Big mistake... time for throwing in the towel.

I consider aw18 purchase a mistake for myself. I jumped on the chance to get it when it came out and the issues weren't discovered at that time. I planned to keep this beast for 4yrs atleast.

But now I am gonna sell it off soon, hoping next gen is not plagued by same issues. Otherwise my m17xr4 and m18xr1 will keep me company till we get something really good.

 

Sorry to hear this. It's a really beautiful, well-made machine with great potential, but the unresolved poor performance aspects are becoming really tough to ignore at this point.

Please post about your disappointment and intent to sell the 18 for lack of swift action to fix the performance and cooling problems over in these threads so it will be visible to a larger number of Dell employees. Some of them do not visit NBR, or not as frequently. The more negative feedback that gets sent internally by Social Media employees to the engineers the better. We don't want Brother Porras to be the only lonesome guy reporting unhappy 18 owners experience to engineering.

Alienware 18 CPU Throttling | Dell Community Alienware Club

Alienware 18, 4930MX Overclocked up to 4.3GHz only reaching to 3.9 GHz | Dell Community Alienware Club

Dell IdeaStorm | Alienware: Enhanced / Customizable Fan Control < this has 67 votes, no action has been taken to fix the problem, but it got archived for some reason, so please vote and comment this up again

Dell IdeaStorm | bigger power supply or dual psu for high end 18s please (18x-18 < without this, there is no point in buying one with top specs unless you are merely a gamer that is happy with stock performance

Dell IdeaStorm | Unlock the Bios on the new Alienware 18s < this is "Enthusiast 101" - they need to either remove the restrictions so we can unlock and flash it for ourselves, or provide it to us already unlocked

Dell IdeaStorm | Desktop CPU's in AW M18 < the "Throttle King" (4930MX) ain't good enough for a true enthusiast - they need to think about moving in this direction because the mobile landscape sucks with Haswell

​

 

I have kept my opinions reserved quite a bit, but now I guess its time to share what I feel.

I am not a once off customer for dell. Pretty much every single top of the line laptop since Inspiron 9300, except M17xR1. To me AW18 is a half finished product, WITHOUT proper TESTING. And following is what I feel wrong with AW18.
- LCD lid designed for a slimmer LCD but changed mind half way and stuffed a different panel, being thicker no problem, will only cause light bleed.
- Enough space for second PSU and third GPU, designed bottom cover and intake for 3rd gpu, but changed mind and only provided single psu and sli only.
- Not only above but limited mosfets so second psu not gonna work like M18xR1/R2 did.
- Promise completely unlimited power to xm processor (and advertise as such) but not capable of providing enough current, so it throttles.
- Came with a mindset to provide unlimited performance but changed mind to go with Intel’s vision of under-powered-silent-asthmatic laptop and ended up screwing fan tables in name of noise reduction and killed the performance.
- Came with a mindset to provide unlimited overclocking but went with MS bull crap and ended up locking everything out, not only taking overclocking options from customers but destroyed the chance for customers to recover from above mentioned issues, due to locked bios and secure boot crap.
- Had the chance to launch world's first 4x 2.5" HDD/SSD powered laptop, yet still retaining twin msata. As such designed ODD bay with the bracket and space for dual 2.5" HDD's/SDD's or ODD + single 2.5" HDD/SDD but changed mind half way and reverted to single HDD/SSD/ODD option, loosing the edge.
- Designed enough space in the laptop for twin msata but changed mind to provide only 1. If I remember correctly, M14x has DMC slot which can be used for either DMC card or msata, same could have been implemented in AW18, considering AW did not provide the option for WIDI. But someone somewhere did not see the profit in doing so and it was not implemented.
- Broadcom wifi provides MIRACAST/WIDI out of the box, with simple driver change and WIDI software, yet someone smart at AW forgot to implement this and provide extra option to customers without any additional cost.

So as such with minimal work Dell/Alienware could have implemented following changes.
- Similar BIOS to M18xR2
- Proper testing and correction for fan tables and removing current limitation
- Dual HDD/SSD bracket for ODD replacement
- ADD msata capability to DMC card slot
- WIDI software

Not that hard to do and will disseminate pretty much every other DTR out there.

