Ask Alienware's General Manager, Frank Azor, Anything on AWA!

I tried, I failed, I surrender. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Of course you are.

Nice redirect answer to my direct questions NOT - 'If we messed up we will fix it' is a great soundbite but that's what you are required to do! Of course you messed up, somehow, otherwise this obvious problem would not have occurred on day one of release. I'll simply be cancelling my order (if it ever arrives) if it is not fixed within 24 hours of receipt.

 

Looking back, maybe it was a little unfair of me. It's just the way the session panned out......it seemed like the more pertinent questions were not answered and the others were. Not your fault, nor mine - more so the format of the discussion which sent things pear-shaped. I apologise and I (and I'm sure many others, too) appreciate your presence here to sort things out. I know that you are proactive and are keen to get down to grass roots and 'hear' the customer - I recall a conference call a few years back where yourself, Bill and others hosted a call with us (myself, Mr. Fox, Johnksss and others) to discus various aspects of Alienware and its machines. We would never get that kind of input or chance to speak with executives like yourself about such things from other manufacturers - one of the main reasons why I still value Alienware as a brand.

I still have reservations about dropping thousands on a BGA machine, but that's just me (or maybe me and a few others!) that loved the upgrade-ability of past Alienware machines. I'm not saying that the new line up is poor, just not what a lot of us were expecting, however, I'm prepared to see how things pan out and drop my cash accordingly.

 

Indeed. I have $6000 waiting to drop on an AW 18 R2 with 980M SLI...

 

I don't feel you really answered his questions.

He's asking for basically a progress report and how you plan to fix the issue in the interim. He's not asking about the general issue what will happen, he's talking about right NOW.

 

I have another question I feel needs to be answered @Alienware-Frank and @AW Khan

Alienware 18 was discontinued (due to issues with the display). We who have Alienware 18 cannot buy a new notebook from Alienware with GTX 970M SLI or 980M SLI since Alienware dont sell these. But what about supporting your loyal buyers?

I just bought my Alienware 18 with 880M SLI a couple of weeks ago. I sold my GPUs, bought two GTX 970M to replace them since Alienware quit on us. Our problem however is:
1. Only UEFI boot works with Legacy disabled. And this doesnt work with Windows 7 (it freezes) just Windows 8. And if you ever switch back to Legacy, the computer refuse to POST and you need to reset BIOS by doing a lot of things.
2. The second GPU (slave, right one) does not run when using GTX 970M or 980M. The primary (left one) does and so does the CPU, both automatically. There must be something in the BIOS that refuse to work with the new cards.
3. Using HWinfo is a very little desirable method, but even that wont work because Dell have locked down the program from reading EC fan tables, and you have 3 speeds if you use non EC: 0 RPM. Doesnt do anything. 1700RPM: Too weak. 3700RPM = Way too loud.

Please help us Alienware. This is my second Alienware 18 I bought from you guys (first one with 770M SLI). Its a nice notebook which I love but we have ZERO SUPPORT from Alienware. You guys should help us and issue out a new BIOS that let us use the new Maxwell cards since you ditched us.

You ow us that much.
There should be extremely little that needs to be done to make the Alienware 18 work with GTX 970M and 980M, and to work with UEFI and Legacy, from your part. Even as simple as unlocking EC or more fan speeds (between 1700RPM and 3700RPM), like 2000, 2500, 3000, would help a lot.
But preferably both.

Closing thoughts:
MSI are able to support the SLI crowd with GT80 and 980/970M SLI. Clevo also with their 17". Its sad to see Alienware exit this market because just look at the Alienware 18 subforum here. Its a big and lively community.

 

WOW WHAT A HORRIBLE AMA.. he did nothing but politely dodged questions.. wow.. they dropped the 18 due to faulty 18" panels... hahah dont make me laugh..

