Alienware M17 *OFFICIAL* Owner's Lounge

when did you order yours?

 

I ordered it on December 1st. There were some payment errors on the 3rd and finally got them straightened out on the 4th.

Fortunately, that pushed my estimated ship date to the 18th which is JUST out of their 24th delivery guarantee, lol.

 

It's only 4 days from your order and 2 of those days are weekends. So, please be patience.
And I thought 18th is before 24th, so the guarantee still hold, right?

 

Yeah it hasn't been that long, I'm just confused by Alienware's wonky phase system.

Even though the estimated ship is before the 24th, their guarantee is only for orders with an estimated ship before or on the 17th. It probably will make it here before the 24th, but the guarantee would've been nice.

Oh well, still super excited

 

Well I now know that its not over night shipping in NA. Since mine shipped on the 5th (Friday) and estimated arrival date is the 10th (Wednesday). Which is still ok with me because I leave for North Carolina on the 11th. Got to love it when a plan comes together in the end.

Z.

 

when i get mine i cant wait to compare you have the same specs as me

where you from btw? your not leaving it to chance like i am,

the irish are building mine!

 

Im studying in UK atm (somewhere near Leeds lol).

I left them alone till phase 9, now i just have to make sure it will arrive here

Just give me 3-4 hours to tweak the whole system after it arrives and ill be ready for comparing !

 

lol I got anouther question lol .
When i ran the crisis bench mark program(1920x1200 64bit high settings). The trees and some other things were flashing lol. also WoW is doing it if i bring up the settings to high. I sorta skimped on the ram and only got 2 gigs and i was just wondering if ppl think thats to blame cause it is defferently running thin.
Edit: and the purple was not happening today.

 

Crysis-- the gift that keeps on giving!
The game is very forward looking and pushes most laptops, you might try lowering a few settings and slowly raise the settings for best performance.

The best thing you can do is to run a game that you have at the native res and then try a lower widescreen res and see if you can notice a blurring of the image and whether you like that resolution. Some people hate running at non native resolution and have to play at it even if it means dropping in game settings whilst others do not mind and prefer higher settings and can handle the blur from a lower res, try 1280x800, 1440x900, 1650x1080 for better image quality.

btw what are your specs?

 

Things should get moving a lot faster once you get past phase 4. Getting from phase 5 to phase 9 generally takes around 1 week.

 

Theres a known issue with WoW on sli/crossfire when turning the shadows too high, try the latest beta drivers and put the shadows slider in the middle

 

The newest beta desktop driver modded with the Mobility Modder makes the flickering shadow thing go away in WoW.

And oddly, all settings maxed at 1920x1200 doesn't always run at 60fps in WoW on the M17. You'd think there would be no issue running a game that looks like a cartoon. I just lower a few settings to get my 60fps.

 

Disable Vsync, vsync in that game is a big no no

 

and here's me thinking vsync only limits the max. fps to 60.

 

Depends on the game tbh. In wow with vsync enable ive have 60 fps but spikes from 45-60.

With Vsync disabled im around 100 and goes down to 65-70. So apparently in that game vsync doesnt only cap your fps but lowers your average too.

Thats with the old laptop ofc (7950gtx)

 

I'm not looking to limit the fps, but to not the have the 'tearing' effect that no vsync kindly provides. Some can overlook it, but it bothers me.

 

Doesnt have that affect in all games, might want to try it to see if it helps, if not then back to the default setting also theres /console maxfps X incase you want to play around with it a bit, might help if you want to keep it on.

 

Mine is in phase 8 in 12days
So i wonder why people say things like these
are they lieing ? are they trying to give a bad name to AW

Honestly Alienware has good laptops & after sale customer service

 

everybody calm down. we know that AW doesn't process orders equally fast. some arrive earlier, some arrive later. we can't influence this in any way, so there's no point in arguing.

 

Ok, I got my M17 for one week now.

It`s great! Some problems I had ofcourse because of many programs written for 32 bit, once even my DVD-RW drive dissapeared form system but everything is now ok. CoD4 works with absolutly everything on high and I like it a lot.