 

What you propose sounds like the new Alienware 18 r2. Get your bank accounts and credit cards ready for pre-order.

 

I am not proposing AW18R2, I am sharing the mistakes made by DELL. You are more than welcome to buy a AW18, dismantle it, track all of the traces on the motherboard, and it will be quite obvious, what was suppose to be implemented and what actually got implemented.

 

Another cracker from get together last night, had 3 dell techs over and dell new awesome plan, implemented as of today.

- Any scratch/dent/ding on any system, take images and void warranty on that part. Take before after images.
- No more replacing motherboard/gpu/ram/etc due to 1 issue, replace lowest cost part and test, till working. If replaced part, found to be working, tech has to pay for it.
- Void of above policy, techs have to pay for the parts.
- Anything non dell, void warranty.

Dell Techs in field, aren't getting paid decent wages as is, pile more stuff on top and make them pay, I wonder how long before they start quitting right and left. All three techs that informed me are already looking for other jobs, and these are good techs.

So thank you again Dell, please go ahead and hit the final nail in the proverbial coffin, so we get ty phone techs and ty on site techs.

 

Love the feedback, and the system names in your signature.

Happy New Year!

 

That could suck real bad for customers and techs alike.. Can we have an Alienware rep confirm that?

Edit: A few things don't really make sense to me:
- Voiding parts on the basis of scratch and dent: who's meant to do that? On-site techs? Why would they bother unless there's something in it for them?
- If replaced part found working, fine the tech: again which tech? Remote diagnosis tech? That's way too harsh especially for the outsourced support guys wouldn't you think?
- (Don't really understand this bit )
- Non-Dell parts void warranty: for the whole system? That means no more upgradability whatsoever? But then if the customer is careful Dell can't catch them..

 

Well all of us were somewhat drunk at the point when this conversation broke out, and with the emotional feelings i saw on tech's face, haven't got the nerve to discuss it. Like I said, all three are looking for new jobs right now. Personally in Australia even the most senior person in dell, a customer can talk to (have talked to him few times, but will not put his name out here) is a pure wanker/idiot to say the least. So this will not surprise me, if dell aus tried to pull this stunt.

On a side note, before packing my aw18, i decided to finish the project i started long ago and wanted to do. I did ended up doing 2 seperate projects today. My best mate helped me with all of the soldering and wiring (he's gazillion times better at it than me).
1. Dual 2.5" HDD's in ODD slot, just took a sheet of aluminum and bent/cut it to hold 2 HDD's. Not elegant but sorta works.
2. Second msata slot and Third msata slot. BOTH ACTIVELY BOOTING

Of course both slots are running over usb2.0 but still having 2x 64GB internal msata ssd's are not bad.

 

I don`t want a more noisy notebook. This notebook is perfect as it is in terms of cooling. Its produce less noise than M18xR2 according to Anandtech, and the CPU is actually cooler on the Alienware 18 than M18xR2.
Alienware M18xR2
Alienware 18

I can understand that overclockers may see issues, but they are a small fraction of the Alienware 18 user base, and should not have veto rights over the other majority.
What Dell could have done to solve this is to implement a fan control software, that let the user unlock faster fan speeds if he choose to overclock and need better cooling. Alternative is a dual fan table for Alienware 18 users which can be toggled on and off with a hotkey on the keyboard. One for normal operation, and another one for overclocking which have more agressive fan table.

This would have done all users happy and should not be difficult to implement and learn to use

 

Hey cloud, how did you come to the conclusion that one is cooler than the other when only the M18xR2 screenshot showed the maximum package power (which in itself doesn't tell us if that level of load had been sustained either)? If the Alienware 18 achieved cooler temperatures by throttling like a drowning dog I would hardly see that as an achievement.

Overclocker or not, it sucks to have to worry about thermal shutdown even with moderate clocks like 4.0GHz..

 

They fixed something that was not broken. They put a square peg in a round hole and tried to make an Alienware act like a Dell. The M18xR1/R2 was and is never loud unless you choose for it to be, or don't keep it clean inside. Since the release of the M18xR1 I don't remember ever reading any post by an M18xR1/R2 owner that complained that the machine too loud.