 

As I stated before, the testing isn't done. I've already filled you guys in that I will let you know the outcome once it is done. Asking for a progress report on pending data is not reliable because if something else was found to be root cause, the internet really won't let you do "take backs!" See the BIOS findings Mr. Fox found. Just as he did, there is a ton to look at to give a proper solution, not a bandaid.

Let's say we just said "Okay! Let's just send 240w AC Adapters to everyone!" and then the problem isn't just the 240w AC Adapter. Maybe it's something else? What if the adapter provides a solution for a week but then shorts out because of some other factor? What if the 240W doesn't provide the results you expected it to? What if it was causing some sort of damage? What if we figured out a way to provide even more surprising performance from the 180w and the 240w wasn't even needed? You get where I'm going with this?

I'm not saying its going to take weeks or months or years to give you an answer.

Why provide a bandaid when you have a fractured bone? Let us set the bone for you.

 

I'm sorry but this is not a validated and supported configuration. We provided Mr. Fox with some support to help him get his similar configuration running and we can provide you with the same but we can't officially support this configuration without properly developing and validating it. We are working to see if we can respawn the 18 and if we do it will be with 980s at which point the 970s should work as well but I'm not sure yet if we can do it, I assure you that we want to. In the meantime Alienware-Umar will reach out via PM to help you get up and running the files we provided Mr. Fox in case they help. Let's see how far those files get you in the meantime. I will let you know as soon on this thread once we figure out if we can bring the 18 back with official 9xx support.

 

Thank you. A simple yes, no, don't know was all that was needed. I tried to make it simple for him but as we can all see, no chance of a straight answer to a simple question. Please make up your own minds as to his honesty and integrity, I've dealt with a LOT of slippery VP's and GM's in the US and he's up there with the best (or worst depending on your perspective).

 

My money is ready.

 

Seems to me this has degraded from what could be a very useful interface with a cooperation and it's consumers to a mud flinging fest.

Everyone knows a company is not going to react at the speed of light. Give them time to do their research and present a answer before we all go ballistic.

Obviously they are interested in hearing what we have to say, and seeking a solution or they would not be here at all.

I commend alienware and their effort to resolve this problem. Let's wait till they give a definitive answer before we light the torches. Who knows the solution may be even better than what we expect.

Sincerely
A humble first time buyer.

 

You guys have never dealt with a large company have you, like this?

It's standard that they don't say anything that's certain because of backlash if any last minute changes happen, or if they were to provide WRONG information. Be patient.

 

I agree to some degree. However neither Alienware people have responded to the large post I made about my experience, which I did link them to and I have no doubt they saw it. To me this just means they don't care about me as a customer or my experience. They just want the money in the bank. It's turning my off the brand to be honest.

 

Awesome. Thanks a lot Frank, that is something I wanted to hear. Its nice to see a manager listening to their fans. Because frankly, there have been a lot of critisism about Alienware and their latest changes. But your latest AMA explained a lot. Like the display was why you discontinued the AW18, which I get can get costly and resource demanding on your part. (Did you know that MSI use the same Samsung PLS display on their GT80 btw? I can honestly say that this is my 2nd AW18 I bought and I have had ZERO issues with any of my displays. No ghosting, no tearing, no light bleed nothing. The displays are beautiful and notebookcheck plus other reviews gave it a solid score. The best display Ive ever used on a notebook.) And of course also the move to soldered CPUs, which is a decision on Intels part (I read that Broadwell will be only soldered), not yours. A move which all OEMs need to be a part of, sadly. But you guys should really reconsider changing from soldered GPUs to MXM modules again. I get that it complicate things on service/warranty, but I cant wonder why MSI and Clevo is able to use that In their notebooks...
You could for example let AW13, 15 and 17 keep the thin design with soldered GPUs and targeted toward the Graphic amplifier.
While marketing the Alienware 18 with 980M/970M SLI but with the same thickness and same design as current, and ditching the GA here, because you know, SLI will equal any desktop GPU and market it like that (970M SLI = GTX 980). Hence making designing BIOS and vbios a lot easier since the Graphic Amplifier is out of the picture for this particular notebook and you dont need to add port and drivers and software for it.

