M17x R4 key rollover

Can some people with this laptop do some key rollover tests.

Open notepad and do the following then post results here.

Test 1:
Hold CAPS LOCK, Left Shift and Right shift and type the following

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog!@#$%^&*()

If every single key stroke does not register then repeat only holding Left shift and right shift.

And again with only Left shift.

Test 2:
Put 6 fingers on sdf lkj.
Press all 6 keys together 5 times in a row quickly then press enter. Repeat this 10 times.

Test 3:

Hold shift and E, then press space several times allowing E to repeat. Do the same with S,D,F

 

Cant anyone do this so we can see how the keyboard performs?

 

If I could hold CAPS LOCK, Left Shift, Right Shift AND type your text I'd be earning money in a circus and not wasting my time reading forums on a Friday night!

Corius

 

lol good one.
now that you've said it, i'm going to try that test and see if i'm circus ready

btw to OP, if you're going to try for ghosting, every laptop keyboard that i've tested has them, only in different keystrokes.

 

You act like this is totally foriegn, other forums contain threads with hundreds of people doing this daily. So you will have to get in the back of very large line to get a job at the circus.

Hey guys this is a gaming laptop right? Maybe I am in the ultra book section 2 days go by and not a single person performs a couple of simple rollover tests on one of the most expensive gaming machines built.

 

You know, if you wanted people to help you, you should learn to be polite. That guy was just kidding, so take a chill pill.

As for the fact that nobody has responded, the people here aren't your slaves. Everybody has their schedules. It would be nice if you actually added more information as to the purpose of the tests, so that people would know what they actually are doing. Not everybody understands the concept of anti-ghosting, even in a gaming forum.

Sarcasm isn't gonna get you anywhere. If you like your 'other forums' so much, then why don't you ask there too?

 

No people arent my slaves but this is like 2 minutes of work in one of a hand full of places on the internet where you would see the highest number of people who actually own this laptop. Does it make sense for me to go to another forum and post a specific issue to a very specific laptop and just cross my fingers and hope someone has it? Or would it make more sense to goto a forum dedicated to that laptop?

 

thequikrowfojupedoerthelydo!~$%^&*()
thequikorwfojupedoerthelydog!~$%^&*()
the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog!@~$%^&*()
LKDFJSJLKDFSJLDFKSJLKDFSJLKDFS
FDJLKSKDFJLSFDJLKSJFLKSDSDFJLK
LDFJKSLDFJKSLKSFJDJLKDFSDFJLKS
LDFJKSLFJKSDLDFJKSSDFJLKJDFLKS
LDFJKSLKDFJSLDFJKSJLKDFSJLKDFS
LDFJKSKDFJLSLKDFJSJLKDFSJLKSDF
JLKSDFJLKDFSFJKDLSFSDJLKDFSJLK
DJLKSFLKDFJSJLKDFSJKDFLSDFJLKS
LDFJKSKDFJLSFDJLKSSDFJLKDSFJLK
JLKDFSKDFJLSFJLKDSFDJLKSDSFJLK
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe
SSSSSS
DDDDDDDDD
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Done. Now stop whipping! It hurts!

 

Is space not working with shift +E?

 

No.


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No as in it is not working? or no as in I am wrong?

 

No, sadly that combination doesn't work.

 

I must be in the minority on this subject, as I rarely ever use the laptop keyboard. I kick back with the external and mouse.

 

OK bummer that means no ESDF gamers on the alienware. I am down to only the samsung with a good keyboard unfortunately they dont have any good GPUs yet.

Really sad MS can produce a full NKRO keyboard that sells for less than $50, and heck dell even had a great keyboard most people say has no problems that they gave away as the base model with desktops for years (that must have cost what $5 to make? So it baffles me that one of the most expensive gaming laptops out has poor key rollover. Really if any alienware reps are here you need to bring this to the attention of your design team. LEDs are fine but not at the expense of the actual function and point of the machine.

I was going to buy a 680m / 3d which speced out at $2800 and that sale just was lost.

