Alienware Laptops: Positive encounters/Satisfied Customers

There are plenty of threads created by folks to complain about what a piece of crap their Alienware laptop is. Unfortunately, only a small portion of the population of SATISFIED owners ever speak up. This thread is to do just that. Hopefully potential buyers who come to NBR will read this and see that Alienware does, in fact, sell a reliable, top of the line product. Please include what model, when you purchased, and a brief history of your experience.

 

I purchased my M17 notebook on November 3rd, 2008. I have NEVER had any trouble with the laptop or the power supply. It runs all but a few of the games I own at 60fps at full graphical settings. I have run the machine with heavy CPU and GPU overclocks for extended periods of time. I've never had any issues with overheating. My keyboard quit illuminating because I accidentally cut the ribbon connector. Alienware promptly sent me a new keyboard. I was on the phone for about 10 minutes. I regularly take my M17 to work and to WiFi hotspots. Owning this notebook has been a positive experience all around.

 

I love my m17x !!!

Because it has Dual GPU - Aero dynamic design - 17" 1200P screen !!!! - User upgradable period !!

In two years, i'll buy another Alienware Laptop.

 

I bought my M17 7 months ago and it's run beautifully the whole way. Never had a single problem with it at all, and hopefully never will. It's a very robust and reliable machine.

 

I just got my alienware m15x a few weeks ago. There have been a few problems with software like The command center and what not, but easy enough to fix. I love it so far and alredy overclocked the gpu a little tiny bit. I plan on buying another alienware laptop in a few years when they have something newer and better

 

Heya,

I had an old m15x over a year which was a powerfull machine but the build quality was lacking. With the new M15x I feel that alienware stepped up and delivered a high quality laptop. There are still issues to iron out but its really a fabulous machine!

 

My M15x works great, no real physical flaws that I can complain about. The biggest flaw is the throttling that Dell has yet to fix. I've resorted to publishing a software workaround that other M15x owners and myself use but it took nearly 50 pages of discussion and investigation to get there. Dell engineering and customer service is hit and miss. Most of the time I'd say they miss.

 

love my m17,m17x and the m17 my brother has and we all know that this alienware forum can fix anything

 

I have not a single problem with my M17x. There are somethings I may play around with, but it worked as well as I expected right out of the box.

 

Good idea for a topic T_T all these negative posts with people saying they dropped their m17x/terrible service/ ect made me worry, now I feel fuzzy inside.

 

Congratulations Terminal42! When is it due?

 

I just received mine. I'm very happy with the system. It's not perfect, and it still has most of the normal pitfalls a Windows based machine has, but Win7 is a step in the right direction.

 

You sound like your talking to a pregnant woman lol.

Well this laptop is considered my baby but I don't know when it will arrive, it started shipping yesterday. I got the fast..delivery..whatever it was thing where it arrives 3 to 5 days or something after it ships but the state where its in is pretty far away from California

Sorry for getting off topic.

 

My M17X is 4months old and so far - it rocks! Dell's service might be slow and clumsy but in the end I got all my minor requests answered and fixed (replaced a GPU fan, touch-panel and got a second HDD caddy with min efforts). Replaced the stock paste/pad on the CPU/MCP and improved by 10c already decent cooling equilibrium. Looking forward to do some GPU/CPU/SSD/RAM upgrades in the nearest future.

 

I bought my M17x 2 months ago. So far so good. No problem at all. For software problem you need a lil bit working around but who doesnt with whatever machine?

More details on hardware related:

Audio skipping? NO! (high DPC Latency tho)

Stuttering? NO!

Overheated? HELL NO! I often put beer near my M17x to keep it cold

Stablity? I OC'ed my Q9000 @ 2.4GHz. Gain round 5-10FPS in GTA IV. No crash! It eats all games I throw at it, alive.

Build quality? You gotta be kiddin' me. It has best build quality out there.

