*Dell-Alienware & AW Legacy Replacement Systems-Warranty Repair Issues*

was hanging on the line with some random rep regarding their warranty extension for 4 years - came up to $490.00+tax. (Mine is about to get exp. , 11/27 I believe)

Also, includes $75.00 Gift coupon from Dell.

 

"no big upgrades " ??
you know , to have a boost on CPU, SCREEN (RGB) and nVidia's 285 ... I think its "golden" !

Also, I wouldn't do it at this time , (switch to ATI cards) ... not at this very moment at least. Well, you have a load of ppl with 5870s at their disposal and no one really knows how the 285s operate compare to ATI. However , if you would have an issue with them you can call'em at any time and ask for ATI cards, as long as you remain under their warranty.

Don't forget that one of the main reasons for them to come up with R2 was the whole throttling, clock modulation issue, latency and a number of some other factors...Hopefully nVidia chip based configs was one of them that has been fixed.

 

Point taken Digital. What I meant by 'upgrade' was in line with the luck some of the others have had- having HDD's bumped to SSD's, their RAM doubled, etc.

I by no means want to imply that this is not a step up. Apologies if it was taken that way. I really am just happy that I'll be getting a hopefully working system and am curious about the 285's.

 

$490 is kind of a steep. I will call later and ask what they can offer me for extra 2 yrs.

Did your order ship yet?

 

@ anodize - thats a negative
((

i think it got postponed to the 4th ... that's according to that rep at least.
But I think I had come across with some other ppl who's EST was the 4th.
Please lemme know how much your warranty deal would run for ... I might just switch to 2years too ... $500+ ... damn, that's a lot!

 

hey np )))
I was just "huh ?!? No big upgrades?? What a spoiled brat !!!" )))))) jk

Happy for you man !

 

congrats, you have a really nice setup there.

 

@anodize-You got it. Just got another 4gb card and stuck it in there.

 

Oles Praetorian77,

Q9000 to an 840QM is a massive upgrade. Congrats cheifs!!!
Most would have only got the 740QM for the Q9000.

Cheers.

 

@Praetorian

The only thing I would say is that if we are talking like for like, you should be holding out for a 940xm - afterall, it SHOULD be extreme cpu for extreme cpu and NOT the 840qm although a good cpu, it AINT an extreme like you had before is it! - I would be on the phone if it were me....

EDIT: or did you and your qx9300 after market????

 

Stevie hows things. Sold the notebook?

Yeh Praetorian had the Q9000 with initial purchase where the QX9300 was an after market purchase. So he did really well to get the 840QM for the Q9000. Massive super CPU upgrade there oles. Thats like $500 dollar upgrade even from a 740QM let alone from the Q9000 eheheeheh oles

Cheers.

 

Hey Reborn,

Just the other day, I arranged with Dell to pick up the two systems I have here at home and return them for a full refund.....enough was enough dude, I couldnt take it any more, it was stressing me out far too much when I shoulda been enjoying the damn thing!

Mind, you, I found a super helpful rep (from posts on NBR) and have since placed a brand new order, same setup but the only difference being I now have an 840qm cpu.....ended up having to put some money to what I will get back for my original but I felt it was worth doing....couldnt stretch to a 940xm as much as I would have loved to

Did consider buying with a 520 cpu and then getting a 940xm ES from somewhere like Shirley Fu or off ebay but I thought about my 2 year warranty - voided by messing with the cpu or so I been told.

Anyways, as I am relatively new to high end notebooks and all the tricks and tweaks you guys do, I think I will ease myself into it gradually, I know if I had an extreme, Id probably blow it up with noob efforts to oc it lol - need to learn more first and then maybe look at an upgraded cpu.

But, for the moment, 840qm will more than suffice, I thought it would be worth a bit more cash thrown at it as basically, same clocks as the old 920xm but without the ability to oc it. Good for me to lean with eh?

And if it dont work out, I can always look to sell the new system on and should still be able to turn a profit to throw at something else.

Cheers !

 

Hiya Stevie,

Ah cool cool. Glad things are starting to move forward for you chiefs. Yeh the 840QM should be an excellent CPU. I've been looking at it myself. It has only a a slightly lower clockrate and it has the same amount of Cache. It should be quite good and comparable to the 920/940XM except without the ability to OC unless you use Setfsb of course. I've been looking at the 940XM as well from shirley and others on ebay. A bit too expensive for me still though atm. I will wait most likely till Sandy Bridge comes out and the prices drop some more before considering the 940XM again.

