M18x Makes Landfall! Pictures, Videos, Unboxing Thoughts, etc. Share away!

As the FedEx planes begin their descent, its time to create a thread for sharing of photos, unboxing pics/videos, initial impressions and the like.

We will start seeing black cardboard boxes with Alienware glyps and 'Alienware' on them arrive this week... finally!

If posting pics, please be sure to keep them limited to 500x500 pixels. Use thumbnail previews or links if they exceed 500x500. Also, any external content must be on a third party site - no linking to content on your blog, site, domain, etc. see forum rules for info on this.


Share away and enjoy your M18x!

Congrats to Jfbarea for being the first to receive the M18x here on NBR! He has posted a couple of initial benchmark results in the benchmarks thread, shared a booting up video on youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNEWG11ZnVE&hd=1) and also a few pictures ( http://jfbarea.imgur.com/9Z5ZM#pRlFp). Thanks for sharing!

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Lots of pics here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...g-thoughts-etc-share-away-31.html#post7511042

 

Hi people, i have m18x in my hands jejejeje.

photos ---> m18 - Imgur

More photos and benchs in the afternoon...

The touchpad is bigger than m17x r2, and the material is different.

Bye

 

Thanks for sharing. That closed nebula red better be the M18x as the one in your pics which is powered up is a 17x. When you have time, be sure to post more.

Thanks and have fun!

 

How come that "m18x" looks so TINY and doesn't have the extra keyboard hot keys to the left?

 

That is his m17x. His m18x is boxed / closed in those pics (Red one)

 

Oh wow, the difference between the size of the m17 and m18 is negligible...I don't think you'd even really notice the difference between the two once you're lugging them around since they both are so heavy...

 

I uploaded more photos --> m18 - Imgur

 

Thanks for that. Be sure to post your thoughts on the screen quality

Also, if you can, open up device manager and grab the HardwareID for the Display.

thanks and congrats on being the first to receive here on NBR!

 

Yeah, bring on the screen quality!!!! we NEED to know!!!

 

the screen quality is much lower than RGB of m17x R2 , but compared to other screens, looks very well ...
I am reinstalling system on ssd raid.

 

Very nice. Thanks for the picture contribution. It was good to see her.

 

If you can video and upload on you tube then even better

 

Switching with integrated graphics(intel) and xfire6970 requires reboot

Only accept DELL ati graphic drivers

 

On a fresh install of Windows you can't use the ATI reference drivers? Also we've seen that if you install the Dell drivers first then sometimes it's possible to then update to the AMD's. Can't imagine having to reboot to get intel vs xfire but I guess it's just a few extra steps. Would have been nice to have that on the fly.

 

Hey jfbarea what SSD did you go with? Can you take a snapshot of your Windows scores?

 

So, after rebooting, what is the estimated battery life with reduced brightness?

 

So far:

• Screen is "much lower" quality vs RGB LED but decent compared to other WLED
• Can't use ATi graphics drivers
• Reboot required to switch to integrated gfx

Have you tried forcing the driver to install? Also make sure workaround=1 in the driver config file.

 

Wow, that would have been great if you could take some photos when Replacing / installing your SSD, RAM..

 

I replaced hdd with 2 ocz vertex 2 in raid0.

I go to trying forcing installation.

Windows score --> http://i.imgur.com/1jsrV.jpg

Edit:I am executing 3dmark 2011, the framerate is more more more good than xfire5870
3d mark 2011 --------------------> http://i.imgur.com/ezzXo.jpg --> 5377 points

 

The reboot is not a shock to me....I have to reboot my R1 to switch from 9400m to 4870 CF

It is also good to hear the screen does not suck, that is good enough for me

Drivers to not scare me at all....I will mod my own to meet my needs

So overall positive in my eyes! Can't wait to receive mine myself

 

lol you're all rainbows. Guess you haven't had to deal with the R2's teething stages so you aren't aware of what a pain it can be to deal with drivers that aren't supported by the vbios. I'm just cringing at the thought of it happening again with M18x.

 

I am pretty optimistic haha

Biggest issues I have had with my R1 included getting CF to work with non dell drivers, which while not fun I was able to overcome (with the exception of XP....NEVER got CF in XP working no matter what I tried).