Customer Service? Have no idea. But I had good experence with my sale rep. Friendly guy and expedited my order damn fast.

 

Off topic: Hows the Q9000 performance without overclocking?

 

Very happy with mines...of course with high performace product there's gotta be some tweaking to get it just right!! Most of the M17x owners already know that before hand, the ones whom complained are the one's who thinks that it's too expensive and it should always be perfect!!!! Nothing is perfect in this world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

may m17 is now 4 month old it as always worked wonderfully except it's stutering pass 1 month after i bought it but it has fixed it self

and even the only time i had to deal with thier customer service cause of the ... keyboard incident they did great job and send a replacement part presto

 

Hi Guys, I have an m15x, had since jan 2008, never had any trouble with it except the downclocking witch was solved with some bios updates, i must say i was suprised at their costumer support in a good way. i bougt the laptop in the us and brought it to portugal so i was afraid of not having any suport, so one of the bios updates i didn´t check the cd after i burned it and it was bad so my bios flash didnt go well, so they sent a carrier to come get the laptop at my house and sent it to their factory in euorpe, it took total 2 weeks and came back all ok and free of charge, i was very pleased. as for the screen breaking, not shown a single sign yet and i have it for 2 years already, i acknolge that its not very strong but just treat it right, to the people compalinig of it breaking you must slam your laptops a lot when you close them you monsters lol. as a final note : very pleased with my laptop and will buy a new one from them when my 8800 gtx can´t keep up with games. i have conviced my cousin to buy one now he got the new M15x so i had the oportunity to compare and must say build quality was improoved just disapointed they dont have the 280 gtx available on the machine. hope to see whats next in the 15 inch to come

 

ohh and upgraded to windows 7 and its like a new machine again

 

The only reason (at least for now) I need to OC my Q9000 is for GTA 4 performance since the game kinda CPU demanding (its a damn poor console port at first). For other games I dont think 2.0GHz is bottleneck (I believe the theory someone posted here in which your CPU will be the bottleneck and show dramatic drop in performance only when your game reaches somewhere 100+ FPS. And the point is at 100+ then 20 more frames doesnt mean much). I got 80-100FPS in MW2 full res, full settings, 4xAA. Crysis run smoothly too. Im going to try Empire Total War which is also a very CPU demanding game. We will see how the Q9000 handles it.

I sometimes do some encoding from .flac to .mp3 and its blazing fast (compare to my old desktop CPU Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz)

 

I love my M17x...like i said before it's the best toy i've ever owned (and I own a few)

This laptop drips with style, quality and performance and it's a very stable piece of hardware, you really can't ask for a better portable desktop.

I can't really say enough good things about it, i just wish it was lighter, but then again you can't rly have it all. I'm truly amazed by the cooling in this laptop.... they really done a fantastic work with it.

 

all the more reasons to make me more impatient

 

So far I love my M15x, no real problems to speak of, a little keyboard flex near the arrow keys but it doesn't bother me. Handle all my games perfectly, looks great, good cooling, beauty screen (1600x900).

 

I went on an m15x for 10 minutes.

All i thought was WOW

 

I am quite happy with my M17 also.

Especially now since i got 4850 GPU's.

I never had a problem with it either, except for my HDD dying, but i wanted to switch to RAID0 anyways so bought 2 new disks.

It does tend to get hot in my laptop, but raplacing the stock paste with OCZ Freeze, removing the cloth of the bottom, drilling a few holes in it and putting it on a good cooler solves that.

My next purchase will be a faster CPU.

 

I cant believe it I've order my M17X Dec 16 and I just received an e-mail today that it was shipped yesterday it sure it was fast !!

