*OFFICIAL* M11xR1 Owners Lounge - Part 4

Man, Tom, your pics make me not able to wait any long for my delivery!
Can't wait to get it.

 

OK, I am officially off the Alienware club, returned my first system yesterday and canceled my second (replacement) order, I am getting a full refund. Just the whole waiting, problems and not as great performance (imo) made me take that decision.

 

delete please

 

Hey I LOVE my m11x so far. Ive had it OC since yesterday all day long no problems at all. I am only concerned with leaving "palm impressions" on the palm rest area. If I game for a long period of time, my palm (oil/acid) will leave a spot on the laptop. Is there anything I can put on the lappy to avoid my palm making spots on it?

also one more question: Since I do not have an external cd drive...is it best to get one then buy all my games via walmart or bestbuy..OR just directly get my games off of STEAM. Which is the better way?

thanks!

 

IMO, Steam is better 10fold as opposed to cd. Obviously there are some games that aren't on steam, but with Steam there are so many possibilities.
Cloud support is the biggest, ability to always redownload your games [drm-less games anyways] no matter what computer you're on as long as you have your account, automatic updates, backuping up saves and games onto external harddrives, no discs or problems related to discs [scratched or missing], and to have the steam overlay for me is HUGE! It's such a conveniant feature to have.

 

I'm waiting for invisible shield to come out for this system. If not I think I'll buy a screen protector sheet and put it on the palm rest area and trim.

 

not sure if this will work for you but go into device properties see if theres a box to check that says "allow device to wake computer from sleep" though imho having bluetooth on while in sleep mode would drastically cut down battery time.

 

Okay, say I have MW2 on my main PC. Once I download MW2 from Steam onto my laptop, will it retain my levels and accomplishments so far, or do I need to manually copy over a folder or something?

 

Worth the wait.

 

Awesome, thanks, I'll check for that when I get home today. I'm not too worried about the battery life right now since I leave the computer plugged in 24/7. From what else I've read here I should probably turn off my battery charge in BIOS just to be sure I'm not unnecessarily wearing it down by having it plugged in all day.

 

Agree, I love Steam. I also bought an external DVD writer for $50 so I can burn stuff and play old games, but for any new games I'll definitely be using Steam. Can't wait to get Mass Effect... been waiting years to play that game!

 

Ugh, so i'm trying to make a bootable usb. Following one of the guides to make a bootable drive, but...my 4gb drive doesn't show up as a full 4gb. What the heck.

 

As far as backing up your saves, you can definitely do that. Right click on MW2 and there should be options to 'back-up' . Whether MW2 supports the steam cloud for game saves I'm not too sure. I know MW2 supports your settings and configs in the steam cloud though.

 

Was it cheap? there are lots of fakes.

 

OCZ diesel one. Shows up as 3.76. It's "technically" 4g I guess, maybe I'm trying to make the bootable drive incorrectly.

 

So we should turn off the battery charge in the BIOS so it doesn't wear the battery down then? I haven't done that... anyone else have?

 

That's normal, no flash/hdd/ssd [not to sure about ssds] shows up as the full capacity after a format. There was a formula to calculate it but yea, if you have a freshly formatted 4gb, it should work fine. I have one both on a 4gb and 8gb stick.

 

It's a hassle but after draining the battery during due to mobile use, I'll plug the charger in and let the battery recharge to 90%+ and then reboot to shut off charging.

 

I've read mixed opinions on this in other threads here. Some say that even with it plugged in you will lose some battery cycles, some say it won't affect it at all. I suppose it doesn't hurt to just turn it off to be on the safe side.

 

I turn it off when I remember to and don't mind rebooting =)

 

Arite, so the method that I first tried to follow didn't work to make a bootable drive. It basically said copy the entire contents of the windows dvd onto the usb drive. Once I get my OS back up, how do I tell what firmware I have on my ssd? Is it under device manager?

 

Use this: Windows 7 USB DVD Tool

 

Welcome abroad!

 

@Impruv,

I tried to use the usb live tool from ms, but it won't recognize the iso i made. I'm trying to make a bootable usb drive on my vista 32 desktop.

@Tears

Thanks, was worth the wait.

 

maybe try this tool? I can't find the tool I used since the Windows official one didn't work for the ISo I made either. The program I used had to mount the ISO via daemon tools and then it auto copied the files over. I think if you use a program to automatically make the USB drive bootable you can just copy paste the files over from the ISO. test these methods first though before doing any reformatting.

btw sorry nsx can't get on aim at the moment in class.

 

NSX Have you tried the steps in this guide? I made a bootable USB with this drive and it works like a charm.

 

I just bought an 8gb usb flash drive lol. I tried one method where it told me to copy all the contents of the alienware win 7 cd onto the usb drive. I tried the wintoflash thing, it'll boot up from usb, but it won't install cause it's missing some file or something. I'm gonna try the other one soon. This is upsetting me. Thought this was supposed to be cake, or am I supposed to have an actual windows 7 cd lol.