But please, do work behind the scenes of getting support for the 980M/970M for Alienware 18. And please have Umar PM me the files that would maybe help me with 970M SLI now. Any help will do.

Thank you

 

Thank you for the productive feedback. In my AMA I was asked why we moved to BGA processors, did you get a chance to see my reply? If you can please take a look at it as it's more detailed but here's a summary: Desktop processors in mobile systems seem like a good idea on paper but in practice it's far from good. We had no choice but to move to BGA processors based on Intel's direction and we did so to preserve the quality we are known for. I know this is hard to understand right now but time will tell as more and more of those desktop CPU notebooks live (or maybe i should say die) in the market. I don't expect this answer to be popular because the specs on paper are pretty irresistible but when you look at who made the move to DT CPUs and who stayed on mobile it starts to help paint a clearer picture. We have been building gaming notebooks longer than anyone else and we've been down the DT CPU path before and we had the option to do it again this time around, we didn't for good reasons that time will reveal. If this is a deal breaker for you and/or anyone else considering a gaming notebook then we don't have an Alienware notebook to offer you in the near term and I'm very sorry to see you go but we plan to stay on mobile processors for now. We trying to work on getting socketed mobile processors back and the voice of this forum is very valuable in our efforts to do so but it is not happening in days or weeks, we are looking at years as this isn't a decision we own.

The graphics amplifier is anything but a cash grab. Rather than selling a new notebook every 2 or so years when your internal graphics is outdated we invented a solution so our customers could upgrade their notebook with Desktop level graphics (faster than mobile graphics) as often as you would like. A cash grab would have been to require the graphics cards to be purchased through us or to never have invented this solution in the first place as it delays our customers from refreshing as often as they do. We cannibalized our own sales because it's a great solution for our customers to get more gaming performance and lifespan out of their notebooks. Not everyone can afford to buy a brand new $2000+ gaming notebook every 1-2 years. Now you can buy it once use it for 1-2+ or so years and when it's no longer fast enough for you, buy an amplifier for $300. Add whatever graphics card you want from wherever you want to buy it from, say a $400 graphics card and for nearly 1/3 the price you get an major performance upgrade. Again this doesn't appeal to everyone but please don't confuse it for being a cash grab, it couldn't be any further from that.

 

I wasn't even asking for a progress report just three straight answers. Not going to happen. You collect a bunch of spurious data and then tell people it's very complicated. Well if that is your approach the so be it.

I know you (dell) are desperate to find a 'soft' solution and it's possible you may find it - hope you do, but the first 180w PSU that melts down by being overloaded is going to finish AW off altogether.

I have no problem with you getting it to just run without throttling, and no overclocking at all, without buying a bigger PSU - and even invalidating the warranty, but that's just my attitude.

Customers have already received bigger PSU's. The technicians know that getting all this power from a 180w PSU is not reasonable.

I'm interested in the statement that my CPU will automatically overclock when connected to the GA. Does the GA provide a +5v line back to the machine? Otherwise this will be another promise that does not materialise (of course I'll test this as best I can). EDIT: Forget that, if the on-board GPU is powered down then there will be plenty of spare capacity.

As to your analogy, how about crutches while we are waiting to get our leg fixed? at least we can get around. We paid, you failed, and now pontificate over a solution. very frustrating .

I have, and a simple yes/no answer, without details to my straightforward questions would not have compromised the company, except to further degrade their reputation if the answer was not something we want to hear.

 

I'm over the BGA processors, we don't have a choice, which is fine. Maybe Dual-PSU IF the 18 R2 is born to sweaten the deal like Clevo has and Mr. Fox's mod? Maxwell seems to pull a ton of wattage.