I am less worried about the video cards because that is easy to make Dell's problem, especially if say, GTX 580m's come out

A not horrible screen is nice too, I have the notorious R1 screen and while I thought it was fine, everyone else abhorred it. So if this will be better than that what do I have to lose? lol

 

Yeah coming from the disaster that was the R1, it's all peachy for you man I just hope that those of us with more experience can overcome the driver issue, that's one of my biggest concerns right now. I already know what to expect with the screen since I had the M17x-R3. It's okay, nothing special but definitely much nicer than the R1 CCFL. Hopefully it doesn't have that ugly blue shift out of the box like the R3 display.

 

I just have mortal eyes and ears so I do not have to go crazy on things like speakers and screens. I aint no audiophile haha

Only thing I am a fanatic on is sheer performance

 

ati states that if you have a intel 3k gpu their drivers wont work

omg that thing looks so nice in red

 

Hopefully the driver issues is just a simple inf update.

 

I hope that this horribly lame oversight is corrected soon.

Most likely

 

That isn't true since their drivers work fine in the M17x-R3.

 

Exactly my thought.

 

Source?

/10c

 

amd lied to us then

The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:

Any notebook launched after this driver release
Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel® chipsets.

if 11.5 works in the R3 unmodded then I bet itll work for us, once tweaked

 

It may not be 100% compatible or tested so that's why they have that statement there. But it still works (but does have a few bugs). With regards to the M18x and the driver working, that's not necessarily the case either. The M17x-R2 had a vbios that restricted AMD drivers from working until all of us made a push for Dell to release a vbios that let us use AMD ones. Whenever you'd install an AMD driver and run a game, it would lock up or bsod. This time though, I think it may just be a case of user error--at least I'm being optimistic, guess scook is rubbing off on me.

 

Gotta stay positive!

 

Can we know the M18x battery life with:

Intel HD Graphics : ? hours

6970M CF : ? hours



You can see real pictures of the M18x here: Alienware M14x, M11x R3 and M18x (green FX color)

 

well at least we have some fun in our future, first to get official drivers to work wins ... working drivers .

dell is too slow in releasing drivers so ill try till it works

 

Downloading the full ATI driver I don't have any problems.

Here the OSD message when you press Fn+F7

 

So does that mean you got ATi drivers working?

 

Does command center and some other alienware utility need to be installed possibly that you are missing jfbarea, because you reformated that could possibly be needed for switching instantly?

 

In the original state it is the same problem.

 

Did you do the following regards driver installation: (as pointed out by Batboy 1st page, owners lounge)

***IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THOSE PERFORMING A CLEAN INSTALL WITH AMD GPU***

•For M18x with AMD, install the AMD Display Driver first. Once done, the Intel Driver must be installed when in Integrated Mode. You will need to use the FN+F7 to switch over to Intel. A reboot may be necessary. Once done, install the Intel HD driver. Once installed, switch back over to your AMD GPU.

 

looks like from jfbarea's pics that they brought back the nice leather manual, instead of that nasty cheap one that comes with the m17xr3. just something that gives better purchase satisfaction knowing they haven't skipped on that.

 

I saw that in the pics, it's both nice for the m18 and sad for the other units/ models. I would be happier personally if they made it leather for all models or none. It's kinda a slap in the face to other owners of other models in my opinion. Just because you wanted a more portable or smaller model is no reason to make the customers purchase feel less valuable or special.

If they got rid of it and he hats an mouse pads across the board and charged less I would actually be okay with that.

 

You pay more money for the flagship system thus you get a premium manual, makes sense to me. Why should someone with a $700 M11x get the same stuff? Just because it's AW doesn't mean anything. Do all Mercedes models have the same trim?

 

Reboot required for integrated gfx? R3 M17X does it on the fly...

 

CrossFireX has never been known to make anything simpler....what did you expect? lol

 

Hell I'm surprised Dell managed to pull it off with Crossfire. Props to them, especially since it's the same chipset as M17x-R3. Other companies can't seem to get the hang of it.

 

I'm sensing a whooping 7hrs of battery life

 

I'd say 3:30 mins tops with half brightness and wifi enabled.

 

3:30 is what they got with 2x460M and Wifi ON. If during reboot the 6970M's are switched off entirely - even 10 hrs is not far away

 

Got mine, but my drives are not set up in RAID. Is that difficult to do? Does that require I reinstall windows?