Area 51 m9750 Dies a Painful Death......Back to the Mothership.....again....

How's it going everyone,
If you've been following the story of my lemon, I mean m9750, you are no doubt aware that I'm a member of the unlucky group of alienware owners. I'm beginning to wonder if luck has anything to do with it, or whether everyone is part of the unlucky group and they have yet to discover what I have.
Needless to say, my m9750 was functioning pretty normal as of yesterday morning. After I came home from work, I noticed a nicely frozen computer. I didn't really think anything of it as I held the power button down. It's been freezing at random ever since repair number one....But I was willing to live with it as long as it performed in game (which it did). Shortly after the system hard shut down, I tried to power it back up. Nothing was happening. There were no status lights or anything. I tried popping the batter out and running on just the ac. Still, I wasn't having any luck. After, I tried to power on with just the battery, I placed the call to Alienware. Several diagnostic steps later, it was determined that my motherbad went bad, and it needs to go in for repair. Alienware even upgraded the shipping to 2 day instead of the normal three.
Overall, I'd have to say that Alienware has an excellent support team. I'm just rather discouraged with the system. It makes me wonder if the repairs will ever stop. I was rather hesistant on extending the warranty on the initial purchase, but I now feel like it's a requirement.

Gabe

P.S. - For all those wondering, this wasn't a power surge related issue. The power brick still has a solid green light, and the computer was always plugged into a rather pricey APC UPS.

 

i'm really sorry for you man i hope the ALien comes down from the mothership pwning even more than before

cheer up!

 

Sorry to hear that.
Ask them if they can send in a new one?

 

sorry to hear that Gabe
join the motherboards are knackered society.

 

ask them for m15x

 

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the support. I remain postive and hopefull, as always.

@Xirurg - It's too bad they don't offer upgrades based on customer satisfaction when issues like this happen with a brand new system (especially since it's dropped in price). However, I can't help but worry that moving on to a m15x might be jumping from the frying pan right into the fire.

Gabe

 

when did you receive this machine Gabe?

 

agree,stay away from AW,take a look at sager

 

for the looks, AW pwns any other brands, also maybe this is a bit out of topic, but you all know that Aw's ram upgrade is a little expensive.(alright maybe double the cost) but i've notices that its timings can me much more tweaked than a 3rd party ram ( ive bought 2 new Kingston sticks, and AW's Latancy tweaking was much better with no BSODs)

 

not Apple. and also there are lot of notebooks look better than AW in Japan.

 

well, i know Japan has some kick ass fancy notebooks, but i dont think they have WorldWide shipping? , and from what i see that you didnt buy one that means they are somekind of under performing

 

Sir, my comment was based on "for the looks, AW pwns any other brands", you didn't mention anything about US only nor performance, so I assumed you were comparing every notebooks in the world.

 

Sorry to hear your experience isn't great so far Gabe. Hopefully this will be last issue you will have with it.

I have been one of the lucky ones it seems so far. Both my M9750's have been trouble free except for the occasional temp issue with one of the 8700 cards on my wifes. Oddly it seems to have corrected itself after the latest driver update as it never goes above 85c where before it would hit 105c. Keeping my fingers crossed that it remains trouble free as I love my M9750's.
These are the best laptops I have owned, they are even better than my Sager NP5793.

 

Hope all goes well with the repair and get that M9750 a new life.

 

wow Frag you have 2 ?

 

For what it is worth, my m9750 is extremely well behaved. After updating to the 174.16 Drivers I have not touched her and she has not wobbled once. Cards never go above 78C and she performs impeccably.

Sorry about your bad luck GabeZ.

 

Yes I do. I had initially purchased one for my wife as she needed a new one and I liked it so much I decided to get one for myself. So now I leave my Sager NP5793 at work and use it on business trips and keep my M9750 at home or take it to an occasional lan.

 

So what makes the M9750 better than the 5793, if I might ask ?

 

Thinking about purchasing one?

 

No, I have a 579x and a friend has an M9750 so I wonder what you found better on the AW

 

m9750
+ Slimmer & sleaker looking
+ SLi (great at the time)
+ Lighter than the 5793
- Old CPU chipset limits it to 2.33gHz
- No 8800 GTX

579x Pros:
+ 8800GTX + faster intel CPU (Now)
- Fatter and heavier

The 579x was not as good a buy as it is today when the 9750 first came out, however, now that the 579x supports the 8800 GTX & x9000 intel chip, I think it's a great deal. 7950 SLI is pretty good but not as consistent as an 8800GTX. Sometimes SLI works and works well, hence 8800 GTX performance, and sometimes it doesn't.

 

Its really hard to compare as I feel like they are both great machines. Its just that in my paticular case the M9750 is just a bit nicer.

The screen is a bit crisper and has no light leakage on the M9750 where as the NP5793 has some light leakage along the bottom and has one stuck pixel and 2 dead pixels.

The keyboard on the M9750 has better overall feel and less flex than my NP5793.

The port layout on the M9750 is better.

The overall fit and finish is better on the M9750, it is resistant to scratches and is cooler to the touch.