 

I bought mine around july 22, had a few problems buying it (the bank didnt give them the moeny) but got that sorted out in a day. edd was on 21 of august, came on the 1st of august. very happy. small problems with touch pad at top but it worked itself out, no problems with it sense. works fine, no lagg in most games on maxed out detail. using single 260m with Q9000 quad core. still a few problems after clean install to windows 7, you lose all the cool alienware stuff, hard to find some of it. over all, very happy. 9.9/10

 

I ran into a few problems with my new M17x, but they weren't all that difficult to resolve. Biggest problem was an NVSTOR64 error, with accompanying freezeups and slow boots. The info in the forum helped me resolve those problems, and it is now running great. I expect a glitch here or there with most anything, so wasn't surprised or unhappy.
I love this laptop. It is what I wanted it to be, a desktop replacement that can serve as my one PC, for fun and to run my business on. For years I've had a laptop for travel and multiple big boxes I've built for personal and business use. I wanted to tie it all together, so along with some good backup capabilities and a large monitor in my office, the M17x does that.
I especially love the graphics capability. The slotload BD burner is outstanding, and graphics for fun or presentation are as good as I've seen on any PC.
I also love the quality of the build, and appreciate that detailed repair information is readily available. I ordered it with one WD Black drive and wanted to add another. Having done that with multiple other laptops and other Dell models, I started searching for an install kit and interposer. A few years ago I spent days online trying to find a stupid HD install kit for a Vostro, and it took like an act of God to get it. So, I was really amazed when I opened up my M17x and saw that it came with install hardware, screws and interposer for the 2nd drive - all contained in the empty drive bay. That may not seem like a big deal to some people, but based on past experiences it was for me.
I think the build is great. It's quiet and runs cool compared to any other laptop I've had, and this is my 7th laptop. It's a solid machine that I expect to give me two to three years of heavy daily use.

 

I like my M17x, its great!

 

terminal42 having a q9000 is like driving a buldowser you go at 50 mph but you go a 50 mph trafic or not since bottelnecking 4 core is a hell of a job for any thing
only poor console port like crysis or gta can put it on it's knees

 

I love my M17x. I am confident the DPC issue will be resolved so I have no qualms in saying that I am completely satisfied.

 

I love my M17x as well, I am quite impressed with what they've done with this thing in terms of build quality, cooling and of course power and design. It certainly bests my old Clevo in every possible category.

As for the DPC, it's a non issue for me. I have red bars, but luckily for me they're not that high and I get no sound stuttering at all so I experience no effect from it.

 

Great thread,

Got my M17x coming on tuesday next week, and to be honest. After reading here for a week now i was kinda bummed out about everybody crapping on my new baby. :-(

 

I'm waiting on mine.

So far I have good and bad feelings. The initial sales rep was dodgy, he gave me a "final" price, then when I went to pay - it wasnt including GST (goods and services tax)

Also he was pressuring me into doing it under a business name for some reason.
Also, when I was going to do it on finance, he mislead me by telling me there was no interest.

The second rep (whom I got onto via overclockers.com.au) has been nothing but AWESOME.
The second rep beat the first guys price, and let me buy what I wanted.

Hoping the computer is as good as their reputation shows, I know you normally only hear from negative experiences, but as OP said - you rarely see people post on forums about being happy with a product.

 

M17x arrived on christmas, played some games for the rest of the night and noticed near perfect game play on all except sims 3 and simcity socities, im blaming this on the dpc latency.

Machine works amazingly well. The lights are so fun to customize and the 280m sli graphics card is awesome!

 

Also got my M17x on Christmas. It is amazing... Every game I've thrown at it has been torn to pieces. The one time I had to deal with dell support I received a response very quickly. The only problem I have with it is I can't stop using it. I have used it probably 30 hours since I got it yesterday mourning. It really is the best system I have ever owned!
(Even though my system before this was a desktop with only an integrated graphics card in it XD)

 

Having a very fun time on my m17x playing games in the dark lol. Love the lighting on the keyboard. the 280M graphics card and quad core processor are an amazing pair.

Renders HD video very fast too

 

I have not a single problem with my M17x and i have had it for 4 months. Plays all the games I want to play on full specs!