It is absolutely messed up how it is right now. When a machine hits 95°-100°C before the fans react (often going into thermal shutdown) how on earth can you call that perfect cooling? It's screwed up... big time. The hardware itself (fans and heat sinks) is very good stuff and more than adequate without a 4930MX. The fact that the fans do not function when they should is terrible. That's not overclockers having veto power. That's simply wanting the machine to function correctly. We also need whatever kind of conflict in circuitry that is interfering with manual fan control to be fixed.

There could be something we don't know about how it is made that is complicating resolution--perhaps a design defect that they are struggling with--but it certainly seems like something could have been fixed in one or two days. Whatever the reason is that it is taking way too long, it makes perfect sense to me that people are frustrated and angry that it's not fixed yet.

 

First off all aw18 fails to achieve moderate overclocks, that were promised by dell/alienware themselves. Not enough current means, in my case anything more than 3.6ghz will cause instant shutdown/lockup. Remember I paid almost $1300 for the overclocked CPU from dell/alienware and it cannot achieve what they themselves said, it will achieve. And this is not from heating, I installed 3x 8000rpm+ server fans right on the vents of aw18 and guess what, exact same result.

Secondly playing bf4 at high settings alone causes my aw18 to goto 92c without external cooler. My m18xr2 used to get upto 72c at ultra with same, and m18xr1 goes to 74c at ultra.

Third, I am assuming here, you were not one of the consumers who was fortunate (or unfortunate) to go through m1730 debacle. I got m1730 when gtx8800m sli came out. Exact same issue, fans were nerfed down exactly the way aw18 has, to provide better noise control. That resulted in m1730 gpu being nick-named ticking time bomb. This was finally fixed on bios a11 and dell had to replace almost every singe gpu on m1730 shipped in Australia with replacement 8800m sli and later on with 9800m sli.

Fourth and final, those screenshots look like idle temperatures. My temperatures are under decent load and I repaste my systems every 6months. So not sure if that r2 was still running paste from factory or if it was dried up.

And not sure if you know, most of the bios has option between maximum performance vs quiteness, in terms of fan speed. Every single review on aw18 out there, outlines the under performing CPU on aw18 while other manufacturers are getting more out of same CPU.

Your welcome to prove me wrong, I love learning new things

 

The laptop is sold as overclocked to 4.3ghz. Why do we have a thread with 368 replies on how to hit 4.3ghz with stability when that should have been done from the factory. Alienware released a mediocre product but made sure to hold back on some fixes and goodies to release for the second generation. The m18x r1 and m18x r2 were ahead of its time. Now they are able to easily keep up with current generation products. Sounds like Alienware is changing their tactics from over engineering to under engineering. My pathetic old m18x r2 with 3840qm can hit 4.3ghz with no problem at all and stay at that clock speed along within thermal limits. How does a computer worth double with superior parts hit thermal shutdown and unable to maintain advertised specs.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...w-overclock-4930mx-4-3ghz-messed-up-bios.html

 

I also have to chime in on the "- Any scratch/dent/ding on any system, take images and void warranty on that part. Take before after images." . I always read all the paperwork the technicians bring in to see what Dell wrote on the ticket. I noticed on the first or second page some gibberish about physical damage and void warranty. It also stated to make sure accidental warranty is purchased if you see any damage or to void that part. I think the OP is stating the truth. If Alienware notices you have a dent on the lid or a gash in the metal from dropping it. The on site tech is suppose to inspect the unit and voluntarily void warranty on products (call Dell and report damage to void warranty) that looked to be physical or water damage without accidental warranty. Dell is starting to do shady tactics to maximize profits for the long run by going out of their way to void warranty. How about Dell goes out of their way to satisfy customers and release products that are fully tested and not beta version release for mass public. You no longer have to answer to shareholders and are free to do what you want as a company.