 

This is something I wanted to bring up, the display. Alienware-Frank, your the GM of both Alienware and the XPS Line if I recall. If the 18 was discontinued for the time being due to the quality panels not being available, then why isn't the XPS 18 discontinued? It still is available, boasting its IPS, True Life 18.4" touch panel. Wouldn't it be possible to slightly redesign the lid of the 18 to accommodate a touchpanel or omit the touch functionality, or would the motherboard need some changing as well? Or is the quality of XPS 18 not Alienware-quality? If the change is more complicated than what I have said, then that's understandable.
I'm not trying to corner you or anything or squeeze out as much information as possible, but I just find this outcome strange, that's all.

 

About desktop CPUs and mobile CPUs. Clevo have currently moved toward using desktop CPUs in their top end gaming notebooks. A move I think was to circumvent that Intel is moving toward BGA on mobile Broadwell, but not for desktops (because that would hurt Intel bigtime with major bad publisity from hardware fans). I like that idea because you get 9 series chipset which allow support for NVMe PCIe SSDs right now. That said, Hm97 will add support for it as well, which I hope Alienware will be the first one to support (time to finally get over the 600MB SATA limit ugh).

I get that desktop CPUs have a higher thermal output than binned mobile CPUs. Totally understandable from a notebook company that want to go down in thickness while keeping the notebook cool and powerful. But could it be an option to perhaps go for the lower end TDP desktop CPUs like the i7 xxxxT/S? Therefor going past Intels deathgrip of soldering the CPUs? Or would that complicate warranty, and manufacture cost and design for using desktop motherboards?

Just giving ideas and spitballing here. I understand both sides of the story here

 

Thank you for the feedback bnosam. You ask if we care, well hopefully the fact that we are here gives you some confidence that we do. Thank you for sharing your sales experience, it is clearly a recurring theme from several customers that have purchased. I'm collecting the experiences I've read on here and sharing them with my peers that run our sales organizations as this is clearly unacceptable. Thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through all that churn and again my apologies for having to deal with it in the first place.
Regarding the 180W PSU: if we made a mistake on that decision it will be corrected. I agree if Mr. Fox's data points to it being a problem it very likely is a problem as he's pretty reliable in his findings. On our end, we just need to make sure we are doing the right due diligence before we communicate next steps. The last thing we want to do is communicate a plan that ends up causing more issues than it resolves because it wasn't vetted properly. We just need a bit more time on this one but I guarantee we will not let this go on any longer than this week, before the end of the week everyone here will have an answer.

 

Thank you for your response Frank. I appreciate it. I will have my timer ready.

 

If it were as simple as solving for thermals and power then we would never have left DT CPUs in the first place when we first used them over a decade ago. The entire industry moved away from DT CPUs in notebooks because it's much more complicated than just solving TDP. There are several other problems of which I'm not an expert in that our engineers can better explain. The major issue we ran into the last time we did this was surrounding the lack of a reference design. The vast majority of notebooks you see out there are derivatives of reference designs produced by silicon manufacturers. These designs are rigorously tested before given to OEMs to create their versions of. The entire board layout including but not limited to thermals, power routing, length of routes, signal integrity, (I'm not an Electrical Engineer so don't quote me ) etc... are all validated to ensure a quality design. We then modify the designs from there and re-test everything to ensure we didn't violate the reference specifications and variances within it. Without a solid reference design to work from it's very hard to produce a high quality and reliable overall product. Please don't forget that these are complicated systems. We talk about CPUs, GPUs, Memory, and SSD/HDDs but everything interconnecting those components so that they work perfectly is about as equally complicated as designing these components alone. If companies like Intel, Alienware and Asus who are very experienced manufacturers aren't doing something like DT CPUs in notebooks then it's probably for good reason. Honestly I will tell you that I hope our competitors figured it out and their designs turn out good for them as I have some good friends at just about everyone of those companies and I want nothing but the best for them.

 

Very good and far more informative than anything so far! It's the 'due diligence' that I like, and I know the can of worms that involves!

