*OFFICIAL* M11xR1 Owners Lounge - Part 4

Good to hear. Dell must have done away with that scam. I will never forget it.
Sir our policy is to charge you for the warranty replacement part untill you return it within 10 days. Then 15 days later im calling them to make sure they got it back because my card wasn't refunded
Im loving my m11x I really dont see me with any other laptop now.

 

When I had my keyboard replaced a order was placed on my DPA and when they got the defective one back it was subtracted. You HAVE TO send back the part to prove it was defective otherwise it's like selling you a part.

 

Yes, I could understand something like a keyboard. I just thought the tech should take care of returning the defective parts when they dispatch him.

 

Yes it is odd that the tech didn't take care of it for you.

 

My bad, You may be talking about a laptop keyboard. I just wish they would send part to the tech then he gets paid after they get part back.

 

Oh yeah, I was talking about my defective M11x keyboard. Dell offered to have a tech come to replace it but I asked if I could just do it and mail the defective keyboard back to them. Two days later the replacement came and off went the defective one prepaid.

 

So I have a question about volume, on mine I turn the volume all the way up, then turn my headphone all the way up and its still not all that loud when playing music... the internal speakers are much louder that the headphones (tactx headphones)

 

Hi everyone,

I'm heavily leaning towards this little machine when i have the money and the time to play with a new laptop towards the end of the summer. (Or sooner depending on the money rolls in and Blizzard's chosen release dates )

However, i do have some questions - and i am willing to put off my purchase and wait some time for competition to catch up (Acer TimeLineX, Asus U30, maybe a MacBook), or for R2 release (August-October 2010?)

Firstly, the debate between the su4100 and su7300 has come down to whether or not you would use the virtualization technology that's included in the 7300. Apart from that there performance is arguably on par.
Question #1: In which concrete cases would the VT actually be useful?

Next, the standard ram is 800mhz (anything above that is compatible, but throttled down to 800) DDR3 sodimms, 2gig. The base hard disk is a 5400rpm, with storage capacity somewhat moot depending on your leniency towards backup drives and the size of your music collection. Standard warranty is 1 year phone support then at home service.
Question #2a: Would doing your own ram upgrade and/or hard drive upgrade muck with the warranty?
#2b: Do you know of any ram that's better and cheaper than what dell would include anyway? (And what happened to ram being once being dirt cheap? Damnit!)
#2c: If you replaced the stock hard drive, and perform a clean install (I get 7pro for free through school, so no need to upgrade via order) can I get all those fancy aesthetic AlienWare doodads back? I read somewhere in this mega thread that you needed 3rd party apps to change the welcome and login screens back, anyone know which ones? (Ah, nvm - this was answered in post #1991)

About Dell service, seems to me - as a Canadian buyer i could buy it cheaper through the US website...
Question 3: Can a Canadian buy off the US Dell site and still have it serviced in Canada?

Finally, about the known issues and drivers... :
How common are the excessively noisy fans, bsods on overclock, and casing issues as a whole? Are they uncommon or just from a bad rush batched to fill back orders? And can you live with the stock drivers if you're not too demanding of the machine performance? (The m11x stock would easily blow my 5 year old desktop out of the water, but my home rig is still kicking after 5 years of diy good times and bad!)

Cheers!

 

Well as for that last part....

Page 56 on this thread (sorry it won't let me post urls yet).

Second post from the bottom of the page.

 

only RAM worth upgrade when you buy from dell. $100 premium on su7300 make no sense. and hardrives are pretty cheap now, even SSD are not that expensive like before.

ddr800 ddr1066 ddr1333 makes no different in game, and in general use for most people. i believe m11x ram operate at 800 normaly, it only run 1066 speed when cpu OC to 1.73ghz.

about fan issue and bsods on OC problem, the % is unclear untill we can have a poll. so far no complainings from people who purchased theirs at bestbuy.

 

I've handled 3x M11x's. The first batch had screen gap issues which is why i went through 2 replacements.

All 3 M11x's overclocked fine with no BSOD.

 

this isn't as light as i expected. which part of m11x contribute the most weight? i wonder if ppl swaped for SSD notice significant weight reduction.

