M17x Order Status Discussion - Part 4

Well if what they say is true, it should ship any day now.

 

Same deal with me man, I called them last thursday to get an update since mine's been in production for 2 weeks, and they said it was in the final stages and should be shipping friday, and should be here monday. I've called them twice today and they said it's in the final shipping stage, waiting to be picked up. NO ONE could find it though, so they had to put in a trouble ticket because they couldn't locate exactly where it was. I've been thrown through hoops, sat on hold for nearly 30 minutes, and been lied to by 3 different people. I'm done with dell. I told the last dude that I was ready to cancel my order and you pleaded that it was a bad idea since i've already been waiting for so long.

 

my order shipped! be here by friday.

i guess it wasnt delayed from the flooding. unless that was already taken into account during the initial estimate.

 

MINE SHIPPED!!

Just checked my order status, it did ship today (and not just dropped off, it is already in transit!). Scheduled for delivery on Thursday!!!

I was really getting worried it wouldn't make it this week, very happy.

You should check your order Domino, I would be surprised if yours isn't shipped as well.

 

YES! I just checked... it says my order has "partially shipped" ... Not sure how that's possible since it's just one laptop, but whatever. I've got a 20lb package and a tracking number... it should be here wednesday via FedEx!

Does yours say "Partially shipped" too?

 

Lucky you guys!!! I've been told the same story for a week and mine hasn't shipped yet... maybe later on today... who knows!!! Just hoping we're in the same batch!

When did you all ordered and what specs? That would probably give us an idea where we all at....Thx

Edit: How frustrating!!! My EDD was 01/16/12 until yesterday now it's N/A'd

 

man I am so impatient...


1/13/2012


Alienware M17x Soft-Touch, Stealth Black

In Production


2/2/2012

thoughts on ETA?

 

I would guess it will ship the 26th, just based on how long my order took. If you got a standard HDD it might take longer, the flooding caused a shortage of them. I got the SSD so I didn't get hit with a delay.

 

Mine shipped this morning too! Should be here tomorrow.

 

I think they upgraded my shipping. Mine is gonna arrive tomorrow too!

 

Nice! They should have thrown in free m14X's for the trouble they put us through. Haha

 

Yeah no joke. There is a delay in the Dell order tracker that is really annoying. They waited two days after they had shipped my laptop to mark it as shipped. Then they waited an additional day to send an email notification.

but it's all sorted out now. Can't wait to get my hands on this beast tomorrow.

 

Mine also shipped !! woo hoo will get it friday !

 

Mines out for delivery today

 

Hi all ,

Mine also shipped with UPS but tracking don't work

 

Same here...

 

Yay. Delivered to my mother in laws house

 

I think I got really lucky... No dead pixels, no flex in the keyboard. No loose panels or creakiness... Yeah this is one tightly made beast

 

Congrats man, I really hope mine doesn't have any dead pixels. I don't care much about the rest of it, but a dead pixel would be something I couldn't handle. I guess they would probably just send the in-home tech out to swap the screen though, so wouldn't be the end of the world.

 

Hey guys,

I have been reading this order status thread for about two weeks now and I feel compelled to share my story.
I made an original order for an M17x R3 on 10 December 2011. The order stayed in pre-production right up to the EDD of 22 December. I received a phone call the following day informing me that there was a delay (which was unknown to the rep) and the computer would not be delivered until January. I was pretty upset at the apparent lack concern by Dell, considering the amount of my money they had been holding, and I cancelled the order in a minor nerd-rage.

Fast forward to 04 January, I have calmed down and decided to give Alienware another shot (I have wanted one since 2004.) I placed an order, this time through AAFES EPP for the same laptop and decided I would be more pro-active during the build. I placed the order at about 10:00am and got confirmation through AAFES with an EDD of 25 January. The next day I had not received an email from Dell so I called and they were unable to find the order (should have been the first red flag) I called AAFES and got an order number form a very helpful rep and called back to Dell on 6 Jan with it.
The Dell rep told me they had received the order on 5 Jan (strike one) and it had an estimated completion date of 17 Jan and EDD of 25 Jan (the tracker showed the same information) I let the rep know I was never given the option to change the delivery method (I hope this is something AAFES changes) and would like to change it to next business day. The rep was happy to oblige and even upgraded me for free (should have know it was too good to be true) This changed my EDD to 18 Jan.