Now I feel much better, a solid timeframe, not too much to expect.

 

Everyone knows a company is not going to react at the speed of light. Give them time to do their research and present a answer before we all go ballistic.

Obviously they are interested in hearing what we have to say, and seeking a solution or they would not be here at all.

I commend alienware and their effort to resolve this problem. Let's wait till they give a definitive answer before we light the torches. Who knows the solution may be even better than what we expect.

Sincerely
A humble first time buyer.[/QUOTE]

Thank you!

 

Good observation, actually the XPS 18 and AW 18 share the same LCD screen. The XPS 18 is one of my favorite products but will unfortunately be discontinued soon too because of the LCD supply . We are simply selling through the last remaining inventory before it gets pulled off the site. Not sure if you caught a post I made earlier on this thread but based on the feedback we are hearing from you all we are going to try and get more panels. Please keep in mind we only use Grade A panels which includes a bunch of quality requirements I'm not an expert in describing other than it requires 0 dead pixels. When panels don't meet our requirements they aren't thrown away by the supplier but rather sold elsewhere at a discount.

 

Well... I wasn't expecting that response. But yes, I did read your posts. I doubt anybody who has posted on this thread has missed a post of yours.
Things just don't get better, but at the same time, they do. The more we all know, the better it is to achieve a win-win for us all.

 

Let's just remind ourselves of the questions I wanted answered:

One and three are simple true/false answers. Number two could be 'unsure, a raft of complex issues need resolving'. No pre-empting the final outcome, or committing to a course of action.

Hope it goes well for us customers.

 

Please do try and assist m18x R2 / AW18 with properly supporting 970m/980m's upgrades.
I'm sure it's doable. Right now I have them somewhat working in full UEFI. But Legacy support is needed and there are still kinks to iron out.
While I understand that these were never configurable options at the time of purchase, it is the sole reason enthusiast's bought these brilliant machines. So we can refresh them and keep them running strong. No one likes being dropped like a hot potato from after sales support.
Having this kind of support from you guys goes along way in making our next machine purchase an easy decision (assuming we have socketed CPU and MXM gpu's).
Please show us some of your legendary goodwill here and also bring back upgradable monsters.
We'll have your back, so long as you have ours.

 

Thank you Mr. Azor. I appreciate your time in replying. A few things come to mind. Why go with say the 4710hq processor instead of the 4710mq processor? Also, why not go with the 8GB non-soldered Nvidia GTX980m. Suddenly we have a gaming laptop with a user-upgradeable CPU and GPU without having to venture into desktop territory like you guys wanted to avoid.

Unfortunately, the graphics amplifier still is what it is. It was a great idea that could have had plenty of potential. However, the soldered CPU is going to make adding a brand new desktop GPU 2 years down the road pretty much pointless...sure you can do it, but you're still stuck with a bottlenecked CPU at that time Lastly, as far as the "Not everyone can afford to buy a brand new $2000+ gaming notebook every 1-2 years" goes...what do you expect to happen when the GPU or CPU fails on the Alienware 17? Pay $1500 for a whole new motherboard right? Wait, you purchased the 4980hq and the 980m in your AW 17? Yeah, you may as well buy a new laptop for the same price which is also going to provide a new everything else. Trust me, I can see all the potential in the world here. The GA is a wonder accessory! But in this scenario given our current options, you may as well be putting a Ferrari F40 engine into a Murray riding lawnmower (securely fastened into a giant box that you'll want to carry around with you when you want that beautiful extra power). I'm totally on your side! I want the new 17 to be great! I want AW to be great! Things just aren't that way right now.