Good Luck with your new order and hope you will be enjoying it soon enough.
Hope to be chatting and comparing games/drivers/specs again with your new beast eheheheh. The way it should be with our super machines lol. eeheeheh
benching, gaming competition and all that other good stuff!!! ehehehehehe oles

Cheers.

 

I called during the day, while I was at work. I don't think it matters, I know you can haggle pretty good. My warranty does not include the Accidental warranty, but that's OK. Remember, you can get a good deal on your M11X too, just read the tread;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/456885-aw-dell-ordering-advice-how-save.html

 

It did not seem to help me, I told them I had two systems, it did not matter. I used the "Hinge" issue to lower my M11X price another $39.00

 

Again, @Stevie, QX9300 was added aftermarket.

Also, thanks to everyone for pointing out the CPU actually got bumped- I didn't realize that for two reasons, the first being I bought the original during an 'as advertised' sale, so had no idea how much the Q9000 was worth when I did that, and when I went to the configurator a few days ago to check the GPU's, the 840 isn't an option any more, which I found weird.

So now I'm even happier, and would like to rescind my ignorantly typed 'no big upgrades' comment. Yay. That being said, it is still ridiculous trying to find an ESD on this thing, tried calling their automated line and for the last 2 days my order has apparently been 'processing' whereas on the website it says 'production'. So....I think I'm just going to go with the 'wait until it shows up at my door' routine.

PS- @ flynnaz- thanks for the info sir.

 

My systems have stayed in production for a few days FWIW, shipped seems to be the longest wait but then im in the UK, maybe it takes longer to get here

 

You need to call your rep to get your ESD. That's what I did since my order status showed up as Information Temporarily Unavailable.

Btw, did you get them to give you a personalized name plate?

 

On that note, anyone know how to get a name plate for UK customers - it seems it aint an option for us for some oddity.....

 

Have you contact your local Dell? Custom engraving seems to be available in US only atm. May be they can make an exception for you and send one from US?

 

I will give it a try, will contact my rep to see what he can do...

 

bump for some updates !!

Anyone whos in "production" has moved to the next stage ?
I've been there since the 27th of Sep.

 

nope....still the same. there should be an update sometime early next week

 

"In Production" since 28th of September. And I don't think they customized the nameplate, but then again, they screwed that up on my first one, so I've gotten so used to not even noticing it I don't really care.

 

Mine started 9/28 as well. I was told it'd ship on 10/4 which is tomorrow.

 

Guys, all it takes to switch that customized nameplate is one screwdriver and about 3-4 minutes of your time .. ))

 

+ The whole getting your rep to send one to you and shipping wait.

 

man, that is really quick!

i hope mines ships sometime this week.

 

just got off the line , was talking to some slacker .... well , so what he told me was : " Sir, it's gonna take another 5 days before you will get it, but this is rather the only information that I can provide you with. You may try our technical support for further details"

Asked for a transfer to tech ppl. - call was dropped.

Welcome Monday !
))

 

I have a customer service horror story of my own:

Not long ago I called AW support about a half hour to their closing time, so that I could hear the fabled "Expected wait time is less than one minute." Call goes through, but the guy on the other end, I swear to God, was doing the old drive thru breaking up voice trick. I couldn't make out a word he was saying, so I said I was calling back right away to see if my phone connection was the problem. Call back, "Expected wait time is 20 minutes or greater." Wat. Kept calling every five minutes or so (I hate being on hold, as you can tell). Fifteen minutes go by and I get through. Until I get the automated message saying customer service is closed.

Anyway, still no word from Alienware, or Dell, or anybody. My replacement has been "In Production" for three weeks, and I'll bet anything the next time I call, I get told "the average replacement takes five weeks" to cover their back ends on this ridiculous wait time.

 

^ Ouch !!

I really don't know what the deal is. But !! The tech support ppl are the ones we all need to speak with when trying to get more details about the order processing and the overall stages of production. Seems that they have a bit more access and knowledge regarding our re-placements.

Will drop an email to my tech rep. tdy.

 

Indeed.

So I called and waited about 20 awkward silent minutes with the rep while he was reading the notes on my case.. yeesh. He informed me that he has escalated the case and I will be receiving a call for sure tomorrow. This should be interesting.

 

Did they not escalate your case already?

 

Apparently not enough, lmao. SO MUCH ESCALATION!