 

I feel your pain there, i felt the same way about the M17x (R1) when it came out. So i promised myself that i would wait for a few revisions before upgrading. My philosophy now is the first revision is a Beta build, second revision most bugs have been patched and big boy hardware has been manufactured and ready for mainstream. So i will be waiting for the next revision to come out and see what changes have been made to improve.

 

The hardware product is lovely IMO, I like the new design, it's easier to access and the cooling is great.

There are just some dodgy firmware choices.

 

I didn`t come up with that conclusion, Anandtech did that for me.

Alienware 18

Alienware M18x R2

Both of those temperature screenshots was from Anandtech. I`m pretty sure they use the same test across notebooks to make it as comparable as possible.
Anandtech did not find any throttling during their 7 game test. Its pretty safe to assume that the notebook function exactly like it should non OCed.

OC it does probably throttle like you and all the other people here say. I believe you and I believe they should absolutely fix that. But not on my expense.
That could however be fixed by having more agressive fanspeeds on those high temperatures though. Say 85C and above. If what Mr Fox say is correct that it hits 95C+ before the fan acts, then the firmware does obviously need to be updated to avoid throttling. I`m with you guys here. Just don`t mess with the fan speeds on temps below 85C and I`m a happy guy

I like the idea of having two fan modes though, which have their own set of fan tables.

 

Actually...stopping the GPU fan when the GPU core temp is below 60C, makes the 2 top right corners of the palmrest unnecessarily warm.

Now what's ironic is, when playing light games such as Dota 2, the palmrest is actually colder then when not playing, because the 2 fans are spinning. Realistically, I really hear no difference between the 2 GPU fans running at 1800 RPM vs 0 RPM. Unless it's 3am in the morning and I close the windows for the room, and turn off the table fan, the fans spinning at 1800 RPM (min RPM set by the EC it seems) makes almost no sound at all.

Perhaps with slower GPUs there's less heat involved, but it's an annoyance for me. I actually hear more noise when the GPU fan kicks in. Using HWiNFO, I see that the CPU fan can run at speed lesser than 1800 RPM, but the EC sets the min at 1800 RPM, so why not just keep the GPU fans running at a low RPM, say, 1300 RPM?

That way it will be quieter than one's fart, and the palmrest will be nice and cool.

From a design and engineering point of view, and taking into consideration of fan noise, personally I don't think this is a wise design choice.

 

Here's the thing, I live in a major city (melbourne) and unless I choose to move out to somewhere 150km+ that tiny noise from m18xr1/r2 is not going to bother me. And when I goto India, I am usually living on a farm house, good 200kms away from a tiny city. Still the noise doesn't bother me.

This whole fad of quite laptops is just pure rubbish to me, intel had the right mindset few years ago.

-Extremes processor for overclocking
-Desktop processors for desktops
-Laptops processors for laptop
-Ulv processor for cool and quite applications

If intel just kept following it and had only ulv processors going in ultrabooks, it would have been perfectly fine.

But they had to go on and change the whole laptop processor segment and tried to trick consumers by nerfing processors and make cool and quite laptops. Hold on a second, instead of selling more, ultrabooks have been saturated and now profits are diminished for every manufacturer. So ultrabooks will have the same fate as netbook segment? Dtr users will be running away and getting back into desktops.

The way I see it, it's going to be bad for manufacturers who are already struggling for profits and DTR segment, where profits are maximum, is the segment that has the potential to tank. Not only from this bs from intel/aw but also introduction of x51/mitx type systems. To me companies are throwing axes at their own feet by trying to make more profit.

Don't get me wrong, I love aw18 to bits, it has literally spent 70%+ time sitting on my dining table, since i ordered it, while I still used m18xr1 and m17xr4 for gaming. But now since I made the decision to let it go, I have spent last 24hrs literally having the beast in my arms, haven't touched m17xr4 or m18xr1. It's hard and every time I look at it, it feels something difference, but just knowing the potential wasted by simplest mistake with fan tables and bios, just makes me so annoyed.

Anything else, I can make do with, I understand being early adopter there will always be some risks of getting bugs. But the point is, dell needs to get up and fix those issues, not screw up over.