 

I would go 1 step further and say MOST gamers dont use ESDF, not just "Alienware Gamers". But yea that sucks man, these computers are great. Good luck with your laptop search.

 

Most gamers use WASD, true, would you agree that most gamers use space to jump or at least use it alot in games? And would most gamers also want to place other important keys close to where they rest their hands? So that means E is probably pretty heavily used. So the fact that it is stuck at 2KRO with E could be affecting any of your performance regardless of if you are a WASD or ESDF gamers. And I only asked to test those keys. If this is the case then clearly this keyboard is going to have a bunch of other very limited rollover combinations.

Look at the caps shift results, they are worse than most apple keyboards and most people dont even game on apples.

Back to configs from my experience ESDF is the second most common config after WASD and the arrow keys are also a popular config, that assumes only FPS games other games do other thing. Point is rather than trying to force gamers into a niche set of useful keys you just make the keyboard 6KRO and let them do whatever they need to.

If you assume this keyboard will be used by gamers of the FPS genre then shouldnt there at least be 5KRO on everything left of F?

 

Razer Naga Epic. Sorted.


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Don't just look at the specs, try the actual experience. If you want to get that professional, buy a professional mechanical keyboard. I do recommend the Razer Blackwidow.

 

No need to argue about external keyboards as I believe it's a moot point. I have a great external keyboard, but the fact remains that Dell sells these as gaming laptops and most gaming keyboards are critiqued with regard to ghosting and rollover.

If these didn't come with the 1080p option, I suspect that few people would be arguing that we should just plug in an external monitor. I'm sure Dell is aware of the problem, but it might be more of a cost issue ...whatever it is, they are loosing sales from it, and I would prefer not to have these issues with my R4

 

It is true that I could overcome this issue with various hardware solutions. But they would come at a heavy cost.

New good keyboard + mouse = $200 by the exampled given. Luckily I already own mulitple mechanical keyboards and other keyboards that dont have a poblem. But it won't solve the fact that I need to lug a keyboard around when I should not need too. I don't know how much it would cost me to get a reasonably compact NKRO keyboard.

Part of the point of good rollover is to ensure that I dont need to reconfigure my entire gaming setup. If I was going to do that I could just give up and switch back to WASD so the naga doesnt really solve my problem. And once I do that it puts the ASUS G75 back in the contenders.

As for the experience, sure, but then to be fair I would need to try the actual experience with all the competitors and I dont really feel like ording $7000 worth of laptops then returning the ones I don't like. I do however wish there was somewhere around me to demo an M17x R4. It just seems like it is better for everyone if I do the research first if I would have bought this I would have returned it pretty quick after discovering the keyboard issue and that would have been bad for dell or me (not sure on restocking fees).

What jazz8 says is right, you pay top dollar for a gaming notebook you should expect performance that is decent. Just for kicks today I went to another building where I work to do something and tested a keyboard that looks like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Dell-Black-PS-2-Programmable-Keyboard-SK-8100-/200718230950

Result it was flawless, so I dunno for $10 it works, it just seems like alienware has made a serious oversight I dont think it is about costs.

 

what the heck is this? Is this some sort of time wasting ponzi scheme to use up and hoard all the worlds free time with a meaningless task?

What is the purpose of this test? What problem are you aiming to solve? I mean...I noticed my shift keyes arent the best on my new r4...but I didnt have to do any of that crap to figure that out.

Sorry...I just dont get it. Am I the victim of trolling here?? I am beginning to feel like I am...

 

lol megatony, its not trolling but it is meaningless as you say, since most ppl already know that all keyboards safe for the anti ghosting one, would always have 1 or 2 ghosts lurking.
and i'm not just talking about aw. all laptop brands have keyboard ghosting.
if you're really annoyed by ghosting problem, buy anti ghosting keyboard, and even then, i'm not really sure if its really 100% free of ghosts.

 

If you ask me, it's just a bit pedantic and some form of OCD.


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If you have ghosts in your keyboard...there is only one thing you can do:

Original GhostBusters Theme Song - YouTube

Who you gonna call??

GHOSTBUSTERS!!