 

Having discovered a way to fully circumvent Dell's ridiculous bios imposed throttling of the M15x, I am almost fully satisfied with the laptop and am quite happy. Had I not been able to fix the throttling (again with no thanks to Dell), I'd probably have returned it and waited on something else.

 

I now own an M17x that has absolutely NO issues. Kills every game and app I throw at it.

 

Then start benchin' !!!! everyone can't party without you.

 

I absolutely love my M15x, until the on-site tech totally moshed it up. I only had a very small issue with my blu-ray drive, but my beef is not with Alienware or even the machine itself, mine is only with the on-site tech services. I am already looking forward to getting my replacement M15x, its like I am getting it for the first time all over again!

Alienware was nice enough to send me a new unit instead of sending me 40 million more parts to try to install...hehe.

 

Dpc latency?

Im making ANOTHER POST ON THIS TOPIC because I love my M17x so much. Plays latest games like Dirt 2 and Crysis like a breeze. Q9000 renders long HD videos that I upload to youtube 10x faster then any laptop I've owned.

 

My Quad doesn't stutter, so I haven't even checked the latency.

I have a big problem with Dirt 2. Inside my trailer I get maybe 5 fps. Outside and in-game everything's fine. There are a lot of folks complaining of the same issues, but I can't find a fix to this. My M17 does it too. It's really lame because you have to go in to the trailer to pick your next race.

That's a software issue though.

 

My new Nebula Red M17x is lordish! Had to wait 3.5 hours yesterday for a 80,000km car service and I didn't give a damn cause I could play World in Conflict and Crysis the whole time!! WOOT!! The only issues I had with this laptop were quickly fixed simply by changing a few sli power saving settings..

My last CPU was E6750 at 2.6ghz now I have the T9600 at 2.8ghz.. I'm quite surprised at how much more efficient the newer cpu is. It handles single threaded games almost twice as fast and thats with only an extra 200mhz per core! Thats 150 bots in Battlefield 2 and its stable... ish..

ARMA 2 struggled on my desktop 8800gt and now with the two 260m sli it gets walked over!! I'm glad I didn't go for the sli 280m. They just didn't seem worth the extra leap in price.

I have 2 x 500gb HDD in Raid 1 and everything loads so fast! (And I have the safety of raid 1 lol).

The weight was a bit of a shock but if you can't carry it then you don't have to worry about applying for a gym membership cause this baby has you covered lol.

Was considering OC the laptop but after seeing how it runs I can hardly justify it!

All round its the best thing I could have hoped for! Thankyou Alienware!

 

Yup. M15x. No throttling issues. No slow downs. All good. May be the best laptop I've ever owned (and I love Macintosh). The only thing that could top it is a Arrandale Core i7 MacBook Pro. Oh Helios!!

 

My quad seems to stutter with audio only. During HD or HQ youtube videos and sometimes during DVD's. Its not that bothersome but if they dont fix...meh getting off topic. This is for positive thoughts

Sorry to hear about Dirt 2. Great game though. Codemasters make really nice racing games. I love GRID too. Hope they make a sequel.

 

own a M15x since nov 09 and i´m totally satisfied, beside the throttling, touch pad lag. had no bluetooth card in it because of their website bug, calles tech, took some time, but i got it and works great.

blueray drive works fine and thanks god, no wrong, thanks to you guys, i didnt do the A03 update and it still works

their support is a different story, hang on the line for hours and talking to uneducated indian´s isnt quite funny, but as joker mentioned, paying extra bucks for having the support in the US, who is willing to do that ??

 

I'm considering a M15x purchase here in the next week or two (whenever they decide to do the refresh) and was wondering, would anyone who has the "Nebula red" and the "Lunar shadow" colors mind posting pictures? I get the impression the pics on their website aren't representative of what the laptop really looks like.

Cheers!