My M15x has arrived...

....and I'm happy to say that after a casual inspection the build quality is flawless! The packaging was amazing and there were zero blemishes, cracks, scrapes, dead pixels, screen wobble, screen creaking, light bleeding, keyboard flex or other undesireable features.

In fact the only problem I have so far is that I don't appear to have any benchmarking results. Where is this usually stored? There was no file on my desktop and after a brief flick through the manual I couldn't see anything there either.

Oh, DHL were perfect...Alienware shipped on Friday evening and my lappy arrived this morning. Amazing service. It came from a depot in Ireland I believe, and it was here in Canterbury soon after - good service I would say.

I'm currently installing World of Warcraft and I'll post an update at some point tomorrow morning after playing with this little beastie a bit. If there is enough demand then I can do a full review with high quality pics but there have been so many of those posts I doubt I'd be contributing much.


Just wanted to share with you guys!

 

Hi Raps. Glad to hear you are happy.
Which Bios did your laptop came with?
If you have some time, do some stress tests on the CPU and GPU, a 3DMark06 Benchmarking and follow CPU and GPU temps (and fan speeds) while using the laptop (gaming, casual use, etc...).

Hope your experience carry on being positive.

 

The benchmark documents are located (along with being on the desktop -- well, usually, but not in your case you say) in the C:\Windows\system32\Alienware folder

 

lol i didnt know our m15x came with a bench mark result

where is this result stored? because i cant find any alienware folders on c:\windows\system32

 

Congratulations! I'm glad the the system is working well for you. Please let us know what the benchmarks are.

 

how do i bench mark my laptop and what software do i use?

btw i bought this laptop for my 8 year old daughter but it's too heavy for her to cart around so i am going to keep it and buy her an Apple MacBook Air instead.

 

Got your 8 year old daughter an alienware?! Can I be your son?

 

me wonders why you got this for an 8 year old and not a toughbook.. but I guess daddy wanted it for him self..

and a macbook air for your 8 year old, what will he/she use it for?

 

When I was 8, I could barely manage Spectrum...
I guess this is technology evolving... But... a M15x to a 8 year old kid? That's funny...

 

Her friend got one so i bought her one but it's too heavy for her to carry on her back pack so my wife wants me to buy her a new laptop instead.

We looked around for the thinnest and fastest laptop with no BSOD and all that BS microcrap has - we came up with an Apple Macbook Air.

Showed our daughter the MacBook Air at JB Hifi in Osborne Park and she loved it. The multimedia will work well with her iPod Touch.

I didnt know Apple make such a nice laptop with really top quality multimedia stuff I think we are all gonna switch to Apple instead real soon.

Gonna get her this laptop tomorrow that will also mean i would get to keep the laptop if my wife hasn't already made a claim to it

 

Probably word processing, some excel, mainly business work. And photoshop on the side .

 

he/she? daughter is female so you would be fair to cal her SHE lol

she will use it for her school work and what ever she wants.


Yes i did wanted AW laptop but hey it all worked out well in the end. I get to play games and she gets her Apple

 

so are you keeping it then tyronne? it was really unfortunate what that reseller did

 

Yeah the Austin Computers did the wrong thing by us by putting our new laptop on display counter where their customers could play with it.

We are keeping it but it will be the last time we buy anything from that computer store.

 

I remember your original post about that m15x. I'm still a little unclear on how seriously your 8 year old girl needs a laptop at all, but that's not really any of my business. Hope everything works out with both computers. And to the OP, congratulations on a working machine. Hope you continue to enjoy it.

 

If you don't see a problem... then I can only advise... not to go looking for them. Oh, and stay away from this forum otherwise you will prob be influenced into seeing.
As Lethal Lottery said... This is not really about luck, I'm afraid. But if you are lucky not to bother, do not bother.

 

lol so true about staying away. I never really took series notice of the wobble rag doll like screen lid when i am closing it until i saw this forum.

I also didnt really think much of the having to press the ON/OFF button 6 to 8 times before it reponse to my finger until i visited this board.

Oh and not to mention when playing games the cut scene would stutter like hell, the webcam didnt work, and it gest worse and worse too many items gone wrong or not working to be listed in this small post.

To make matters worse my daughter couldn't even lift the freaking laptop.

I think visiting this board made me into "NOT a SUCKER" anymore.