Only problem I still have is Mass Effect. Everything maxed and look beautiful but I can`t play full screen. When I try game after launch minimalize itself to taskbar and it`s impossible to do something with it except killing it via task manager so i`m forced to play in window mode but still the game looks great. I`ve searched google and so, but only hint i found was to disable ME dir from real-time virus scanner but it did not help.

Also on some planets instead of textures on rocks/mountains/ground I have only black shapes.

Problem with textures I found on Catalyst 8.12 beta rc3 so I`ll try once again with 8.11 but not being able to play full screen is both 8.11 and 8.12 beta problem

EDIT: besides it it`s really great system, I like design (my alternative was Toshiba X305, yuck ), I like compontents used to build it, I like fans not loud too much (they have to make some noise, we have here two gaming GPUs ), I just like it all

 

Awesome. You should investigate undervolting the laptop to lessen heat output and extend its lifetime. Warranty voided when doing such things, yada-yada-yada, but again, only if Alienware finds out.

- F

 

Btw just out of curiosity, undervolting reduces the performance as cpus are concerned ?

Although most of the heat comes from the gpu but if im not mistaken undervolting the gpu does affect performance.

 

Zero performance hit. I couldn't believe it myself, but undervolting is all advantage. There might be a need for slight voltage juggling when combining it with overclocking, but that's what testing is for.

EDIT: Subscribe to this thread

The Undervolting Guide
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

- F

 

Hm thats rather interesting, tempting

 

I played in 90-99% GPU load for 3-4 hours and temp at GPU didn`t go over 76 degrees so I don`t think I need to undervolting it but out of pure curiosity - is tehre a thread about this? Won`t it decrease my GPU`s performance?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824&highlight=undervolting

 

Frog, I edited my previous post. Consult the link there for the main undervolting thread on this forum. Or Coolmine's link -- same thing.

Based on what I've researched, people who have undervolted have seen temperatures drop anywhere from 10-15 degrees celcius, again, with zero negative effect to CPU performance. Generally the bigger temperature drops come from machines that run hotter as the norm.

As for your video card, the CPU isn't affected by undervolting, so your GPU performance should remain unaffected too.

- F

 

Lol, everything seems ready for tomorrow, downloaded all the drivers, already have the ATI modded and ready for installation along with the rest of my software.

And like 10 game cds waiting !

From my previous experiences with delivery services id say they will come around 10am

Using a laptop for half a month with 800x600 resolution (gfx fried) makes you eager to get the new laptop!

 

Sigh... it's lonely here at phase 3...

Oh, quick question, in the future what problems might I run into if I try to upgrade to a qx quad model? I was thinking about buying one in advance soon just in case they aren't as readily available in 2 to 3 years.

 

Caskey, it's better to wait now *if* you have to. Cause if you went the x9100 then Im sure they'd never let you upgrade to the qx9300 down the road. Even if it delays, it will be worth it. But, what exactly is a delay with AW? They take a month and a half for these systems it seems, regardless

 

Not all of them, for eg mine shipped in 2 weeks after i placed my order, almost 2 weeks before estimated ship date and its arriving tomorrow after 2 business days (well basically 1 business day since im receiving it at the 2nd ).

Not sure what went wrong with the other 2-3 people still waiting for it but my order went pretty good as far as phases, shipping etc.

 

Well, my M17 "arrived" but Fedex claimed nobody was around to accept it (false) and returned it to the local depot. No sorry-we-missed-you card.

Crud. Commercial carriers never get things right. One would figure they'd be the ones to depend on, yet the feds (USPS and Canada Post) are always the most reliable, intelligent and cheapest carriers out of 'em all. If I order anything from Alienware in the future, either they ship USPS or they don't earn my business.