 

The funny thing is that even very old computers like the Amiga had full n-key rollover keyboards. Yup, you could press all keys at once (even if you had more than 10 fingers) and they would all register, without exception.

Common PCs never had. They didn't put insolation diodes to save costs. What's the point on high end laptops like Alienware?

 

Not trying to be rude fellas, but this was a fair question asked of the Alienware community. While it may have been answered before, there is always a chance that the keyboards had changed with the R4 (yet we now know they didn't).

If you're not interested in the question, no need to read the whole post, nor post responses that might only make it drag on. It was a simple question with a simple answer. Again, I do think it was a fair question, and one that I hope is read by some Alienware rep (and the info passed on to the right individual) ...just my two cents, and now I'll bow out so as not to add to this dragging on

 

I am testing for key rollover, gaming companies started calling it antighosting and that caught on so. (Which is a term I think people should avoid because it is like calling an MP3 player an iPod) People call key rollover the ability to accept more than 1 key input at a time. For instance CTRL + C copies, so you need to be able to rollover CTRL with all other keys to make modified commands.

Keyboards are typically 2KRO (2 key rollover) It means you can press ANY 2 keys at the same time on the keyboard and they will work. That is where it ends. But most keyboard makers try to efficiently design keyboards to save money and so users do not notice this limitation. As such, often the modifier keys like SHIFT, ALT, and CTRL are more like 3KRO. For a long time it was very hard to even figure out what was going on as most people were ignorant on this issue. They would just rebind keys in games, or buy different keyboards that randomly worked better. Eventually people started to notice these really old keyboards were NKRO (they could accept ANY combination of keys up to 16-18 which is more than fingers you have (I think, pics or shens)

What you see above is what you expect to see in test 2 so you might be surprised if you had results like this. (Well not after I did all that explaining).

sdfjklsdfjkljklsdfjklsdfklj
sdfjklsdjklsdfjkljklsdfs
sdfjklsdfjkljklsdfjklsdfsdfj
sdfjksdfjkljklsdfjklsdfjklsd
dsfjklsdjkljklsdfsdfjklsdfjk
sdfjklsdfjkljklsdfjklsdfjkl
sdfjkldfkljklsdfjklsdfjkls
lsdkfjljksdfjklsdfjklsdfjk
dfsjkljklsdfsdfkljklsdfjklsd
sdflksfjklsdjklfsdfjkljklsdf


What that shows me is that the keyboard is not registering all the keys. A blind person would not be able to use this keyboard and a gamer might want to investigate it very carefully before buying it. It turns out this is very common. In fact I stopped into Mythlogic which is a Clevo builder and their 17 inch laptop had a result like above.

Or like this
Apple Aluminum Keyboard
H CK BN FX JMS GH V H LAZ DG

What you want to see is this for every test.

Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard Cherry Red Switches (my current desktop keyboard)
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG!

The Great Keyboard N-Key Rollover (NKRO) Test/Round-up - [H]ard|Forum
Here is a post with tons of keyboards tested.

Both of the tests above try to make a quick way of discerning the quality of roll over status, but neither is perfect, some laptops will score perfect on both of those tests and then when you get it home you will find a fatal flaw that gets in the way of your gaming or work. This is why I asked for tests on ESDF, I use ESDF to game, and shift is typically run/jet/aux, space is jump. You might be highly disappointed to know that the ASUS G75 which is one of the biggest competitors to this laptop will not allow me to hold SPACE, SHIFT and E at the same time which means I cannot jump or move forward. This is obviously not acceptable for a gaming laptop.

The biggest problem with laptops is that unlike a desktop you are married to a whole config of hardware. And most of it you cannot configure much if at all. For instance most only have 1 or 2 keyboard choices. So if the laptop fails this test it is out for me, however for most people they don’t make decisions based on this so laptop makers don’t care, they just buy keyboards for other chiclet keys and flashy lights. On top of that people often do not understand key rollover and they do things like blame the game, windows or something unrelated.

