General Satisfaction Poll

Generally how satisfied are you with your M11x whether it is a r1 or r2? What adds or deducts from your score? What would you want changed and want Alienware to fix? i am holding off before i score mine because i want to give the battery life a whirl or two and try oc'ing so far my only hang up is the hinge issue which forced me to buy a screen protector which i can't get on the screen just right other than that so far so good!

 

Voted 9 I really like mine...
I think I want to request someone to make me one of those cool alienware signatures.... Can I please have one in alien green? R1

 

i got the user bars from this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/489835-official-nbr-alienware-userbars.html

 

Voted one looks like it has to go back to the shop.... Too bad I sold my 1201n couldnt run all my games but it worked. A lemon is a lemon and I prob cant speak for all m11x r2s.

 

I voted an 8. Better than my last laptop for sure. My only issue so far is optimus and battery life, of which I'm sure the former will get fixed in the future.

 

i did the same thing, had a 1201n and decided i wanted more power, so my younger brother got a nice gift and i got a m11x. what was wrong with your m11x?

 

Go on, go on, go on, have a go.
I'm sure with a few green crayons you could knock something up.

oh yes, 8, but I'm assuming Aliens don't know much about hinges. Bless their little green socks.

 

I posted this under other topics.


Had my m11x r2 for 2 days. Call into support today.

First on this version you have to add the program to the nvidia control panel before it will run it with the 335n. I added the few games I installed and when I open the games now it reports (Intel HD graphics) as my display adapter.

Response---This is normal the card only takes over the gpu duties and will not show up as a card. (It shows in windows device manager????)

Second under the bios screen for cpu boost it has diabled, 133mhz-166mhz. I can select any option and my cpu still reads 1.2 on any diag program I run. When I select 166mhz in which case all I get is a blue screen pagefault with dxgkrl.sys error.

Response---Alienware does not support overclocking your cpu. If you want to increase your speed upgrading to 8 gigs of ram is your best bet. (What ???? my invoice says Overclockable Intel Core i7 640UM (4M Cache, 2.266 GHz Max Turbo Frequency)

Later after I did some research and foudn the beta realease.....

I updated the beta and now all my games crash shortly after a few minutes. Eve online was runnning fine before the update. It was displaying Intel HD graphic under the display info. I updated the beta and it changed to nvidia n335 but after only a few seconds it crashes to desktop. Borderlands and l4d2 both crash when they start to load from steam.

I had it running the i7 overclocked to 154mhz but I changed that to disabled with the same problem. I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled just the normal ones but the same problem.

 

@goodvibes - I told you before I love your sig... That is why I wish someone would make one for muah...



StevenX

 

Voted a 7.

When/if some drivers come along that resolve the "automatic scaling" in the processor and optimus I'll bump it up to a 9.

 

Voted 7, way better than any laptop I have ever owned, but battery life and optimus are really making me regret the purchase.

 

I'll vote once my little situation is resolved. If it's resolved well? Good score. Resolved poorly? Low score. Simple as that.

 

9! First laptop I've ever owned and I'm quite satisfied with this little beast
Would give a 10 but I also have hinge problems which make my screen touch the keyboard.

 

This scale is too granular and each rating without a specific definition is meaningless.

 

What's difficult about satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10?

 

Voted 9. Keep in mind, that the laptop that I would vote 10 does not exist. And that I would vote 8 on m17x-r2.

If it bothers them let them imagine 1 represents [0,1] interval of real numbers, 2 represents <1,2] etc.

 

This is pretty much been my experience. Compared to my Asus G73JH-A1 This this is real disappointing.

Plus mine shipped with Dust under the panel, but at least a Dell guy is coming in an hour to replace it. Plus, and maybe it's not a fair comparison, but the screen quality compared to my Asus is downright offensive for the price. It can't hit a decent black level to save it's life. At best it's dark grey, there's hinge problems and sealing problems so dust can get in easily, like mine. Not good for a machine sold to be a gaming rig meant to fit in your backpack. At least my G73 came with it's own backpack. And a decent, all black, not embarrassing one to boot.

I am seriously considering returning it. This rig cost me $1500 the way I configured it, which was an I7 with 4gb of ram and a 500gb HD. My Asus cost only $300 more, and plays every game at double the frame rate without crashing and all games on high or very high settings. The only thing the M11x has going over the Asus is portability, battery, lighting custimization and the best track pad I've ever tried. But that's not enough for $1500.

I want a portable rig to game on, emphasis on gaming, if that means carrying a 17" 8lbs. over a 13" 4lbs, and the bigger one means all games play with no crashes, or fail starts and at a desktop comparable experience - well to that I say, it's still more portable than a desktop or console.

