*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 Ranger (2013) Owner's Lounge Thread

ZOG Paradox lol
You ordered your laptop when? September 26 and you think you will receive your laptop before the 21st of October....
I bet my left nut and right arm you wont that's for sure.
At least I am telling you the truth.

 

I am quite positive I will receive mine before the 21st.

I.E. before you.

 

Awesome news man!! Congrats!!

I'm still waiting on word back from the expedition department. Almost a week now since the request was made. I'm feeling another escalation coming.....little good it did me last time. I'm so sick of this crap, been dealing with it since Sept. 13th.....

 

I feel your pain rednekcowboy believe me....
I also have done everything I can do but never any changes in my order status. I also expedited my order and still made no difference.
I am hoping things will change this week but probably not..

 

Could you give us a review on your laptop when you receive it tomorrow. I have the same specs ordered in mine and I would like your opinion if you could?
Thanks in advance.

 

Yeah sure. I was planning to anyway. Depending what time it arrives, and assuming it works flawlessly, I may be able to do one tomorrow. I called FedEx and had them place a note on the shipment to arrive before 3PM, so, I hope it shows up before I have class.

EDIT: I've also just pre-ordered the Battlefield 4™ Digital Deluxe (Pre-order), so, I'll do a video unboxing and review with some gameplay. It's download-only, though, so it may take a while.

 

I order mine on the 2nd of September and it went straight in to the production stage and stade there until 5 days ago.

 

Great News!!!
Received my shipping Notice today, Laptop is in route and due to be delivered tomorrow...
Have my 240 Gig SSD drive and windows 8 disc standing by.
Looks like a busy and fun time Thursday....

 

120Hz HDTV display: To display 120Hz, you must use a connection that supports 120Hz on both the HDTV and the laptop. With the AW17, it appears that this is only supported from the mini DisplayPort - so you'd have to have a connection that goes from miniDP to whichever input(s) the HDTV or monitor supports for 120Hz at full HD (1920x1080) resolution. NOTE that HDTVs are designed to support TV and video and may not be as responsive as PC monitors - which might introduce lag times, especially when displaying at 120Hz.

16GB memory in AW17: Received my AW17 last week. Haven't opened the case yet. The system does report the memory is provided through 4x4GB and not 2x8GB - so that if I wanted to upgrade to 32GB, would have to buy 4x8GB.

 

Awesome. Do you want to install the SSD alongside the HDD or replace it? Same copy of Win8 on both?

 

I'm kinda resigned to the fact that's it impossible as TV's don't have Display port ports. Even with a Display port to HDMI converter cable it would still only be as strong as its weakest link. Looks like its peasant 60fps max for me... Oh well

 

I will install the Windows 8 on my SSD and format my 750HD for storage.
Then use Acronis 2014 to make a backup...I really have no need for windows 7...
Will download all my drivers tonight from the dell website and put them a Flash drive ...

 

So?????

Let me guess, too busy playing with the new laptop to let us know you received it and how awesome it is????

 

Any news on your shipment yet?

 

Not sure why it wouldn't work with the adapter. TVs take HDMI inputs from other devices and run at 120Hz so I'd think that with the adapter everything would work ok

 

Mine arrived today.. Ordered in the beginning of Sept (as soon as the 780's were available again) and had a scheduled delivery date of Oct 7th so I'm actually almost a week ahead of schedule.

So far so good!

 

What BIOS did yours ship with ?
Just got off the phone with dell and added a year of complete care to my system, should protect me from any nasty surprises for my first year.
Have all my drivers and apps loaded to my zip drive, a new SSD drive, and a windows 8 disc, so now I await FedEx tomorrow morning...
Think I will leave windows 7 on my 750Gig HD just in case I have any issues with the SSD drive.
My last SSD drive that this one replaced from Newegg died in less than 30 minutes..so I will play it safe for a few days...

 

A03 which is a little surprising since A04 has been out for a while (I wouldn't have expected A05)

 

Please help.

Good news is I received my laptop today .
Bad news is it's stuck .
Turned it on and played around with lights everything working fine . Was happy as he'll.
Then clicked windows update . Said 40 updates . Clicked install updates. Computer downloaded and installed updates then said restart to install updates. So clicked restart and computer restarted then when it got to screen that says alienware with windows 7 home premium under it . It just got stuck there and won't do anything. I push power and it seems to shut off but when I push power again the same screen comes back up. So I'm guessing power just puts it to sleep until I push power again and the it goes back to where I left off. Is there a way to force it to shutoff or fix this thanks

 

Figured it out .
I feel so stupid .
You just have to hold the power button down for like 5 seconds or so and then it completely shuts down. Powered it up again and seemed to fix problem. Sorry for waisting space on this thread.