The second big problem is the so called antighosting on many gaming laptops is just a special design of key rollover that tries to make most combinations of keys work well around the WASD cluster. However gamers who play more keyboard intensive games may run out of options and gamers who try to move their configs to ESDF or RDFG will also have problems. More or less antighosting was a bad term coined to allow manufacturers to keep selling ty keyboards as gaming keyboard instead of designing true NKRO keyboards. Even a 6KRO keyboard would be acceptable to most, in fact NKRO is only 6KRO if it is over USB due to USB limitations.

You know that is sad, I have hypothesized that many of the things we do and like in the world of computers are the result of hardware limitations. For instance modifier keys like SHIFT, ALT, CTRL need to work with other keys so they are typically made to have better key rollover, as such the whole gaming world has sort of moved to WASD configs instead of much more efficient RDFG or ESDF configs where you have more keys close to access. Some people argue it is about spacing but I think that was only a small part of the decision. I also think that the move to LCDs which are slower than CRTS is a big part of why fast paced games lost popularity to much slower paced games. People could not react quickly in games like HLDM, Quake, UT and Tribes on LCDs so games like CS, BF, COD became more popular.

So spread the word and google more about this issue eventually one day consumers might start demanding NKRO in high enough numbers that most laptops will come with it. Haha who am I kidding probably a pipe dream people want macbook airs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(key)
http://rollover.geekhack.org/

 

*slow clap*

We can only dream that the market goes that way. I suppose that Alienware puts in those cheap keyboards to increase profits margins. It's a shame I suppose, we will see when I get my m17xR4 if it comes up as a problem with my gaming...

 

OCD indeed...
so you're blind and wanted to play games and buy gaming laptop? awesome.
like i said earlier if you can't handle keyboard ghosting, try to use anti ghosting keyboard.
and its not about being cheap, more like about space limitations in laptop architecture, do you even ever see how thin laptop keyboard is?

and please read this.
Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

plus the site have a very useful built in ghosting checker. enjoy.

 

If you live in new York area JnR has Alienware comps on the floor that you can see in person, FYI. Right near WTC Path if commuting ... That's what I did.

 

In all seriousness though, this is something your average gamer, or even borderline "hardcore" gamers, are going to care little about. And that makes up a large percentage of Alienware customers. The only gamers who are going to be bothered by this issue are elitists. I'm talking competition gamers. And for the most part, they'll have built custom rigs.


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well to be honest i was concerned as well since notebookcheck (if i remember correctly) clearly mentioned about R3 ghosting problem which was s+d+space key.
which means you can't move backward right and jump at the same time, but since i received my machine and play BF3 i've yet encountered any maneuvering difficulties caused by ghosting.
btw during competitions, usually gamers bring their own trusted keyboard, and i can tell you that only a handful labeled as "GHOSTING FREE".
so i assumed even pro gamers prefer comfort over ghosting-free.

 

Personally, I don't see how anyone games in a FPS on any laptop keyboard. Maybe I've just gotten to used to my Nostromo N52. With that and my mouse, I never even have to touch the laptop at all during gaming.

 

i have concluded the key rollover issue is due to faulty hardware.. i'm on keyboard #2.. waiting on dell to ship keyboard #3

both keyboards #1 and #2 worked great in the beginning.. at least for a few days before i started experiencing key rollover issues including Q+W, certain Ctrl+Alt+Del combinations, and the inability to key special characters using Alt+#### combinations.

issue resolved:
it wasn't keyboard issue. replaced the adapter and num pad wiring and works fine now. faulty wiring, was probably pinched when tech assembled my R4

 

I went to microcenter 2 days ago. They had an m18x not m17x and the 18x had the bad rollover causing jamming on E+shift+space pretty much as described here.

The samsung was not flawless it had key jamming issues too, it failed the shift,+capslock and was not perfect on shift +shift either. But the important key combinations did work.

As to coach nite, Sure I love my mechanical keyboards, but you still gotta game on the go sometimes and I dont want to lug around a separate device. I accept that gaming on any laptop will never be as solid as having a CRT monitor running at 100hz, a full desk to spread out on with a wired mouse and keyboard. But things like key jamming dont just make it less desireable they make it pretty much impossible.