- F

 

Had a lot of issues like that, thats why i always call them a day before they are going to deliver it and tell them that usually they have hard time finding the place bla bla bla and at the end they give my number to the driver. So as soon as the package is near my home i get a call Always plan ahead

 

I'm sure they got near, realized that because my townhouse is buried well into a cluster of other houses with no immediately accessible driveway, decided they wouldn't deliver and mark it as as nobody available. Matter of fact, I'm confident that's what happened -- commercial carriers are impatient jackasses. If they don't deliver to wrong addresses, they leave expensive parcels out in the open for anyone to walk away with.

Still, I see the point about calling ahead, but carriers should already have the intelligence to deal with exceptional delivery cases. Canada Post never seems to have a problem, so I fail to understand why FedEx and the like would.

- F

 

Should have called them if you noticed the card (did you ? ) fast enough. Last time that happened to me i gave them a call and because the guy was like 15mins away he came back

 

Hehe thats good news indeed

 

still on phase 1 myself as I paid with an international credit card they take so much longer on veriying stuff

 

You need to call to verify your order

 

I did call but they said they take longer to confirm the right billing adress and such

 

They need some confirmation i think, photos of your credit card, or an utility bill things like that.

Used the conference call option, were basically you call your bank while they are still on line without talking, just to verify your address (of your card that is).

 

That's what they did with mine, conference call to the number at the back of credit card.

A way for fraud can still be done easily. Set up a 1-800 number and have your bro to answer the call and pretend it's bank to confirm the purchase. This security is weak. The bank number should not be given by customers, AW should have update database of all banks for security confirmation. That is if the banks setup such phonelines for it, which they all should.

 

And you still didnt move from phase 1 after that ? Mine moved 5 mins after that call.

 

Retailers who verify higher ticket purchases generally confirm by calling Mastercard or Visa directly, as was the case with my purchase when it was verified.

- F

 

Same idea, the credit card phone number is provided by customer, which can be fake.

 

Well I think it will be fine now going to just make it to bill on a US billing adress card since I before was paying with a mexico billing one, now if they would only pick up.....

 

I pulled the trigger and ordered one. I had the Sony AW 18.4" and that was just too big. 17's are more manageable for me, even though the M17 is heavier. I would love to have the quad processor, but it was too much moolah. I also think they charge too much for Raid, so I passed on that as well. As long as this notebook doesn't sound like a jet, I think I'll be happy with it.

Video/Graphics Card: Dual 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3870 - CrossFireX™ Enabled!
Processor: Intel® Core™2 T9400 2.53GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Chassis: 17-Inch WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD (1200p) with Clearview Technology
Keyboard Options: Illuminated Keyboard – Alienware Exclusive Design - Astral Blue
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Without Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
Memory: 4GB« Dual Channel DDR3 SO-DIMM at 1066MHz – 2 x 2048MB

System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 320GB 7,200RPM (16MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical Drives : Dual Layer Blu-ray Disc Reader (BD-ROM, DVD±RW, CD-RW )
Wireless Network Card: Internal Intel® Ultimate N 5300 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card with MIMO Technology
The World's First 450 Mbps Wi-Fi Adapter!
Sound Card : Internal High-Definition Audio with Surround Sound
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Onsite Service and 24/7 Toll-Free Phone Support
AlienRespawn: AlienRespawn v2.0 Recovery DVD – Windows Vista® Edition
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mesh Cap
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mobile Binder
Alienware Extras: Owner Identification Card
Alienware Extras: M17 Protective Cloth Sleeve
Alienware Extras: M17 Keyboard Diagram Overlay
Avatar: Alienhead Glow
Window Style: Default Window Style
Mouse Pointers: Standard Mouse Pointers
Wallpaper: Alienhead Glow
Power Plan: High Performance
Automatic Updates: Automatic Updates On

 

Finally after quite a long talk got it moving to phase 2 =P

 

AlienRespawn can be made by partition cloning software and takes 1/2 to do for free. But I see many many people still pay for it. That's how AW make money.

 

Yeah after reading a couple of post canceled my stupid like norton and the respawn and instead got longer warranty

 

You are welcome, I hope you saved you couple hundred dollars there and be a happier AW owner.