Thanks for indulging my nonsense

 

well i got to say that minus some of the features that we wanted (us enthusiasts) they gave the rest of the community exactly what they were asking for... and took a few features away.. hence why i kept my R2

 

Sorry to hear you guys are having so much trouble. I repasted mine, but other than that, it has been flawless.

 

The opinion that it has been flawless could have something to do with your use pattern. It's a really great machine for playing games left completely stock. The 18 is impressive in many ways. It just doesn't handle being pushed to higher performance levels very well. One of the main advantages to owning an Alienware laptop has always been that they were very capable machines and easily handled being pushed to higher levels of performance. They were not crippled in many ways like most of their competition. Now it seems like the opposite might be true. Compared to everything else excluding the P570WM it is still a beast among new machines. The pathetic and frustrating part of the experience is driven by the fact that is struggles to keep up with yesterday's best.

 

My sentiments exactly, for the stock user the 18 is excellent, but unlike previous years you can't also push it.

 

I have said it before and will say it again, AW18 is an amazing laptop, but... and its a big BUT.

It lacks so much, just because the decisions made at the Alienware HQ/Mothership. Even if Dell comes out of hiding and fixes, Fan Tables, Current limitations on CPU's, Power limit on using twin PSU's and... well just that alone will make this an exceptional product.

Yes its still a BETA product in my books and if Dell listens and improves upon by covering the shortcomings (posted on 1st page), AW18R2 will literally be the best laptop out there.

 

With the new model soon be released in a few months.... I doubt their focus is on this now. They would have fixed it by now

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

This discussion reminds me of the troubles with the M18x in the beginning. There were temperature / fan troubles then as well. Took some time before Dell managed to make a BIOS that fixed the problem.

 

I don't remember ever having a fan or temp issue

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

Yes, there were some anomalies with systems having 6990M CF. Below is a link for those that do not remember. A05 was released to fix those problems. It was unique to quirks with 6990M CF released around October 2011. Those systems with 6990M released earlier did not have the same issue for some reason, but the end result had some similarities to what we see happening now. In the case of the 18, the current problem appears to stem from doing things on purpose to try to make the 18 run quieter by having muted the fans.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/8030512-post1.html

 

Do you remember the time frame of the bios fix ?

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

It was roughly 3 months, but the problem surfaced after 6990M CrossFire was already well into production. The systems released with 6990M CrossFire before October 2011 did not exhibit the same symptoms.

Although we don't know for sure and we can only speculate, what seems to be happening now might be by intent rather than an accident or glitch like what happened with 6990M. If there was some sort OCD anti-fan noise agenda or a preoccupation with the notion of having a silent system by design, it might explain why the fans have such a delayed response and the fan speed is capped below the maximum RPM capacity. If that is true, there may be a disconnect between what they wanted and what some of us want. If it works according to plan, it might not get fixed until the person or group that implemented that kind of fan behavior on purpose is convinced that it was a wrong decision.

Here is a compelling idea for an alternative BIOS to be released by Alienware to satisfy everyone... those that prefer quiet can keep what they have now and be happy about it. Those that want superior performance could download and flash an unlocked BIOS version with a very aggressive fan profile and open access to manually control the fans and run all three of them full blast with HWiNFO64 if they want to.

 

Great idea brother Fox!

 

Yikes. I've been reading the AW forums even before I officially joined NBR after getting the clevo in my sigs. I've always been a fan on large powerful desktop replacements. I'm quite happy with my clevo and pleased with the performance of my 675mx (it really is a good card, especially for it's price point below the 680 at the time) but the upgrade itch has been bugging me for a few months. I really wanted an 18 inch lappy, and AW is the only game in town. I've been following the complaints/issues and I have to say thank you to everyone; you've saved me many thousands of dollars. Sigh...it looks like the only choice I have for ultra setting gaming is go build a desktop.

 

Well, you can always get a loaded R2 for a good deal now since its older, which if upgraded with 780mSLI will run around the new version. OR wait and see what alienware announces in the next 3 or so months for the new lineup. Fox, do you know why someone hasnt written an unlocked bios for that thing yet? did they ultra encrypt it or something?

