Issues.

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Sajin7, Aug 6, 2013.

  1. Sajin7

    Sajin7 Newbie

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    Looking to find out what the major & minor issues are with the new 17's before I buy one. If you could list them here that would be great. Thanks.
     
  2. J.Dre

    J.Dre Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Hi, I've owned the 17 now for nearly two weeks and I've found no major issues, except maybe the throttling issues, but that is solvable by using NVIDIA Inspector. As for minor things: Bluetooth seems a bit unstable. Internet speeds go awry, as seen here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-17-owners-lounge-thread-142.html#post9314293 when a Bluetooth device is connected, but this is likely related to the driver.

    Nothing else I can think of. The system keeps cool (more so than the M17x R4) and performs very well.
     
  3. llelitell

    llelitell Notebook Guru

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    While gaming on battery, after like 10-20mins. Screen will auto dim and all usb ports will power off and AlienFX will start to blink. Only when the power adapter is plug back in. Everything will resume back to normal.

    Currently running on Nvidia 770mn with Bio A04.
     
  4. kungfu-judo

    kungfu-judo Notebook Guru

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    so what the fixed for this?
     
  5. llelitell

    llelitell Notebook Guru

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    have not found any solution yet..

    To be exact what's the problem was.

    Problem at hand: Auto dim. After it hits a certain threshold on battery life (In this case, it seems to range to anything from 30-50%, which is ridiculous), the monitor gets extremely dim, and my USB ports get disabled. In order to restore normal functionality, I have to plug in the power cord.
     
  6. mikecacho

    mikecacho Notebook Evangelist

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    All this can be manually changed to your liking through control panel.
     
  7. Dusk Star

    Dusk Star Notebook Consultant

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    Minor issues I've had -

    1. DDR3 ram is no longer supported. Go DDR3L or go home. (Annoying, as I still have a 2x8GB set from my r3)
    2. Headphone audio was initially rather noisy. (As in, static) Removed the audio drivers and now working fine.
    3. AlienFX turns off immediately on removal of power, though as I haven't seen any posts about it I'm assuming this is just me. (I've tried changing the setting in control panel, and in AlienFusion - no idea what's causing it, unless it's a BIOS setting. I should check that.)

    Other than the "problems", the removal of eSATA and media keys was annoying. I've mapped my macro keys to be media keys though, so that's sort of even.
     
  8. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    Have you tried installing the latest command center from DELL.com ? That should get rid of that behavior.