As of now, this machine can't play most of the games, or if you want to play a certain game you have to change your drivers every time?

This thing was really meant for my wife anyways, and is just my backup gaming rig when we're traveling. So I'm just going to throw it to her, but if there's no serious driver updates that fix all the game crashing within the 21 day return period, I'm returning it. And maybe I'll consider a R1 since they seem to be half the price with no performance loss.

It's one thing to be early adopter and have issues, but when a machine designed for gaming can't play games, that = FAIL. I don't want it to be the case, I want to love this machine with it's pretty colors. But when half the games only work with one driver, the other half with the other and only a third of those games combined can manage a steady 30fps, much less 50-6ofps (like my G73JH) then it's not working as intended.

They clearly didn't test this new one enough before they dumped it in here and sold it to us like it was going to be an 11" M17x, Oh wait...

The only guys doing worse right now are Apple and their all glass, shatter with only a one foot drop, antenna doesn't work for left handed people, IPhone 4.

I'm not doing this early adopter anymore. I'm learning my lesson with this M11x. If Apple and Alienware and other big electronics companies want me to beta test their products before they're truly ready, then they can pay me.

If Asus can make a gaming rig this size that does equitable performance as their G73JH, then Alienware seriously better step it up with QA otherwise, they might be heading the way of AOL and Gateway and MySpace - The Past.

 

So... you voted 9?

JK. Hope it works out for you. I'd be steamed too.

 

@thx5334 - I understand the frustation with quality or lack thereof... comparing to a G73JH-A1 is not really fair. True quad I7, hd 5870, etc...

Alienware is partnered with Dell. I doubt they are going anywhere. I did hear that HP is laying off a lot of folks though.

Still.. everyone deserves quality and at the price paid it should be the best quality possible.

Sorry to hear the issues...

StevenX

 

the reason i didn't provide a definition for each number beyond the general two posted is because everyone may have a different opinion. someone may give it an 8 and knock points off because of battery life on an r2, whereas someone elses 8 could be because of the hinge issue.

 

I agree, it's not a fair comparison. And there are many who are having QA issues with the G73. And I had some performance issues there until I was able to get info from the forums here which programs were causing stability issues and should be removed, etc.

So I'm hoping it's the same here, and easy fixes will soon be discovered by those cyber pioneers much smarter than I. And when I bought the machine, I knew it wasn't going to give equitable gaming performance, but I did expect it to hit 30fps on DirectX 9 games, a console standard now, rather than not even load up, which just happened with Singularity which I just bought and only runs DX9.

I'm more frustrated that there aren't solid drivers that don't crash half of modern games which are all mostly made from a console standard as a base, so they shouldn't be crashing in rigs like these.

But, Dell has shown incredible customer service in having the LCD replaced in house 24 hours after reporting it.

Honestly, I think it's the screen and the lack of quality color/contrast combined with there not even being a current set of drivers is what's got me the most.

But those, especially the game performance can be improved with updates, so I'm hopeful.

We probably will be keeping the machine, regardless as my wife really likes it's design. But if it gets to be determined that these new I7's don't add the gaming performance that everyone complained was there due to a lacking CPU and that whole theory is bogus, then I will be returning this one and going to Best Buy and getting a R1 with the same Ram and HD for $500 less after tax. I spent $500 more for this new config, waited out the R1's because everyone was saying that the machine lacked a good CPU to truly be a great gaming netbook.

And now that it's out and I dropped the extra $500 for the same config as the R1, everyone's saying the R1's actually better because of heat and battery is better, so if that's the case, then I might 'downgrade' to that machine so to speak.

**Between the last paragraph and now, the Dell contractor came out and replaced my display. He had a really hard time connecting the wires to the power buttons. I was explaining the hinge issue and he looked at it and said there wasn't anything he could do to fix it and remarked that there clearly was a design flaw with the way the case bends on the back in or something or other.

That being said, I'm much happier with the unit with this new display. It has much better contrast and seems to be properly calibrated unlike the last one. The beta drivers are playing more games than not, the main one for me being Just Cause 2

In summation, for all my complaints, I am very happy with the machine now that I have a good calibrated, dust free, pixel perfect display. It goes a long way. As for gaming issues, I know those will get fixed sooner than later and can wait out the driver updates as the wife will be playing with it.

I still voted a 7 before. The potential's there, they just need some real optomized drivers that regulate optimus use for battery and doesn't crash any games at startup.

I'll keep testing, but as of now, the games that won't play for me with the new beta drivers are:

Just Cause 2
Metro 2033
Singularity (brand new Ravensoft game)

What's frustrating about Singularity is that it's a gorgeous game coded in DX9, so this laptop should be able to play it. But whenever I try to start it, literally nothing happens.

I'll keep testing.

Sorry for the length