New R3 ordered. What now?

What kind of tips/tricks do you guys know that would help me enjoy my R3 maybe a bit more?

8GB of RAM is on its way as well as a Corsair 180GB Force series SSD drive.

But..what next? Any programs I should install/uninstall? Any tweaks/tunes I need to be aware of in BIOS?

Thanks, NBR community. You're the bestest.

 

The BIOS will be up to date you do not need to worry 8GB RAM and SSD are the two immediate increases so you have them covered, all of the software you need to enjoy the R3 is already installed and for any extras I highly recommend this post that I found:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...stomization-themes-wallpaper-collections.html

Allows you to really make it an Alien

Just enjoy it they are awesome little models and I love having the option of integrated (silent fans) graphics for my RTS and old skool games and being able to kick in the 540M GT for Skyrim and Mass Effect 3

If you want to up the card as I found these things overclock very well and very easily just install MSI Afterburner.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the Afterburner. Do you find that overclocking really helps performance that much?

 

Not really you can get a few extra frames out of her and the memory or at least mine overclocks very nicely and an extra 8gb/s on the bandwidth front always helps. I mostly play on the integrated card however Even skyrim runs on it if you limit the settings.

 

Got it today. Realized they deon't have a function key for turning off the trackpad. Anyone with advice?

 

Narp that lonely F6 key which is doing absolutely nothing at all would have been a perfect FN key for it!

Alienware command center -> Alientouch you can disable the touchpad or set it up to disable upon USB mouse connection.

 

There's an option in the synaptics CP to disable the trackpad when an external mouse is plugged in.

 

and if you must I suppose one could do some hot key? either built in if you have it or by 3rd party if important enough.

If you mean for long periods you can disable it entirely until enabled by you (manually) and no need for hotkey or shortcut

 

The Command Center did exactly what I wanted it to do. Thanks!

 

I'm getting a message from windows that my Firewire/1394 controller driver hasn't installed. Anyone have a quick fix?

 

2 options -

1. get the drives from Dell

2. disable the firewire port alltogether if it's not being used (my option). I've got my Firewire + Bluetooth BIOS disabled, never use them.

 

Is there a way to set the color of the keyboard manually via RGB instead of using their interface?

 

AFAIK, no. You need the AlienFX program to control the lights, otherwise it will all stay black.

 

But you can set it using their software and then disable startup of their software and it will stay the way you set it.

 

There's a program called AlienFX Lite (or maybe it's light) that can change the lights without using the 'real' program.