My History With My Alienware M17xR1

This is the first Alienware that I've ever had. I paid $4000 for all this.

I was so fed up with having a very slow laptop (Acer Aspire 4315) that had its backlight break and then I decided that I wanted a gaming laptop, and I had seen some reviews for the M17x. I read alot more of reviews on it to make sure it was good and almost all of them on it were good. So in late August of 2009 I ordered an Alienware m17x, and had to wait until September for it to be sent out. When I got it I started playing some games that didn't work well on my old one and they ran perfectly.

But within a week of having it a DVD got stuck in the DVD/Blu-Ray drive, and I had to call alienware support to get it fixed. After a week of waiting, the repair technician came, took the computer somewhere, and he replaced the DVD drive (after he was gone with the pc for 3 hours and his company couldn't contact him because his phone "died" right when he got the computer). And when he came back, he said that he replaced the Drive sucessfully, but he said put THE SAME DISK right back in and it died in a puff of smoke (from what he said). The only good thing that came out of this was they sent me 2 $25 amazon cards for that game that got destroyed.

So he called alienware and got them to replace the whole computer, and then that one works fine for about 7 months, then it started having the monitor cut out randomly, and alot of BSOD. So I called them and then they said that my graphics cards was going out, and they replaced the graphics cards (Dual 260m) and it fixed the problem for a few months. Then it started to happen again. I called them (again) and they said that the graphics cards they put in could be defective still, so they replaced them again (with the person that destroyed my first one). That fixed the problem for 3 months and then it happened again, so I looked on Alienware's support site for drivers, and found I needed to go to Dell's website to get the drivers, so I install those drivers and it works.

In January of 2011, then I start to get a very weird beeping problem (almost like a BIOS beep but quieter). I call them about it and they tell me to do a power drain, so I do that and then a week later it happens again but more often than before and when the beep happens it freezes my pc for a few seconds. I call them again and they tell me to open the back panel, and take out the BIOS battery and let it stay out for a few minutes. Then it works for 2 days after that then it comes back even worse. They said that it could be the RAM or Motherboard going out, so they send a replacement for both. When the Repair technician came out he said that he will replace the RAM first and see if that fixes it because he said replacing the motherboard takes alot of time and might cause more problems, so I let him replace the RAM, and he told me to call him the next day after I played games for a few hours to see if the problem was gone. It didn't happen again from that for 2 weeks, but then it was back again!! I let it do that for a week more to see if it goes away on its own, but it doesn't stop.

So on March 6 I call them and say that its still happening. After about 30 minutes of the Support Agent looking at my computer with aliencontact, he says that it could be the motherboard going out. So he asks if it would be ok to replace the motherboard and I said that would be ok, but then I remembered the repair technician saying that replacing the motherboard could cause more problems, so I ask if I could get the whole Computer replaced. He said that it could be replaced, and he said that it might be upgraded to the M17xR2 with upgraded parts, and a day later I get a e-mail saying that I'm being upgraded to an M17xR3 with upgraded parts as compensation for all the trouble that my R1 had.

So now I'm being upgraded from: M17xR1 Intel Core2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz, 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz, 1GB Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - SLI Enabled, 1TB (500GB x 2) 7,200RPM - RAID 0

To: M17xR3 Intel Core i7 2630QM 2.0GHz (2.8GHz Turbo Mode), 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz, 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6970M, 1.5TB Raid 0 (2x 750GB 7,200RPM)

As of right now, I'm unimpressed with alienware's quality, but I hope that this nice upgrade that I'm getting in 1-2 weeks will change my opinion

 

ahh, you are not alone... my FX board went on me (no it was not a reformatting issue), one of my 260m cards went "boom", umm... the DVD drive died, and the AC adapter kicked the bucket too. All in all, the help I got from in house techs was great. I dont know... I think it may have been that it was such a change from other laptops they have had, and they were in a rush to pump them out. since then, I hear the R2s are much better, and I hope (fingers crossed) the R3 will be a solid machine (ordered mine). You were lucky to get a free upgrade like that. I am impressed with AW/DELL's catering to customers. They know how to keep us happy in the long run. Best of luck with your new toy =^_^=

 

Thanks for wishing good luck with my new m17x!

I hope that your new m17xR3 works well too

 

You actually can demand for a better upgrade or partial refund since that is not a true upgrade. Lowest processor, 1 GPU instead of 2 GPUs, etc.

 

Are you sure that it's not a good upgrade? The processor is alot better than the one I have right now, and I don't really care for the dual graphics cards because my games performed almost exactly the same with the SLI on or off (maybe only 2-5fps frame increase with it on). And if i had bought the intel i7 and all the best parts for the m17x when it first came out, it would have been well over $8000

 

R2 would have been best IMO, I love the R2.