 

The new 18 is definitely a high-quality, powerful DTR, especially with 4900MQ or 4930MX and 780M SLI. If your passion is not heavy CPU overclocking and competitive benchmarks, it's a fantastic gaming machine. It would be a huge upgrade to the machine in your signature and it is build like a brick house.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...18-benchmark-thread-part-3-a.html#post9355472
3DMARK11

#	USER	VER	CPU	CARD	LINK	SCORE	GPU	PHYSICS	COMBINED	GT1 FPS	GT2 FPS	GT3 FPS	GT4 FPS	PT FPS	CT FPS	CLOCKS
1	MR FOX	R2	3920XM	780M	LINK	P17197	20917	11779	10464	97.84	96.91	128.64	63.82	37.40	48.67	1125/1500
2	NORTHSTAR	R2	3940XM	780M	LINK	P16564	19921	11624	10185	93.01	91.96	122.54	61.00	36.90	47.37	1086/1500
3	MR FOX	R3	4930MX	780M	LINK	P15993	19395	10824	10004	93.07	91.37	118.71	57.73	34.46	46.53	1111/1500
4	MR FOX	R2	3920XM	680M	LINK	P15413	17892	11987	9581	84.82	84.11	109.87	53.65	38.03	44.56	1130/1168
5	KH90123	R3	4930MX	780M	LINK	P14889	18336	9860	9053	88.00	86.30	112.30	54.60	31.30	42.10	1046/1500
6	JOECAIT	R3	4800QM	780M	LINK	P11861	14361	8060	7423	61.00	69.80	91.30	44.60	25.60	34.50	771/1250

There is no problem unlocking the BIOS. That has already been done long ago. The problem is flashing it. You can't because of Secure Flash. It won't let you because it does not have a "signature" to validate it. There is no way to circumvent it (thus far) like we could with the M18xR2 from A07 forward because the registers are read-only. M18xR2 is still unquestionably king of the mountain for laptops with a mobile CPU.

 

Has anyone tried brute forcing it by removing the chip and flashing it in an external programmer?

 

Mr.Fox, why dont you obtain magical bios on the chip from mr svl7 himself and just swap that with your locked down OEM bios chip?

 

A member of our community purchased a reprogrammed chip from svl7 and even found a person that can replace the chip in his town. He got discouraged with waiting for the fan tables to be fixed so it could be reprogrammed before replacing the chip. He did not want to have to remove and replace the chip a second time. He returned it for a refund and purchased a P570WM like you have instead.

I don't know how to do SMD soldering and don't have the tools for that. And, I do not know anyone close to where I live that does. I really wish I knew how. I may eventually have to buy the tool and learn. I have some old desktop motherboards and dead laptops that I can use as guinea pig material. I have already been watching videos on the web to see how it is done. Shouldn't be too difficult. The problem with doing that is when Alienware fixes the fan tables with a BIOS update, the moment you flash it the unlocked BIOS will be replaced and Secure Flash reinstalled. So, right now there is no point in doing it. The need for fixing the fans tables is actually a more urgent need than an unlocked BIOS since 80% of what is needed for good overclocking can be handled by XTU. Having full menu access would allow for fine tuning and access to some useful features unrelated to overclocking. At the end of the day, having an unlocked BIOS will do nothing to correct Haswell design defects.

I suspect there may eventually be some kind of hack to defeat this Secure Flash garbage if Alienware doesn't give us a BIOS without it. Hopefully, folks with the power and authority to do so are reading these threads and will give us what we want and need before long. That would be a lot better than having to resort to an exploit to get what we want for a BIOS.

The information in the video and PowerPoint below explains why we cannot flash modded firmware like we have in the past with this new Secure Flash BIOS Gestapo-ware. This is very interesting and I wish I understood more about this than I do. With the right knowledge there is probably a way where we could flash an unlocked BIOS right now. As shown in this video, there are already some exploits available to flash any firmware desired for those with the right knowledge.

Defeating Signed BIOS Enforcement PowerPoint - Source URL

<embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=77458468&force_embed=1&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width='500' height="281">

 

Yeah having been visited by three different techs on multiple occasions when I weathered a failed primary GPU in the M18x R1 that my now current R2 replaced I can confirm that they were only being paid $12 an hour in San Francisco, a city with one of the highest cost-of-living in the world.