I'm tryin to get my ssd running on my m11x.

I guess after this attempt with wintoflash, i'm gonna use ultraiso to burn the image onto the usb drive. Last time I tried it said my 4gb usb drive was too small -_-.
----
So...it turns out that my USB flash drive just too small to complete the process with wintoflash. Works now with the 8gb lmao. What the heck.
----
*I have to keep updating cause I don't want to add new threads, but DANG. I don't want to live without ssd's now!

 

The only tool I use to make my bootable USB drives is cmd.exe lol. But I want an SSD too

 

Could someone explain GOBI to me? If I put down the cash for it would it mean that I would not need a wireless router for this little beast?

 

It's an antenna that allows you to connect to wireless broadband (through cell phone carriers). You have to have a data plan with the cell network. So for example, if you have an Iphone with a mandatory data plan (in US) you can connect to their internet on the go.

 

@trouble = Don't forget the modem. Plus I think its been proven that the iPhone's sim doesn't work with Gobi.

 

Omg, first game I tried is dragon age origins with the ssd and good lord. So much faster than my desktop lmao.

 

I hear AT&T iPhone SIM cards are locked and can't be used, but other phone SIM cards should work fine if you have a data plan on it.

 

@nsxxrmaniac = I hate you sooo much right now... "Plots to rob SSD warehouse"

 

@ Nsxrrmaniac

what did you do to finally get it working? like what progs did you use? still trying to get my ssd to work.

i just made an iso of win7 with ultraiso last night. gonna continue tonight. did you use a tool to get the iso onto the flash or just copy it over? also...once you load up, do you just repair the boot?

 

Just tried booting windows 7 on my M11x and it ran chkdisk..deleting a good portion of system files. Now it'll boot into Windows 7 but give errors when a program tries to start. My ubuntu installation gives a decompression error on boot up. Looking into this further it seems to be an error with the OCZ Agility SSD I'm using. Looks like I'm going to have to upgrade the firmware version, run a OCZ tool that does a full erase of the drive, and reinstall everything. Not that big of a deal because I was planning on doing it anyways, but now I won't be able to use the laptop until I have time to do it.

Hopefully this won't happen again. I read on the OCZ forum that there might be an issue with some of the NAND chips they use and certain SATA chipsets.

 

i can confirm that it indeed does work with at&t iphone sim cards...thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=466689

 

i used a tool called wintoflash. basically, the first couple times i tried it didn't work because the usb drive i tried using was too small. you really need to use an 8gb usb drive for it. wintoflash makes it real easy.

-stick alienware win 7 cd into computer with optical drive.
-start wintoflash.
-follow wizard.
-after 3-4 clicks, about 10-15 minutes, remove usb drive.
-install ssd.
-boot from usb drive.
-profit.

I kinda wish I had a 256gb ssd drive. These 120gb's I have are getting owned. Also, I LOVE THIS LAPTOP.

 

awesome! thanks man. gonna try that when i get home later on. really can't wait...

so dragon age runs smoothly? was going to try that game out first once i got the thing running.

 

@nsx - glad that wintoflash worked out for ya. And yeah I REALLY noticed the load time difference in DA:O. It's amazing. I know for sure I couldn't get by with just a 128GB SSD. I'm at 80GB left on my 256GB SSD and I'm holding off installing some games!

 

I'm tryin to load up the ones i'm gonna play for a while first. So far it's wow, dawn of war 2+chaos rising, DA:O, probably battlefield 2 bad company...i have a bunch of other direct2drive games too T_T.

Dragon Age with a ssd...is freakin amazing. There's a huge difference between my m11x and playing da on my desktop which has 2.8ghz pentium d, 9800gt, 2gb ram, and 7200 hd.

*Oh, does anyone know where I can get the webcam driver? I saw the name of it a while ago, but have no idea what to search for or where to find it. Thanks.

 

Nice job!

 

Are you SERIOUS? I asked this board like 10 times about the AT&T thing, and never got a straight answer.. ordered the Gobi.
FML

EDIT: Thank god. Thank you, ali3nwar3z. (heh)

 

I was pretty sure the iPhone SIM would work, but i held off because I don't want to turn my cell phone off for internet.

I plan on just setting up bluetooth or USB tethering.

 

I actually wish i would have thought of that. I've never taken the sim out of my iphone, but i'm guessing that it's a hassle.

 

yeah you have to have that little pokey key thing to stick into the top of your phone to eject the sim, and it isn't designed in a way that i feel will be very durable for repeated removal/insertion. very flimsy.

 

@nsxrrmaniac = It should work without the driver since win7 has its own drivers. The webcam prog's name is Cyberlink youcam.

 

Looking at the alienhead on the on/off button, it looks as if it has a left hand eyebrow above the left eye, I am trying to work out if this is a scratch (If it is it is very deep) or whether it is meant to be like this.

Am I the only one with a mark on the top left of the on/off button?

 

i have nothing above my eyes.

 

Thanks Neil, I will get on to Dell to get it sorted out