 

Actually, I'm having issues with AlienRespawn and the SSD's I'm using. I might have to remove them and restore windows on the factory mSATA and then expand the drive through Intel RST.

System works fine, though, so far. I haven't been able to play any games or test anything because of this SSD mess. As soon as I figure out what the deal is, I'll get to it.

 

Hi
That's not good for sure. Are you trying to run the OS threw a ssd you are installing or your mSATA? Is the OS installed in the mSATA or the HDD from factory?

 

It was installed on the mSATA. I ordered a 256GB boot SSD. I'm trying to RAID it with other SSD's and use AlienRespawn to restore windows. It works fine except I get some Intel Rapid Start Technology error crap and it is annoying.

It's just a minor error getting in my way.

 

I've got to play around with my new 17 for about 3 hours so far. Updated bios to a05 and did windows update. Mine came with bios a03 from factory. The invidia driver is 311 something . I'm now downloading stArwars the old republic . This will be my first game install . I only have AT&T 2 wire so if I'm lucky it should be done downloading by the time I get off work tomorrow at 230. Lol . I am pretty happy with it so far. Very we'll built better than I expected it to be. Can't wAit to actually play a game on it. Is there a way to pull a list up of all the drivers installed on my 17 so I can compare them to the drivers on dells website and see wich ones I actually need to update.

 

Hi
I am sure that you cannot update the NVidia driver. You can download it but it will not install (it shows some error)
That is my experience. From what I have been told buy alienware tech there is problems with the update..

 

I'm cool with the nvidia driver. The driver that's installed in my 17 matches the latest one on dells website so I'm not worried about it .i know there's later ones from invidia but I'll just stick with the ones from dell for now. I was just curious about the other 15 or so drivers . I want to compare those to dells latest drivers so I was just wondering if there was a way to pull up a list of all the drivers in my system to compare to dells.

 

Hi
The device manager will give you the list. That is what works for me.

 

Sweet . That's what I was looking for .
Thanks a lot for info.

 

So, I've figured out what the issues were. Some genius at Dell made a partition in my 256GB "boot drive" to cache the HDD that came with it, so when I went to RAID the mSATA with other SSD's, it was spitting out errors about acceleration and Intel RST. I'm still getting one error upon boot, but it should be resolved with a BIOS flash. I'll try that later...

Anyway, the SSD's are in RAID and all works great. 768GB's of SSD capacity is sweet... Now I can test this biatch.

 

How do you like your Vindicator bag? I decided that I wasn't going to use it until my laptop arrived, but that is looking like it will be sometime next millennium so I decided to bring it to work with me this morning. The Alienware logo's paint is already flaking off--after 1 day of use!

I've also not received a response on the expedition request that was filed a week ago now. Extremely aggravating!!

The only thing that is working out so far is the Targus Chill Mat, which is funny because that's also the only thing that isn't Dell branded lol.

 

I ordered the Everki Titan, not the vindicator. I like the Titan. I haven't had the chance to use it, yet, but I will soon.

As for the expedite request: according to my order details, I was fortunate enough to have mine accepted. I placed the order on the 17th and it was shipped on the 27th, via FedEx Ground to Chicago (from Dell) and then Next Business Day to me... So, I got lucky there, and it all works, so far.

I'm not happy that an Extreme Edition CPU comes with a dual pipe heat sink, but it stays pretty cool. There is definitely enough room for a better heat sink... I'll do more testing tonight.

I would bet your order will ship within a week. It looks like they are shipping out for other members also.

 

I hope so, but seeing as we can't get a response back on the request (approved or denied), I'm quite skeptical. I've escalated it once again so we'll have to see what happens.

I'm very pleased that you received yours though and things are now on the right track and going well. You're happy with it? Seems solid and well-built?

 

Yes, seems to be built very well.

It looks like I'm going to have to install a fresh copy of Windows to get rid of these Intel RST error messages.

 

--- Edit to create my own thread ---

 

My computer came with a 256gb msata and 750gb hdd. When I check drives the 750gb has 698 free wich seems about right. But the drive c: only has 145 gb free. I know windows 7 don't take up 100 gb. What's up with that.
I'm not at home bit I do recall the 256gb boot drive saying 145 gb free of 197 gb

 

It looks as though Dell has created a partition to speed up the HDD, using approximately 32GB's as a caching SSD for the HDD.