The build quality is pretty close but the nod goes to the M9750 as there is no flex in the chassis at all.

The NP5793 is about 10% faster in most newer games but the M9750 is faster in my favorite slightly older games such as Fear.

I have two hard drives in raid 0 on my M9750 which makes my bootup and load times much faster. I don't have that ability on the NP5793.

So while thay are both great I prefer to use my M9750 as is just that little bit of a nicer experience.

That being said I would still recommend Sager/Clevo products as they are certainly fine machines. I am not so sure that I can say the same thing about the current Alienware machines outside of the M9750.

As always your mileage may vary.

 

@Grey you can OC your CPU anytime, actually i'm Attempting to OC it to 2.5ghz this week, so i'll give you some feedback about it, anyways, CPU doesnt matter unless you are PLaying RTS.

 

I'm scared of overclocking my cpu on this thing. I already get over 85C while gaming and I'm using arctic silver on everything. I even get some weird black boxes when I play games but so far, it's only been in Bioshock and Mass Effect.

Off Topic, I've pretty much confirmed that SLi DOES work over-all with significant improvements, just not in Call of DUty 4, my current favorite game.. sigh.

 

SLi is overhyped in my opinion. But, if you can get it running as it should then you have a pretty decent mobile rig.

 

added some opinions.

 

he acknowledged that the m9750's SLI options are now worse, nirvana, that's why he said "great at the time"

 

I've had one experience with a Sager.

I won't buy a Sager. Ever again.

I've had one experience with Alienware. I own a 9750. No issues at all.

 

would you kind enough to share your terrible experience of Sager with us?

 

the 9750 has a very good rep.... i kind of wish the m15x was just a shrunken 9750 .

I remember wanted one of the Green ones (i think it was just m9000.. or some thing) back in the day... but alas world of warcraft pulled me in.

the 9750 would be alot quieter than the NP5973 would't it?
every one says the 9750 just makes "air movement sounds"

 

Good valid points. The only one I *might* contest would be the weight, but that's being nitpicky. I'm not about to whip out a scale just to see who's right or wrong =P

I'm not saying the the 5793 is a bad choice now. It's really a great machine, but I do think it was a waste of money before it got a refresh.

I've only had a few issues with my laptop but they have all been extremely minor so far. (matte paint finish wore off quickly around edges, SLi drivers not working as they should to begin with, and a bit of having really high expectations due to cost vs what the laptop can really do)

 

yea 1 thing I don't really like 579x is that it can't hold dual GPU nor dual HDD while it has bigger case than m9750.

 

2 much of the 5793 case is filled up with Copper heat sinks... good for over clocking but no soo good for extra raw power/storage.

the m9750 will support a single ATi 3800's didnt some one say?

 

it doesnt matter if it did support a Single 3870.. it will stil have the same gaming power as a 7950GTX SLI, but with DX10 support, by the time true DX10 games come out, the HD 3870 would'nt have the power to handle them at 20 FPS.

 

I was the owner of an early d900, a 9260 I believe it was. Motherboard blew out just after a year.. as it did a great number of owners before Sager/Clevo finally fixed the issue. Of course, the rest of us were SoL.

I still have a few of the parts of that machine sitting on a shelf in my basement.

 

yeah, but a single card solution beats SLI anyday (when that single card provides equal performance to the SLI option). for some the DX10+no SLI would make it a worthy upgrade.

 

I'd be happy if they let me put a SINGLE 8800 GTX in it. To helll with SLi! =P

 

@Grey - I totally agree with you. I do not think I am ever going to touch SLi again after the M9750.

 

thats because you are on Vista stone, believe me i got Vista with my m9750, i was getting an average of 40ish in UT3 Engine games, with XP i'm getting 60+, please man.. try it with XP AND YOU WONT REGRET IT!

 

To me, going back to XP is like taking a step back. I'm sure stone feels the same way. XP isn't going to last forever, and only so many extensions can be made. It's time to jump on the Vista bandwagon and move forward. When Windows 7 releases, XP will no longer exist. It will be a world with Vista and Windows 7 users.

Gabe

 

To me, Vista feels an awful like Windows ME. It's not an upgrade AT ALL and just seems to have more headaches than benefits. I hope Windows 7 is a better, more polished product.

I was one of those people that purchased Vista on the release date, but after struggling through many driver issues and significant performance loss, I switched back to XP.

Also, Microsoft made dx10 Vista only to try and convince gamers to purchase Vista.. it didn't have to be, but again, they're trying to sell their OS and nothing more.

 

@Grey + Brainer - The problem isn't windows vista. Hell I love windows vista and I use programs like Photoshop CS3 which I believe are Vista only now if I'm not mistaken. The problem isn't Vista because I have seen XP users on laptopvideo2go who have problems with SLi drivers for XP as well.

For example, look at the Dell XPS1730 users. They really don't have any SLi problems because the drivers are there. Not 1 driver that AW has released has been any good for me and I've been stuck searching for my own which is a HUGE headache.

 

Vista is fine. If your machine can't handle it, then get out of 2002.

