New palmrests for AW17R5 29G90

Having used my AW17 principally as a static (DTR) system, I was upset (but not entirely surprised) that the palmrest was not looking its pristine best; where the stickers had been was visible in certain light conditions and there were a good few fine scratches; how they got there is beyond me, but it was starting to really bug me.

Having been trawling eBay it became apparent that the supply of new parts (at least in Europe) has dried up.....

I therefore looked further afield and came across these folk:

http://www.waresphere.com/store/dell-alienware-m17x-r5-top-cover-assembly-29g90.html

Understandably I was thinking 'Chinese fake', but emailed the company who responded that it was new and genuine. Still with a degree of trepidation I thought 'Ah well, buy it on Visa through PayPal and if it does turn out to be fake, at least there's a degree of protection...'

So, eight days later it arrives; and after VERY close inspection I have no reason to suspect that this is anything other than the real thing.

The palmrest arrives bare, so you have to transfer switch, indication panel, touchpad, keyboard & daughter board over from the old one, but every single item fitted first time - all the screwholes line up, had good threads and so on.....

The top surface arrived protected by that thick tacky-coated plastic that was found on my brand-new unit back in 2014, and the thin protective strip along the mirror-finished strip was also present.

The 'feel' of the palmrest surface is EXACTLY as the original, the look and thickness of the part is 100% too.

So, for a total including shipping of £41.00 ( and it 'sneaked in under the radar' as the vendor had declared the value at $20.00, so no import tax!) my 17R5 is restored to factory fresh appearance; I wish I had had the good sense to take some pictures of the palmrest before fitting - the stickers on the underside looked pretty identical to those on the original in size, style and location. The last price I can find for this from Dell is a whopping £168.00 GB, so £41 + an hour of my time transferring the components is pretty good.....

And so, good people, I can say that this is a cheap and relatively easy way of refreshing your R5, the part appears to be 100% correct and genuine - if it IS fake it's a very good one....

I would be really interested to hear from you guys if you have had any experiences good or bad, with Waresphere aka Bixin Computer Incorporation; as far as I can see they are 'one of the good guys'.

I don't recommend companies I've not had personal experience of, but I think this company seem ok

Regards

Dave

 

Bookmarked their website. Thanks for sharing! Will definitely take a look if I need to replace any part in my AW17!

 

They do seem to have a fair range of parts for AW/Dell, including the Precision range - I had a Precision M6500 prior to the AW17s, and regret selling it on so promptly - with the benefit of hindsight I should have kept it........

I took the opportunity to move the 8gb SoDIMMs to the under-keyboard location (and the 4gb to the easily-accessible slots) with a view to swapping out the 4gb for a pair of new 8's - very much an afterthought that was; I stopped for a 'tea break' after moving all the bits and bobs over to the new palmrest and thought maybe I should do it while it's in bits.......

Now looking at a pair of Crucial CT102464BF160B on UK eBay ( I'm in London) as ( unusually ) pricewise they are about the same as buying from the US ( which is generally cheaper ) to bring it up to 32gb. I know it's overkill but I do a bit of video manipulation - mainly adding hardcoded subtitles to foreign language films and encoding from one format to another; so I can pretend to justify the cost on those grounds......