 

Because apparently HDMI is not capable of carrying a 120hz signal only up to 60hz.

 

A comment about the A05 BIOS:

It seems to be much more consistent and stable with temperatures. It seems to allow your system to run cooler at times by letting the fans be much more active and adaptive to the gaming climate you put them through. I'm not sure why they did not include a change-log, but this is what I noticed over A03.

I don't have much proof of this except watching temperatures and listening to the fans, but hey, I tried.

 

My Baby has arrived...
FedEx just dropped off my Alienware 17 and she is a sight to behold...No damage in shipment and she booted without any problems..
I am updating windows at the moment and will wait until tomorrow to install the SSD drive as well as windows 8..
Thus far I am quite pleased and my coworkers are just amazed...

 

Probably caching drive + system recovery partition + paging file + system restore + hibernation, all done in your ssd.

 

Nice to hear!

That thing about your coworkers, I believe it. I haven't seen anyone else with one from the new lineup.

 

My son 17 just came today . Im going to do the backup on the 256 msata boot drive, do update on windows 7 ,
should I update to the latest nividia 780m driver ? I read some where in the forum some new driver give you a black screen.

 

Installed my SSD drive and windows 8 and had a bear of a time getting the backplate back on...one side would not completely line up as before, noticed when I removed the backplate there were a few scuff marks on the inside..looks like they forced it at the factory to line up..I have no problem with it for now but one screw will not properly line up I may request a follow up visit from a tech to maybe bring another one and fit it correctly...

 

Congratulations on your laptop. Today is my second day with mine and I am very pleased with everything about it so far .
Enjoy.

 

Hello
From what I have been just told from customer service that my order is finally done and will ship in the next 24hrs

Until I get the tracking number I wont get too excited yet...

 

Any news on your order today??

 

HDMI in general is because that is how everything is attached to the TV. How I read the previous posts was that the HDMI of the computer couldn't but the display port did (so 120 wasn't being sent over HDMI)... so in theory if 120 is being sent over the mini-display an adapter would just bypass that right to the TV.

Of course I could be completely wrong but it might be worth a try for how little $$ an adapter is.

 

32GB of the system drive is used for the Intel Rapid Start - a faster alternative to using hibernate (which stores the hibernation file in the C: partition). If you leave Rapid Start enabled, then you don't need hibernation.

You should be able to add about 9GB of space to the C: partition if you get rid of the Respawn/recovery partition - which should be adjacent to the C: partition on the drive.

If you get rid of the 32GB partition, that will break Rapid Start - and you'll have to either re-create it (which I believe must be on an SSD) or create a hibernation file (and if you only have 16GB of memory, should be smaller than 32GB).

I've decided to keep the Rapid Start working - and lose the extra 16GB of space on the SSD.

 

I've re-escalated yet again but unfortunately, the same jerk-off that got the first escalation, picked up on this one and is telling me a bunch of lies. Caught him in 2 right off the hop.

I'm not going to get into the whole sordid thing again, but I explained in the latest escalation how we've been waiting since Sept. 13th, he smugly replies that the current order was placed on Sept. 26th, but neglects to mention that due to Dell's incompetence, there have been numerous orders placed and canceled and re-ordered. He also stated that they are working on expediting, however I will see no change in the EDD, which is BS.

On the email he replied to, I had included the rep that actually went back to financing for me and got the extra approval, that reps manager, the michael dell email address and the manager of the yo-yo responding to me. In yo-yo's response, he removed everyone on the email change and responded only to me. My response to him, I re-attached everyone back on the email.

He also tried to say that there was a request made for additional financing for me on the original order but it was refused, which is complete BS. I confirmed with the Financing department that no additional requests were made until the Sept 26th order was placed and I also confirmed with Customer Care that an expedition request takes a total of 48 hours to make and, once approved, the EDD, while it may not be updated on the website, most definitely is updated in the system and is available to the rep assigned to the order.

This yo-yo is telling me that the EDD still remains the same so either the request was never processed, or it was refused for whatever reason. Whichever it is, he is still lying through his teeth and I'm fed-up. My reply to him last night was not very nice. While I kept it professional, I called him out on every point. I mean these people must truly think that customers are idiots or something. I've asked repeatedly that he give me the contact information for someone that is over his head that I can deal with but he repeatedly ignores those requests.

I feel bad for the guy that went back to the Finance department for me and actually did his job. He is stuck in the middle of this now and has always been nothing but honest with me. He confirmed that the request for expedition was placed by him and his manager but they are both baffled as to why they are not receiving a reply from that department.