One of the guys said he retired out of the U.S. Army as a nuclear engineer. Used to work at nuclear missile installations, even on ICBM's. He could not believe that he couldn't find anything better than working for Dell at $12 an hour.

 

Dell pays third party repair companies to do field service work. The company I use to work for did contracted field service work for dells. I had to take dells online training and certification tests.

 

Wait, you're serious?

 

Glad I bailed on AW when I saw the writing on the wall with the M18 release. Their new policy (if accurate) for techs will be the final nail in the coffin of a once great brand.

Sent from my RM-937_apac_hong_kong_222 using Tapatalk

 

Latest revision might not be that great, there will be kinks that need to be ironed out. That is what every company goes through when they release a new product. If it does not make you happy, move on, wait for the next release that has all the fixes.

Regarding their warranty, I love their services. I have owned their M series all the way through to the current gen. I never had issues with them not taking care of me when i do have a fail parts. From what I see , there are process of doing a warranty services. I know for a fact that some user abuses their unit and hope to get it fix, those are the ones who have a hard time with warranty service, and complain/rant how horrible service they provide. I know some of us are much more smarter than the average tech they sent out, but c'mon, no need to take advantage of them.

 

Well sorry guys, if I stirred something. But my opinions are.

- scratches cannot be a avoided on a laptop, I take care of laptops as my babies, but still sometimes something gets scratched, lets say you got a scratched LCD, but LCD gives up and aw tech says, cannot replace under warranty as its scratched? How would you feel about it ?

- first gen of any products has some issues, some bugs. Being an early adopter is understanding, that you will find some bugs along the way, but one expects those to be fixed under warranty. Those who bought m11xr1 had the horrible hinge issue and dell recalled it, how would have everyone felt if dell did not recall it and void warranty claiming it as damage ?

- issues with aw18 are not bugs, they are idiotic decisions in my opinion, yes secure flash has its place, yes it in a sort of a way protects us, but a normal consumer might never need that protection, for a business it might be of utmost important, but give us the choice. If I don't want secure flash, as an owner I should be able to remove it.

Someone might compare it with a closed system and in some aspects it might be while in rest. It really isn't. If dell said we are putting secure flash and you cannot run any other os on the laptop and its in the agreement, I understand it and wouldn't give a crap about it. But when secure flash is actually stopping us from sorting out an issue, well I will not shut up about it.

And it's not an issue, everyone wil, see. For example, working in an office with proper air on going in 24/7 (like most do in India) one will never know the fan issue is present. Take it out in the field and you will know it.

In the end of the day, I paid over $1300 for a CPU that cannot reach speeds, dell advertised, that is a pure deceit and fraud on dell's behalf. I can take dell to court. Will it solve the issue? Not even a bit, dell will come to tribunal and offer to refund me the full amount, and I know for a fact, aus dell will refuse to sell any product to me after that. I have seen that happen in the past (stupid Australian laws).

I can make my laptop work without much fus, and I can forgive everything, but you know what will happen?

Most of the guys who bought aw18 with standard 1 yr warranty will be the ones feeling the pain. Gpu's/motherboard/CPU will only last so long with fans stopped, eventually one of the parts will cook itself slowly. And then all of the guys will start complaining about it.

This is exactly what happened with m1730. I had over 6yrs worth warranty over my m1730, so despite having 8800m sli, I went four times through 8800m sli and then got it replaced for 9800m sli, and that got replaced twice aswell before final a11 bios came out. I stil had 8 months warranty remaining on the laptop, when i sold it. But you can search the Internet and see how many customers were left, high-and-dry due to messed up fan tables.

And dell techs (Fujitsu techs) get $23 per job in aus, they spend money on fuel and its a personal car, just measly $23 per job, doesn't matter it takes 5 mins or 5 hrs. This is the biggest reason, I ask my tech to do bare minimum and I will have laptop disassembled for him for easy work. This is in an economy, where a pizza delivery driver can make $18 per hour plus extra per delivery.