All was good, or so I thought until I logged on the tracker to check the status on 16 Jan, assuming I would see a change considering the computer would have been done the following day. Well there was a change, but it wasn't what I had hoped for. The tracker now showed no estimated completion date, and the EDD was 23 Jan. I was slightly upset, but it wasn't that much of a change. I called the EPP to find out what the delay was. The rep told me that the original EDD was 23 Jan (which it never was) and that there was no delay in the order at all. I never received an email from Dell so I had nothing but my story to show that the 23rd was never the original EDD. They treated me like I made the whole thing up, like I was lying. After arguing with two separate reps they eventually just kept feeding me the line that, there may have been a glitch in the tracker and the dates are only estimates. I conceded, besides a few days delay for free NBD delivery was a fair trade.

Now today, I log on the tracker, as tomorrow should be the date of completion. It still shows the 23rd as the delivery date, and all seems well. I figure I will call the EPP just to make sure, just to verify that everything is still alright. The rep tells me, oh, there is in fact a delay in your order. The hard drive (256g SSD) and the mobo have both been backordered. I wanted to yell at the guy, but I didn't. I knew from the day that tracker changed that there was a delay, and I know they knew also, but they didn't tell me. I was pretty upset. I almost cancelled my order again, but I know I am the only one that will suffer in that scenario.

It has been over a month now that I have been without a computer. I have built several of my own computers, and have owned a boutique vendor computer as well. I have never had this much disappointment and what seems outright disregard from any computer equipment vendor, ever. I know I can't be the only person that has a story like this, so I want to know, what would you guys do? What have you done? Should I just be a good little American consumer and wait for my computer? Or should I take my money elsewhere altogether?

 

I feel your pain, before I ordered my M17x I had ordered an Envy 17 with the 33% off coupon that was around a few months ago. I ordered like 12/4/2011 with a delivery date of the 12/26/2011, it got delayed to 1/9/2012. I started looking around, discovered the M17x gets good battery life, and canceled my HP order and ordered my Alienware on 1/3, and it is now out for delivery today. Anyway, point is I have been waiting for a computer a long time, so I know that feel.

As to your question, there is really nothing Dell (or anyone) can do about delays. Flooding in Thailand has caused HDD shortages, the holidays have caused some other shortages, it is just how the world works. I got the SSD also but my order did not get delayed, even though I only ordered the day before you, it is just luck.

Now your shipping, if they said they upgraded it then they did, the online tracking sucks and won't update the method it shows or the EDD. I got upgraded, and when it shipped it did use the correct shipping speed.

Most of Dells problems seem to be that their internal tracking systems are awful. My order changed to shipped on the phone order status last Friday the 13th, it told me my order shipped the 17th (days in the future). It took until the 17th for my order status to update online, and it turned out it had been handed over to Fedex days before, but it took them days for the order status to update. I even called and talked to a rep about my order on Monday (when it was technically shipped but their system didn't show it) and he said it was in the final build stages and would ship soon, because that is what their system showed and he didn't know anything else, in reality my computer was already with Fedex and on the way.

Honestly, I would keep your order. There is nothing that really competes with the M17x right now, and your computer will come, I know it is hard, but just be patient and try not to think about it.

 

Hey Yoda,

thanks for the feedback. Unfortunatley I don't feel that I have much choice. Either keep this order or wait several more days/weeks for a different company. Either way it sucks. I have to say though, despite the hardships on the supply side, I am paying for value added when I buy Alienware.

I can pay a random company to slap these same chinese components into a black box for about $600 bucks less. I pay a premium for professionalism. Professional build quality, professional warranty management, and most importantly to me professional customer service.

I feel lied to, I feel that they knew about the delay in the build when the delay first hit the tracker, someone knew. Regardless if the rep on the phone knew, or it was just a guy in the wharehouse. If the internal communication is at fault, that is still sub-standard for the extra money I am spending. That is how I feel. Again, if the choice was easy for me I would have already cancelled the order.

 

I got mine today, and I can say you REALLY get what you pay for. This is an incredible machine, mine has absolutely excellent build quality and really is a unique machine you wouldn't get anywhere else.