Also, you can +1 me for everything bnosam said about his first time buying experience. It has been an absolute disaster, with no end in sight! I'm on my 4th order now, with the others having to be canceled and placed all over again through no fault of mine and at the suggestion of the order modifications department. My current order has been sitting in pre-production since 1/20...it's one thing after another...the ssd is out of stock, we don't know why it's stuck in pre-production, the 4980 processor isn't even out yet and this is a pre-sale (yes, I was actually literally told by one rep that the 4980 hadn't be released by Intel and that was the cause of the delay in my order). I haven't canceled my order yet, but I also cannot even come up with one reason why I've continued to put up with the B.S. that sales and order support have thrown at me. LOL, I've even been promised that same "compensation" that bonsam was offered after his order shipped. They say after the order ships, someone will contact you to offer compensation for your troubles. It's very obvious that they won't make that call...otherwise, they would have just taken care of the compensation for the trouble up front rather than waiting until after the order ships. Yeah, the sales and order support experience makes me want to stomp my phone into the ground...those are hours and hours of my life that aren't coming back, and I'm no where closer to actually having a laptop built and shipped to me.

 

Something needs to be done about the order system, it's extremely disorganized and I think it's more a result of Dell than Alienware. The reps make up any information that sounds good, they take no ownership over issues, it's frustrating. But we will see how this works out. I'm gonna send you a PM staark, I have a few questions for you.

 

To AW Frank!

Firstly, thank you! Thank you Alienware for making these supreme machines.
Second, the main reason I went from Desktop to Laptop Gaming, are the support from Dell/AW. If there is a problem, technicians comes the buisness day after. How great isn't that? (instead of 2-4 weeks wait time).

I'd like to challenge AW to make a unboxing video, say on Youtube. To this day, I've yet to see a good enough unboxing of the New Alienware 17 R2.
Now why do I want it? Cause I desperately awaiting my new machine! (3 weeks now, cry)

Again, ty!

 

Hello Mr. Azor, and thank you and Mr. Khan for your continued engagement here. It is greatly appreciated. We miss Brother Luis Porras, but I think the heavy criticism and anger expressed by many members of this community as of late may have sent him running for cover. If you are able to bring back the 18 with 980M SLI and 4940MX CPU you are probably going to see a lot of happy Alienware-lovers.

I did not receive any support for GTX 980M. I did communicate with a certain individual that suggested a possibility of why it doesn't work right, a gentleman that I appreciate very much, but he was not able to provide any support for this because it would involve the system BIOS needing revisions. My M18xR2 had the same problems as the Alienware 18 that Cloudfire referred to in his post. I made no attempt to use the GTX 980M cards in the Alienware 18 since it was already proven futile.

The only advantage I had over Cloudfire is my M18xR2 has an unlocked BIOS with access to menus with important settings that are blocked in the Alienware 18 BIOS. Unfortunately, we cannot unlock those menus because of Secure Flash that was implemented on the Alienware 18. Therefore, I was able to partially resolve a few issues on the M18xR2, but it was still riddled with most of the same obstacles trying to use 980M SLI. The BIOS on the 18 and M18xR2 appears to need some work in order to make it fully compatible with Maxwell. Both machines refuse to POST with Legacy unless Optimus is enabled (meaning no SLI) so the video passes through the CPU's IGFX. There is no way to enable SG mode (Optimus) on the 18. Only pure UEFI/GOP boot will function and the GPUs throttle horribly. The same GPUs do not throttle even a little bit in the machine I have them in now. So, something with the sBIOS, vBIOS or both are problematic.

I do not know what NVIDIA changed, but whatever it was, it doesn't play nice. Perhaps with the focus on BGA GPUs for the new products there was insufficient influence with NVIDIA to ensure that their Maxwell MXM video cards would work perfectly in an Alienware laptop as they always have in the past.

I finally gave up the effort and purchased the Clevo P570WM (Panther 5) noted in my signature so I could enjoy the GTX 980M SLI. I took the GTX 780M SLI out of my M18xR1 and put it back in the M18xR2 where it was before I spent $1500 on a pair of GTX 980M that I could not use in any of my three Alienware 18" beasts. (The M18xR1 will not even POST with a Maxwell GPU installed.)