Well, the first time it was "expedited". So now I guess it's "escalated expedition"? Or maybe "expedited escalation." My brain hurts..

 

lmao!! )))

I feel that in about 3-5 days they will have a bunch of some "escalated dudes" !

 

alright, self-bump here...

Just talked to some "tech" ppl @ Dell. Apparently, 11-days is their normal and regular production span for these systems.

 

Any changes for you guys?
Still in production here. No idea where my rep got 10/4 from.

 

Ditto. Though if Digital is right, then 11 days from 9/28 is next Wednesday- though of course, I'm not sure if you count Saturdays, since it's been 3 years since I was in the States and I was shocked my first week back when I realized that both post and FedEx run on Saturdays...which was frakkin' AWESOME. So it could be end of the week-ish if they're fast, but I would lean more towards next week.

 

You will receive on weekdays only no Holidays either. They do NBD if you get your rep to throw that in, not to hard to do..

 

Oh, that's nice. It's listed on my order as NBD, so I'm hoping that is the case, just would love to get an EDD as I'm not actually home when the FedEx guy normally comes and with NBD by the time their automated system tells me about them shipping it back to me it's usually about 4 hours after the box has already shown up (at least that was the case with the depot repair). Oh well- good things come to he who waits, right?

 

Ding !!!

My first up-date: "Estimated Delivery Date: 10/6/2010 (updated)"

Well, not much, but my previous one was: "Information is unavailable"



edit: Next Business Day here too

 

I think they have a bit more info then their automated sys and web order tracking.

When my tech was sending me a list of specs , it also indicated ETA: 10/01/2010 while I couldn't see that date anywhere besides his email.



Also, how is the whole mail-back-your-old-R1/R2 is going to work ? Are we expected to ship them out in the same boxes with all the original content ? (my damn original manual was bitten by my dog and mouse-pad nailed by my cat...))

 

Well, my rep is out until Thursday, so it's in the dark for me until then.

And from what I understand, we keep everything except for the machine itself and the power cord+ brick. Those we ship back. But the mouse pad, hat, and all the rest are extra goodies for us.

 

looks like several of us are expecting our m17x within the next week or so.

i got a call from from today for an update, but nothing really new or different from the online status page. i asked when it will ship, they just said sometime between next monday and the following friday. the good news is its next day delivery.

 

Maybe they are doing batch shipping now. Or, they think you are all the same person and just send blanket responses to your questions.

But seriously, I hope you all get yours soon. Still loving mine. A few quirks-but I'm sure I have caused them in some way. Good luck to you all.

 

Ding-Ding !!! ))

Shipped Date: 10/4/2010
Estimated Delivery Date: 10/6/2010 (updated)
Carrier: FEDEX EXPRESS


well fellas , here we go)

edit: Oohh.... (Fedex: Estimated delivery Oct 5, 2010 by 3:00 PM) Niiice !!!
I guess I'll have some un-packing to do later on this evening

 

congrats! im excited for you

 

^ Thanks

Will keep u guys posted.

Up-date:

Oct 5, 2010 10:24 AM - Delivered - BROOKLYN, NY


))))) So happy !
Thank you guys for all your input here. Truly hope you will get yours in no time !!

 

Gratz sir! Enjoy it and let us know how pretty and shiny and awesome it is.

 

So, I've read about the last 100 pages or so of this thread and figured I would now add my name to the list, lol

I bought my system in Nov. 2009 and had not had any problems with it until really, the past month and a half. I began to notice frequent FPS issues as well as lag which then blossomed into random freezes during game play which could only be corrected via a hard shut down. This all culminated into a BSOD followed by an automatic restart yesterday morning. The lappy is still usable but the problems persist. On my own, I had tried updating/rolling back drivers etc but nothing helped.

I put a call into Dell yesterday and after about an hour on the phone, the rep (Julio) said he would be sending out a Tech to replace the motherboard and both video cards. I was kind of suprised and mildly impressed that they were willing to send someone out so quickly without hours and hours of over the phone troubleshooting.

The parts were shipped yesterday and I saw that they were at FedEx this morning for pick-up by the Tech (John), who just now called me and said he would be here by 4pm to do the work.

Hopefully, this will work and I'll be one of the lucky ones! And, for what it's worth.... I use the laptop for both work and play (primarily World of Warcraft).

FYI, if anyone can tell me how to add a signature, I can add my system specs.... looked at te control panel and didn't see any options...