 

I also got mine today and it's really a good machine... minus a little flex in the keyboard and I don't know if it's me but I'm used to ssd on both my desktop and my ex laptop... so I had a feeling that even that raid array was not fast enough... the computer reactivity in whatever I was doing was kinda slow... so I tossed in a 64gb ssd for now and will probably order a bigger one... the other 500gb will be put in an enclosure for back up/extra storage purpose...

any ideas on a good esata enclosure out there?!

P.S.: I think rolling back to bios A08 helped a lot in the reactivity issue

Enjoy to all the new owners even though RAGE won't launch!!! (installing borderlands lol)

 

I heard Rage has some problems for some people. It was one of the reasons I didn't snag it at the last Steam sale. Not to stray too off topic here, but the general consensus from my friends who own Rage is that it's a pretty sloppy console port and that the console version is the version to get. Whether or not this is an exaggeration I dunno, I don't own the game. This is just what my friends are telling me.

 

mine is here

there isn't a cover box over the Alienware Box ?

 

Hey Kara did yours just come now ?? Mine is due today... Hope my misses stays in the house

 

no dead pixel , keyboard no good , Red Nebula is too red for my taste , Os slow for now

 

What's wrong with the keyboard?

 

the keyboard is slightly crooked, it flexes a lot in the middle, and some keys are moving too.

I am Italian and unfortunately I can not explain myself better in English

 

Your OS is slow because of your HDD and low ram. It will be using lots of page file but your HDD is horridly slow so the whole system is slow. Get more ram, get an SSD, or get both.

 

Hey Yoda,

Congrats! I know there isn't much in the way of competition when it comes to the Alienware build. It is why I have wanted one for so long. I am glad you got yours man, I am still waiting on mine. No update today on when the parts that are on backorder might be available. I am a sad panda

 

I'm waiting for the delivery of 16GB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz PnP , and i will buy a HyperX SSD very soon .

 

I got my M17x R3 last night and have to agree about the OS being so slow...this is compared to my low spec work laptop which I use daily (a 3 year old bog standard HP Intel Centrino).

I straight away installed a 120Gb ssd, did a fresh install of Windows and the machine now flies. Boots up in 10 seconds. I only have 4Gb ram in the Alienware - don't need any more.

Obviously the SSD has made a massive difference in performance but you always get loads of bloatware pre-installed from Dell. If you are not getting an SSD anytime soon, I would just do a fresh install of Windows on your mechanical disk.

Great guide here which I followed for the driver install order:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

Got my M17x R3 with standard 500gb drive and it boots near instantly. In fact it boots faster than my M11x does. My OS is not slow or laggy in the slightest either.

 

Fair enough - with mine, the standard option was a 750Gb 7.2k Seagate Momentus.

The point I was trying to make was that you would expect that going from a crap old machine running Windows 7 to a new core i7 running Windows 7 would be a big jump in basic running performance and that was not the case for me..
All it meant was that my first impression of the R3 was not great. Now my opinion has completely and utterly changed - it's incredible!!

Maybe me and kakaroth1977 were just unlucky..

 

your keyboards are ok?

 

Cheer up, at least your not me. I won the unlucky lottery. My machine died within 24 hours of getting it brand new. The GPU or the Mobo decided "Screw this, im outta here!" and now I am waiting for a repair next week.

Technically the machine still works on integrated graphics, but the discrete GPU is completely gone, so either it died, or the MXM slot on the mobo died. I was having problems and BSODs before it died, so I was using Furmark to test and identify the problem, and that apparently pushed it over edge.

I don't really blame AW though, this a hardware issue that factory testing would be unlikely to find, but that my heavy stressing found and eventually caused a catastrophic failure. I have had the laptop open and I really do think the build and quality are extremely good, just unlucky for me to get a part that probably had a fault during manufacturing, but still worked well enough to make it to me.

 

Oh man, that is terrible! I can’t believe you are taking it in stride; my disposition would definitely not be as sunny as yours. You are certainly showing some good self-control in my opinion.

If it was really just average use that made the problem surface, your use of benchmark software to troubleshoot it is neither here nor there. The normal QC at the warehouse should have picked that up, it is pretty standard to run a customer purchase for at least 24hrs prior to shipping it.