 

My advice for purchasing is to use AW support line. Once you get a tech tell him that you want to buy. They can process an order directly and know what you are asking about. You also get a name/email to follow up with if there are problems. Chat and the sales lines are simply not educated in the requirements of an AW customer.

I have mine looking at why I'm stuck in 'pre' for 3 weeks now and only a week until the deadline . Seems there is some sort of supply issue with so many people experiencing ordering issues. Mine was also cancelled on day-one due to them withdrawing the top CPU hours after release in the UK.

 

Same here. Awaiting the new AW17r2, but weeks are going, and supposed to get it next week. I have my doubts(edit: just been told that the factory starts working on it this week)
Same speccs as you, but without the touchpanel. I'm thinking about cancel it, and reorder with touch. Is true life worth it? (touch I rly dont care about).

Also! If you want to order a AW today, the dates to shipping is less than 2 weeks. A little optimistic, or ?

 

I purchased the 'touch' purely from my experiences with matte panels. This one I have ATM is not truelife so reflections are quite annoying some times. But, and it's a biggie for me, low-light gaming is so much better with strong contrast, it kinda 'pops'. I have seen a lot of people upgrade and all have been impressed. Part of the improvement may be in that it is 120hz so it appears smoother, even in games that don't exceed 60fps.

I was disappointed that the 120hz was dropped as I really like 3D gaming. Users with truelife panels (AW 17 R1) have all said that reflections are not a problem so I intend to do a side-by-side comparison for posting. It will of course be subjective but adds to the available data .

I can even go HDMI-in on my 120hz R4 from the new machine for interest. Don't have a clue how that will look or what features it will support but I'll find out.

 

I'll look forward to that, mate - I'm normally a matte guy, but it will be interesting to see how much glare there is on the glossy panel.

 

I'm still around the forum brother Fox.
I've been trying to get most of your questions to management and the L3's so we can get all of them sorted out. I also knew that Frank's AMA was coming so I waited for that to let everyone ask what they needed about the marketing part and technical specifications about the new machines. I'm still responding on the sub-forums to all technical issues that the community has and will certainly keep sending all technical and marketing concerns to the right channel as they appear.

Thanks for the support that you provide to this community, it's highly appreciated!

 

This is absolutely a blessing to have the reps gete and pray they actually make things happen for us 18/18x r1/2 owners.

On the same note I hate brother fox is slowly moving to another brand and fear total abandonment of Alienware eventually.

So please Frank, Porras all my alienware engineers bring the love back for us enthusiast.

I'm done crying, thanks for listening.

 

Social media, engineering and marketing are all here listening to your concerns. We will surely try our best to review all of them and fix anything that needs to be fixed.

Thanks for your continued support to our brand and for giving us a chance to review what we've done.

 

A lot of people will be grateful for 9 series support for the Alienware 18/M18x R2.
We get that officially you don`t support 970M/980M since you dont sell the machine with the cards, but at the same time, everyone here knows the risk involved by replacing the stock graphic cards with new ones you upgraded yourself. That the warranty for the new graphic cards goes away.
I can`t see why support for these cards (software wise) would potentially harm any other components that are covered by the warranty.

I can only see positive things about it. That Alienware care about their customers and are willing to support us. It will build reputation as a true gamer brand if you ask me

 

Maybe they could think about comping him a new R2? He's using a borrowed one for his testing

 

I think Mr. Fox owns his r1 and r2 and well as a 2013 18....

 

No, he means the 17 R2. I don't need one or want one, although I am having fun testing a few things with borrowed machine. I have so many laptops that I would not know what to do with it at this point. Nor do I need to be compensated to continue being a brand advocate. I love the M18xR1, M18xR2, Alienware 18. The 18 could have been better than it was, had it not been impaired by limitations with the BIOS access and power handling threshold being too low. Even so, it's still an amazing machine. I am an SLI/CrossFire fanboy and won't settle for less than dual GPU. I can continue to be a brand advocate even if I am not an advocate of the current product offerings.