 

Only issue with mine is a clickety right hinge.

@lie495fc = The battery. Open up the bottom and see for yourself. Its a massive 8 cell. Even 15 inchers don't come with that big a battery stock.

 

I am about to get my m11x. EST is on the 21st. And as the "general electronic stuff, especially those with flahsing lights," geek that I am I am psyched. Now I just have to wait a WHOLE WEEK for it

 

yeah if you take out the battery, a significant weight difference is felt

 

I took off the battery, screen, keyboard with bezel and touchpad, and speakers... now it's truly portable! I just have to use it plugged in at all times and, well, then I may as well have it connected to a desktop display with speakers and full-sized keyboard/mouse. I'm also considering moving to a 1.8" HDD or SSD or perhaps even booting off the SD card and eliminating any kind of fixed disk.

 

@CZroe = think you just made the world's most powerful nettop Mount the chassis on the back of a 24 inch monitor and you have an All-in-One! Complete with blinky lights

 

Hmm...so I just noticed a corner of my lcd screen is popping out from the screen lid. Do I just call tech support and deal with it that way?

 

Yep. They'll take care of it.

 

Yes! call tech support and ask for a replacement unit. You bought a new laptop not a "Pre-repaired" with optional service call.

However be prepared to be patient as in 2-3 weeks, after 14 days on a replacement unit they canceled the order four days ago.

Today I called and they reorderd my replacement, when I asked why the other order was canceled they said that the configuration was wrong?

I looked over the description it was just like what I ordered. So what was wrong I don't know.

 

ok guys im just wondering on the battery life,
is it 6 hours+ in integrated graphics with the power mode on high performance or on power saver?

 

6 hours ish on Balanced for me. 2nd bar brightness and wireless thingys on. LEDs off.

 

Hi guys...i get only abt 4.5 hrs on Battery for my m11x with iphone tethering,MSN,Microsoft Office and some web surfing. Is that considered ok? Brightness of screen is 2Bars

 

Sounds about right. You are charging your phone while tethering from it after all. Power drain right there.

 

Yeah - same thing happened with me (ordered first wave - received in 2 weeks - first unit had dust particles in the screen - Tech showed up with replacement screen - scratched the casing while installing and the replacement screen had the gap issue). I then had 2 replacement orders initiated/waited on/cancelled for a total wait of about a month. At that point I just called and RMA'd the unit (this past week).

I guess I may be a glutton for punishment - I've re-ordered a new unit as of yesterday (called and got a pretty decent deal through my EPP along with the extra "complaints" - total of almost $220 off this time). We'll see what happens with the new unit. If it still exhibits any of the reported issues (Gap, BSOD, Fan (although this one didn't bug me as much as others)) - it'll be immediately returned and I'll either be waiting on the refresh later this year - or looking at other laptops that may fit in the same "category" (which currently NONE do not).

All said and done - I *really* like the unit (obviously) as I had the opportunity to really get to use it while waiting on the replacement units to ship. I also took the opportunity during this time period to see if there was anything even closely resembling this unit. The Sony Z is the *closest* to this - and it's almost $1000 more, otherwise - there's absolutely nothing out there that even comes close in comparison.

There are a few on the horizon (i.e. Acer / Asus) - but it's questionable as to when those are even going to be released any time soon... (at least in the US). And even then - I've had even worse support experiences with Acer. Asus - I've never used/owned before - though I've heard good things about them - which would put them at the top of the list assuming I have to return the new unit yet again (albeit a slightly larger form factor which is a pretty big negative for what I'm looking for in purchasing the M11x).

 

JSGIV I agree with you that the form factor is what is one of the best features of m11x small enough with enough battery life and power when you need it.

I will give it this one last try but if they cancel the order again this puppy is being rma'ed .

 

I get about 8 hours on level2 brightness; wifi on; lights off; 1 hour of music; a little bit of youtube and msn/websurfing
I'm happy. It matches my previous netbook in battery life but much faster

 

Just a question for the UK users. I am getting prepared to order the laptop in the next weeks.

Has anyone had success haggling with Dell and if possible what have you off?

cheers

 

Seriously? Have you felt a notebook HDD lately?