Despite the cause, I am sorry to hear about it bro. I hope the technician is able to narrow that down easily (although I am sure you have a good idea already) and that it’s just the GPU. Post back and let us know what happens; if it is the mobo I have a terrible feeling that more of us will be in store for the same thing (based on the backorder). When demand outpaces supply you usually see an increase in inferior production.

 

I did implement the throttle fix to get rid of the 63 degree throttle, so it is possible I would not have seen any problems if I was allowing it to throttle at 63, but quite frankly a card that can't hit 63 degrees is useless for gaming.

The problems occurred at stock voltage and clocks, just with the throttle fix in place, which should not have happened. It was also very weird, if I left the laptop sitting flat on my table it would heat up to 77, throttle down, etc just fine with no crash. The problems came when I put it on a notebook stand or used notebook feet to prop up the back. If I did something to keep it cooler, then it would crash. On the notebook stand with lots of air room underneath it died at 71 degrees every time. With just the notebook feet it would die at 74 every time. I therefore suspect it was some sort of motherboard problem, and probably power related, since running the card at full power too long (as I was able to when I gave it lots of airspace) was what caused the crashes.

I don't know if the tech is allowed or will be willing, but I am going to push for him to replace both the GPU and mobo in one go. I would rather just need to get it serviced once, and the engineer I talked to said it could be either the gpu or the mobo, I suspect it is the mobo, but I am a bit afraid they will replace the GPU first, and it will work, but when I start using it again and stressing it then the mobo will fry this GPU also.

I am also hoping to get the tech to apply my thermal paste, and if he replaces the mobo then he will need to repaste everything, so everything would get better thermal paste. Anyway, my level of satisfaction will depend on the tech, if he comes, replaces the mobo and GPU, and repastes everything with my paste then I won't be upset this happened. If he comes and refuses to do stuff, just replaces the GPU and leads me to needing future service I might just return the laptop. Everything depends on the tech and how strict Dell is with what he can do.

 

so i just found out that for us canadians, the dell listed shipping date is not entirely true. i got a email from dell stating that my notebook has shipped and is to arrive on or before the 23. however, this actually means that the notebook will arrive at the canadian purolator distribution centre (in this case calgary) and from there it will take 1-2 business days on top to arrive to your doorstep...

quiet decieving if you ask me..but w/e whats 1-2 more days anyways.

anyone else in canada experience this also?

 

Hello,

Im an APO purchaser as well.

I also made my order 28Dec, it shipped 12Jan. Have you received your computer yet?

 

Hi all, new here and I'm finding a lot of useful information. Just ordered my first AW laptop so I figured I'd post my order experience/system config as I am waiting for it to be built/shipped:

Order Date 1/20/12, EDD 2/9/12:

Alienware M17x Soft-Touch, Stealth Black
Intel Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (2DIMMS)
17.3-inch WideFHD 1920x1080 120Hz WLED w/ NVIDIA 3D Vision Bundle
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M
1TB Raid 0 (2x 500GB Hybrid Solid State Drives)
Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BR-ROM, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology

So far no issues, seems like everyone has a different story to tell so I'm crossing my fingers that all goes well. Will let you know when it actually arrives.

 

Nice! You got a beast coming!

 

Nothing yet. Just checked the mail today and still no AW. I understand it can take up to 4 weeks. Just hoping it doesn't. SWTOR is killing my old Toshiba

 

Your doing better then me then... 4 days ago I spilt water on my xps1530. Took the computer apart 3 times and rubbed it down with alchohol and still it wont turn on.

Btw just checked my mail, no computer.

 

Delivered this morning

AW M17xR3 - Black
Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.2GHz
16GB DualCh DDR3 1600MHz 4DIM
Blu-ray Reader,DVD+-RW,CD-RW
17.3-inch WideFHD1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
2GB GDDR5 AMD HD 6990M M17x3R
1.5TB Raid 0 (2x 750GB 7,200RPM)
Win 7 Home Prem 64 SP1,Eng,w/Media,AWNB
Wireless 802.11 g/n
3 Year Warranty

 

when did you order?

 

january 2nd, my order was delayed an extra 5 days from original estimate. not too bad!

 

I feel like im going to explode out of boredom, did you get yours today??