 

I'd be hard pressed to deal with the 18 as a first revision product as while the shell is a somewhat new design the actual design really is a tweak on the old 18.

 

Actually its not really a tweak of the old design. And I should know, have gone through 4 M18xR1/2's and got a AW18 here, all opened up and disassembled to bits on a whim. It does have some indications of old design but its mostly working design choices rather than anything else.

For all intents and purposes, AW18 is a complete design-up from ground, just not tested enough. I am still umming and ahhing about selling AW18, frankly it does anything/everything I NEED, I am not a massive overclocker, just a nut when running any piece of hardware cool. I have been known to put cpu heat-sinks on modems/routers to keep them cool. My Aw18 got repasted within first week of getting it from dell, and I have managed GPU's @ 59-57C and CPU @ 61C after 4 hours of BF4 (ultra) and 5hrs+ of bf3 (ultra) and palm rest being cool to touch. But these are due to U3 at full and I actually want it running cooler, which is probably not going to work, till fan tables are fixed.

Its just the fact, that have been through M1730 cool-and-quite debacle in past, its an annoyance if parts cook themselves due to AW engineers mistake.

Either way, I am 99% sure, I will not be ordering the next revisions till everysingle bit is sorted by Dell and same goes for my best mates, even though all of us claim it on tax, we would rather put that claim bracket towards our cars than laptops we will not be satisfied with. Your reading that Dell, that is a AUD $30K order go-went-gone. Our order for 4x maxed out AW18's plus extended support came to $31,200

 

There used to be some Dell posters and also a dell leak site...Anyone see anything from someone on the inside as to why there are the delays or if any plans are even in the works to look into this more? I've seen nothing so far unfortunately.

Lastly, does anyone think this has to do with Dell being private now? No need to disclose or be as helpful and employees are more worried about keeping their jobs so they're too busy finding new work to bother...Understandable, but still, you'd hope some engineer would go rogue and just post a fix for all of us so we'd all just shut up

 

I agree. I can't really find any similarities between them other than a few innocuous things like the fans and GPU heat sinks. Other than that, they are made completely different in almost every way imaginable.

The last round of leaks, especially those on some European web site (someone with a forum name like "snuffles" or something similar) were so far from accurate it wasn't even funny. It is hard to trust leaked information because too much of it is sensationalized lies and distortions.

I anticipate Dell going private will make things a lot better. Mr. Dell's name and reputation is on the line like it used to be, and they don't have to be burdened with concerns about what impact business decisions will have on whether or not dividends get paid to shareholders. They can focus more on doing what is best for the brand and their customers now. It would be normal to go through a period of adjustment and restructuring, so that may have a temporary effect on what we can see as customers. It would not be too surprising for things to become (or seem to become) disorganized for a bit while they make appropriate internal changes to structure and workflow.

 

I'd go even further. I'd like to see AW itself go private. Go back to being a boutique firm and just get a manufacturing agreement for the custom chassis, if needed. The machinery required isn't nearly as expensive as it used to be.

 

I have though about that myself. It could be a really good thing to have them sever ties with Dell and focus exclusively on extreme performance. They could ignore Micro$oft mandates for Secure Poot and Secure Flash crap and do what their customers want to the chagrin of Micro$lop. But, I don't know that this is doable financially and it would likely mean there would be no more Alienware outside of the US and Canada. The excellent service and support that we value so highly with Dell might also get flushed down the toilet.

I was considering buying a new P570WM, but a good friend has a new one that had a motherboard failure. He had to ship it to their repair facility and wait. They do not offer NBD on-site warranty repairs, no parts-only repair option. It took way too long to get it fixed (2 or 3 weeks if I understand the timeline correctly) and they tried to blame him for some errors that happened during the assembly of the machine (even though he never disassembled it). Clevo ended up charging him $90 for the repair without a satisfactory explanation for that. It should have been a free repair. It should have taken 24-48 hours. The reseller he bought it from said their hands were tied and didn't step in to take the bull by the horns on his behalf. Based on this experience, I am not sure I actually want one any more. I think we would see something similar to that without Dell backing Alienware.