You would not be able to tell as there is no significant difference (I swapped mine and couldn't tell).

 

Okay, final skins are ready at invisibledefenders.com. Yes there are more designs than this, but this is just the one I picked. It comes with a matching background. Any questions just send a pm!

 

How hard is that skin to apply? it also seems like it may be a pain trying to line up the LCD bezel skin with the wallpaper.

I think I may end up buying myself one.

 

they did a good job on the top case.. with the curves and everything. I'm impressed.

 

Nice skin wolf.

So the hard drive failed in my m11x. I have the 250gb 7.2k rpm drive. Weird failure, too. The system would start to boot into windows (so the drive worked well enough to read the mbr and start loading the os) but would never finish booting. Safe mode, last known good, start up repair, nothing would work.

30 minutes on the line with tech support and they overnighted a new hard drive plus an optical drive for me to reload the os with. not bad. I had already pulled the error codes via diagnostics before calling so there wasnt any trouble shooting involved.

 

Nice. Do you have to return the optical drive?

 

for those interested, I upgraded the dell 1520 wifi with a intel centrino 6200 wifi card.

essentially it doubled the signal strength of my wifi.
where i was setup inside the house with the dell card i had only two bars antennae, with the 6200 i know have full bars.

picked up the card for 30 shipped on ebay.

 

How difficult was it to swap out the WiFi cards? Does the Dell WiFi antenna plug right into the Centrino 6200 WiFi card just like the stock Dell card?

 

super easy, it was a remove one screw pop out the two antenna wires, remove the old card, pop in the 6200 and screw it in and attache the antenna wires, downloaded the drivers from intel's support site and viola done!

 

@RAQemUP They're incredibly easy to apply, they come on this clear film so you just set it down and it goes on without any bubbles. If you mess up you can pick it up and move it really easily. Just peel the clear film off and tada! This place is by far my favorite place to get laptop skins. I like that they skin the inside and the outside.

 

Very nice - thanks.

Was this the item you got?
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-INTEL-WIFI-...wItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Routers?hash=item563b2628cf

 

same item different seller the one i got was:
HERE

maybe he might be getting more in stock idk would be worth sending the fellow an email
actually just sent him an email asking for stock availablity, im very happy with the 6200 card want to upgrade a few other claptops

 

Wolf, that doesn't look half bad with the wallpaper and bezel skin. Nice match.

I'll stay skinless however.

 

Guys, still i want to be sure, you all see on your laptop this wired lines?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5020311/ShippingPC-BmGame 2010-04-17 00-35-15-58.bmp

Fullscreen, look at the sky. Vertical lines, you all see them? Is that's just the way how this lcd draw picture?

 

I don't see anything on my 1080P panel. If you are seeing distinct lines it might be the M11X Screen, you should get some solid color pictures and view them full screen and make sure your LCD isn't borked.

 

I'm not seeing a problem from your picture. But then it's on my work monitor which isn't that great.

 

Are you kidding? Of course I'm interested in displaying this image on your screen notebook, not your external )

I say that on the laptop screen, on this picture, i see vertical lines in the sky.

So i just want to be sure that you all see them on your laptop screens. Cause on my desktop monitor i don't see this lines. Weired

 

@Wolfvixen I ended up getting the skin with the large lone vertical orange koi goldfish. Will see how it goes whenever it arrives. I kinda wish I ordered the 2 koi surrounded by blue however.

 

Anyone else's M11x has their Lan port positioned slightly above the outer plastic? It's not severe enough to lose its functionality but it still bothers me.

 

Also, my shot is grey on laptop screen, but on dell u2711 its green

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5020311/IMG_9013.JPG

But vertical lines bothers me more. Wanna be sure that you all see them.

 

Very nice skin Wolf, it looks much better then I thought! It looks like they custom designed one just for you.

 

Wow that's exactly what I wanted to hear, Wolf. I made a post about the site on the "side stuff" forum. Really interested in getting one, and it looks like you can get it custom made.

Glad to hear that they are nice!


Actually, something I really really want to know, is does it REALLY not interfere with the touchpad at all? It seems like it would at LEAST lower the usability a little bit...