 

I am looking forward to hearing the results of the outcome of the 180 psu. Thank you Frank for chatting with us. This is a very very passionate community.

I have as of last week purchased a new Alienware 15 and plan to buy the amplifier in the next year or so. Now its just the slow painful waiting game to see the dell website go from "in production" to "shipped". Its killing me! i dont have a laptop i can use right now since my last alienware broke.

 

You could be one of us A17 R2's that would be happy just to see our order moved to "in production".

 

If Frank is reading this, I'll test one. Of course, I would not expect to keep it.

I was recently the victim of a burglary and my AW 14 was stolen - along with my Dell U3011 30" Ultrasharp monitor

I'd be happy to trial, comment and review a new machine, wether it be 15 or 17, and report back.

 

That's a me too! only a few days till deadline

 

Oh the good ole days of going through the phases and worrying about delivery...

 

Hey all, new here found my way from the AMA event. Loads of good information here thanks to everyone. Glad to see the PSU issues are being sorted out / being looked at by Dell (Thanks Entire Dell team). Also glad to see I am not alone with the ordering fiasco. Mine is still in pre-production as well for 3 weeks now, and would love to see it move into production since I am a week from expected delivery.
To share my order experience:
My purchase experience so far, being my first Alienware purchase, has been pretty aggravating to say the least. I went through chat several times and got so many different answers about the questions I was asking ( m2's pcie or sata, how many m2 slots, how many 2.5" slots, ssd's mlc or tlc) that I started to look for the answers myself. I found a lot of that on here and to the manuals that were linked in another post. (Huge thanks for these). So finally I decided to order my 17 r2 (498hq, 980m, 16 gb, 1 tb, touch panel) around the 12th. I got an estimated delivery date of 2/26. A few days later I look at my order and is in pre-production. I go through and double check what I purchased and built a new one on the Alienware site. When I added it to the cart (same exact components) I got an estimated ship date of 2/6. So I call into the support line and talk to the rep, after an hour of trying to explain the components are exactly the same and asking why my new order would ship two weeks earlier than the first one placed a week ago was really confusing for the rep. She kept telling me to ignore the date and to not look at it and I would get the laptop. The rep said there was nothing they could do to change it and they would pass me to the order modification team and see if there was a component I could change to get it faster ... So after 45 minutes on hold, a rep answers and I explain to him what was going on. He was unsure why the new order would be prioritized over the old and did not understand what was going on with delivery dates. He advised me to cancel the original order and place a new order so I would get it faster. So with him on the phone I did just this and he confirmed the order and proceeded to cancel my first order. A week later still in pre-production so I call in and ask why, answer was shortage on processors. The rep was trying to advise me to cancel my order and order a different laptop... So they updated my shipping options and told me this week it would move to production and would still be delivered on the expected delivery date, now 2/11. So going to be watching this week to see what happens, but over all pretty frustrating to say the least. I did call in one other time to try and talk to someone about the PSU issue but I decided I would deal with it if / when I get the laptop instead of confusing anyone anymore and risk getting my order pushed out more.

If it was not for the warranty (I travel a lot) and will be using this for business and pleasure (coding, 3d modelling / design rendering, gaming), and the reputation on the Alienware build quality, I would have been done a long time ago. As with all the concerns brought up in the AMA I hope these concerns / experiences are brought up, and changes are made to make the next launch go a little better for everyone. Jury is out if I will get mine on time, as an IT professional, if any of my customers went through anything like this they would go elsewhere without a doubt.
Would be interesting to see who all is waiting, what they ordered, and when there Delivery Date is estimated. Not to mention when they actually receive it.

 

@Alienware-Frank,

Does this apply to Alienware as well? Looks like a definite "yes" for the XPS lineup. If you "can't" comment on it, I understand. But it would be nice to know if the old Haswell processors are going to finally be replaced, considering they are quite old.