M17x R3, R2, etc. official Win 8 driver support?

It seem no change from Aug, lol. Thats why Dell/Alienware is going down. M17r3, M14r1, M18r1 are not too old

 

i completely disagree the R3 should be supported it is not very old. Thats just a slap in the face for your customers and another reason why i wont be buying another Alienware. It wouldn't take that much to provide win 8 support and i know i can get video card drivers from the companies directly trust me i have got those updates.

 

I'm sorry, I pretty much disagree. The 17xR3 is only ONE iteration away. I'm not an apple fanboy myself (i'm more against apple actually), but Dell should take a leaf out of Apple's book. Look at their iPhones, phones up to 3 generations are still supported. I don't see why a device one iteration older should not have support, considering these devices are not cheap at all.

 

Apple is entirely proprietary, and there isn't a plethora of developers like on the Android and open-source scene. If they don't develop for their devices, there won't be much to build on. Comparing with phones is irrelevant because most firmware components like the bootloader and modular drivers are often proprietary too, and require continuous attention to develop, the very same effort (if not more) that's put in by vendors of modular components in OUR laptops.

In comparison, you can get the drivers for your device by yourself in the same time you'd spend a day here at NBR.


EDIT: I'm HAPPY there's companies getting people to stop lazing and perform simple Google searches to find what's right in front of them (like I did, months back for Windows 8). For all you know, I'm happy since it promotes Google!

 

I have to add another voice of disagreement. It is a middleman's responsibility to support their customers since they are the point of sale. I also don't believe its a "waste of effort" for them to support us. Support is why companies like XoticPC, Mythlogic and LPC-Digital exist in the marketplace. It's also why my next gaming notebook purchase won't be a Dell and will be most likely from one of these companies. And regarding "We all got what we asked"..."so be content", well I'm sorry, I asked and paid for SATA 3, and I have SATA 2. This is just another reason why I have to agree with Faith81's comments about Dell/Alienware going downhill. They certainly are. We are lucky though to have people like you, Prasad, in the community to help us when Dell/Alienware won't.

 

For the M17x R3 I think their hand was forced. There were issues with stability in SATA3 mode on the board and it would of been very costly to try to fix by the time it was discovered. Their only options were to leave it at SATA3 with potential stability issues (already reported at the time I think) or drop it to SATA2 and cause a small performance hit while stabilizing the platform. While not ideal I would prefer the laptop be stable. Anyways I also agree that they should be supporting the current model + at least 1 revision back.

 

First of all, thanks. I completely understand your frustration. When my notebook generation is phased out and the next one arrives and I'm not officially supported anymore, it's gonna suck but it's inevitable. It still won't stop me from fully utilizing what I have available to me at hand, ie. this notebook. Then again, newer Windows OSes seldom arrive as frequently as the usual quarterly cycle of hardware increments. This was just a timing thing.

 

Not to overdo the SATA thing (since it's not the point of the thread), but Intel recalled the first batch of Sandy Bridge chips because of SATA degradation at a cost of $1 billion Intel warns of $1bn cost of chip fix | Technology | The Guardian A reputable company, like Intel, would have issued a recall and fixed the M17x R3 sata defect. Again, this coupled with the drop of Windows 8 support for a single past revision is just another reason for me to not purchase from them again. Just my humble opinion.

 

i am in the same boat as you i believe this will also be my last machine from Dell.

 

who needs official support? I'm running almost 100% windows 7 drivers and running fine. The OSD and Command Center were also updated for windows 8 some time ago as well and they are working flawlessly. Just my ten cents.

 

i agree 100% official support isn't needed and i to am running it flawlessly with stock drivers and win 8 drivers from intel and nividia but its the point if you bought a new laptop just over a year ago and a new OS came out I expect that product to be capable and OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED to run that OS and be able to keep up with the latest technology. And this brings me to another point the R3 hasn't had the best run as a previous post mentioned there has been countless issues with SATA as am sure you know. and dell hasnt even kept the drivers for the R3 up to date and people will say you can find them on the INTERNET OR JUST GOOGLE IT WHY should i have to waste 30-40 mins of my life finding some driver which dell could easily update on their website.

AM sorry if i seemed a little bit aggressive its just am frustrated by Dell. by how rubbish they can treat their customers and think its ok Again sorry

 

I completely disagree with Dell not supporting the m17x R3... And is idiotic to say that we got what we bargained/payed for... The last time that I checked there was a lot of things that could be done with the 2000 bucks that I spent buying my R3, which by the way is capable of supporting and running Windows 8 even in UEFI mode (using the unlocked A08 BIOS).

Also, I don't think that it is great costumer service to basically make our computers obsolete after just one year. The main idea of buying this kind of PC is to have something that lasts at least 3 years easily.

Dell doesn't need to provide driver support, but at least they need to provide the BIOS update that allows us to use safe boot and Windows 8 fast boot.

I mean, c'mon... We all know that the R3 is basically the same thing as the R4 and they both run UEFI.

 

legacy runs fine for me, only plus for me personally with a uefi bios would be a slightly faster boot time, but it's not a big deal to me personally as an SSD + Windows 8 is already pretty damned fast.

 

Hi! I can't find UEFI mode in unlocked A12 bios. Where do you have it?

 

I don't think it's there.