 

cs3 does work for xp. i dont think there are many programs out there that are vista exclusive.

 

While not "bleeding edge" I keep my desktop pretty up to date. Core 2 Duo 6600, 8800 GTX, Asus Striker Extreme MOBO, 2x500GB Seagate drives in Raid 0, 4 GB RAM which I put together well over a year ago. What irritated me was Linksys and nVidia took their sweet time getting drivers out for the 64 bit version of Vista. I could not use my new Draft N wireless on my desktop nor could I play the games I wanted to play without a lot of issues and crashes: FFXI being the biggest issue of all since I was heavily addicted to it.

It's taken well over a year to finally get everything straigtened out with Vista. Sure, I guess it's 'okay' now, but I wouldn't live with all the crap issues I had to deal with just to have the latest OS.

Sure, you could say it was other company's fault that kept Vista from working properly, but really.. why upgrade to it when there really is no compelling reason to do so? DX10 as far as I'm concerned isn't worth it and won't be for another year.

 

It seems as though the same non-valid arguments keep returning to vista like a bad plague. These seem to be the top arguments:

1. My drivers don't work.
2. My programs won'ts run.
3. My system now performs slower.
4. Vista doesn't give me anything I can use that XP doesn't have already.

I would like to be rather frank in answering all these questions. First of all, have we forgotten what a mess xp was on launch?? Does any product ever release flawlessly? Being that we are human, and very much capable of mistakes, it can only be assumed that the products we develop will reflect our flaws. With that said, the main purpose of patches and upgrades are for that exact purpose. I think all issues can be resolved with a little patience. The fact that microsoft released service pack one proves that they have plans on supporting and improving it. I don't feel the least bit worried about it turning into a so called ME.

Answers:

1. Spend a little more time searching for them. Update to service pack 1. (I honestly haven't had a driver that didn't work)
2. Look for Vista patches. All reputible companies will be willing to support vista as they did XP. If all fails look for Vista compatible programs just like you did when XP released. (Maybe I'm confused, but isn't it the software manufacturer's responsibility to be compatible with the latest operating system?)
3. I seem to remember XP being slow on release also. Update to service pack 1 or make sure your system meets the requirements. Upgrade where needed.
4. You didn't use it long enough to find out. By simply clicking on the start menu, the new search feature is self evident. Explore......don't think that everything is the same.

This may be a bit of a bold statement, but perhaps we've entered a society in which the majority of us expect everything to be done for us. Vista won't just work. You have to put some work into it. Remember that XP didn't just work either. How long did it take you to like XP? I wouldn't expect anything less from Vista.

Hope this helps,
Gabe

 

IMO, Windows 2000 > All. Case closed, hands down.

 

Bah stone.. the 1730 users have 8m cards, which have 0 problems with Vista in SLI, Unlike our 7 series which were MADE to run in XP enviroment, and if you still have your own doubts, just choose any game to benchmark and i'm 100% sure that i will be atleast 20 FPS above you.

 

GabeZ - You have to understand.. I already OWN a copy of Vista (Ultimate-64 to be precise). I got it at launch. To sit there and patiently wait for updates while my primary desktop system was basically handicapped until the SP1 launch would have been absurd. I did dual boot for awhile, but I found I spent more and more time in XP than I did in Vista. Also, the 4 above points you mentioned are still valid. There are MANY complaints out there of being sold "Vista Capable" laptops that were barely capable of running it. Even executives from Microsoft had this complaint, so no, this complaint isn't some mild "rehash" but a genuine one.

Is Vista a lot better now that SP1 is out? Sure, no doubt it is, but I'm STILL not compelled in ANY way to re-install Vista. I'm no stranger to figuring out how things work nor am I scared of searching for drivers. Hell, by simply coming to these forums and POSTING already proves I do more than just purchase a product then do nothing if it doesn't work. It's the NEED to switch to it just isn't there for me. End of story. If I happen to buy a new computer and Vista happens to be installed on it, I won't be going out of my way to uninstall it IF it does work as promised.

When XP launched, we had no less than FOUR operating systems on the market. Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP. From 98 I chose to upgrade to 2000 because of it's known stability over XP and ME. Was XP a mess when it launched? I wouldn't know because I believed I had the better choice in Windows 2000 and I didn't upgrade until well after XP SP1 launched and just before SP2.

Above all else, I'm a gamer. I wouldn't have purchased this type of laptop otherwise and frames per second DO mean something to me. I don't care if shadows and lighting are better in DX10, if it costs me 20 frames per second, it's not worth having it. If I get an ADDITIONAL loss of 10+ frames per second just because I'm running a different OS but with the same software settings and hardware, etc, that'll just piss me off.

Lastly, if I really wanted to enjoy using an OS, I would of purchased an apple product or something. They always talk about how good the OS is. To me, an OS is an end to a mean. I want it to work well enough to get the applications I do want to run going. That's really about it.

 

You know what?

I'll probably give Vista another shot and dual boot my laptop. I'm not sure how that'll affect my laptop though since Alienware chose to make seperate BIOS for both vista and XP... we'll see I guess.