The shop owner new i work offshore on oil rig and he thinks i am loaded with gold and he has been over charging me for so often.

THank god this board exist from now on I am not going to spend blindly.

 

If you reinstalled your OS, it won't be there.

If you have the base install from the factory (not respawned), go to

C:\Windows\System32\Alienware\My PC Information.XML

 

ahh i have reinstalled the os from respawn because the stupid punk shop owner that sold us alienware had his employees playing on our new laptop.

they installed all sorts of crappy games on it which i couldnt play anyway because they didnt leave or give us the game cd./dvd after we picked up our laptop.

I got so made felt like our laptop got raped and invaded by those punks so i reformatted the pc and reinstalled from respawn dvd.

Because of this from what you are saying the result wouldnt be there now

 

yeah, unfortunately though I believe you can download a 3dmark demo with which you can run the tests again

btw have you tried filing any complaints about the business to any consumer protection services there in australia?

 

just go to

http://files.filefront.com/3dMark06+v110+Oct07+Updated+Installer/;9147716;/fileinfo.html

filefront is pretty fast for me so it should probably not take longer than an hour to get 3dmark06

 

Congratulations Rapscallion on getting a perfect machine. fingers crossed it stays that way.

Hi tyronne and welcome back.
i remember the long thread about all your problems.
i hope you contacted alienware to complain about this shop as we all said you should do.
right, down to buisiness.....
as long as the name plate on the bottom of the m15x is in your daughters name or yours then alienware should have a copy of the document "my alienware" that should have been on your desktop. as it looks like it was deleted by the shop and youve now reformated i think the only way to get a copy of this is to ring AW up and ask them to send it to you by email. in the document it has all your details ie: account number (diferent from the one you already have) computer specification and all the benchmark tests. did you get the black folder with the back up discs. in there should be a white card,this will also have your account number on it. with this you can get into my hive for help and support and new downloads.

when you say you are buying your daughter a mac, dont forget most schools use window based operating systems so what she learns at home on her mac will be slightly different when she uses a computer at school and this might be a little confusing for an 8 year old.

now go enjoy your new expensive toy.

 

Good thing you didn't get an m1730.

But seriously, why would you get a MacBook Air? You do know that it overheats right? If you want a lightweight notebook for your daughter, get like an EEEPC or something, God forbid you buy an Air. It's even worse than the m15x for cooling because it's way too small.

 

OK guys turns out I was being a complete dipstick, there was a benchmark file left on my desktop afterall! It got a score of 10,272.00 3dMarks (Doom 3 @ 122 fps) - this was run with 1GB of RAM but I have since installed 4GB Crucial RAM.

I've now installed WoW (with TBC expansion) and fully patched it - that took forever ! - and I'm about to install Crysis. I'll try and get my mits on a copy of 3DMark and run some tests.

As for the problems people have reported ... I have actively looked for these in my laptop and come up with the following:

Pros

1. No screen creaking
2. Minimal screen wobble (no more than any laptop I've had)
3. Power button very responsive
4. Touch controls responsive (just need to press for a second, like it says in the manual)
5. No light blending from the keys
6. Silent - fans only turn on when performing serious hard drive interrogation
7. Battery life is amazing with smart bay battery + stealth mode
8. Flawless chasis - no cracks or blemishes
9. Perfect screen - no dead pixels (yet)
10. Keyboard very response (however see point 4 below)

Cons
1. The volume slider responds after a second of touching, just like the other controls. Sliding your finger does indeed reduce the volume however it takes several full slides to get the volume to 0 (i.e. the bar isn't long enough or the volume doesn't reduce rapidly enough)
2. After leaning on the keyboard a little bit there appears to be a very small about of flex. If I didn't purposeful push into the keyboard then I doubt I would ever have noticed it
3. AlienFX suite seems to take a ridiculous amount of time to load...around 20 or 30 seconds (yes I know I'm impatient)
4. OK not sure if this is an issue or not. Last night I was using Live Messenger and I type pretty fast. Every now and then there will be a pause in the text coming up on the screen, then several words will appear at once. Is this some sort of keyboard buffer lag?
5. The area under my right hand does indeed get warm
6. What the hell is up with there being no physical eject button on the DVD drive?
7. Also what were they thinking putting the AC port on the same side as the DVD drive? If I have the AC plugged in behind me or under the desk the drive cannot eject far because the power cable is in the freaking way


If I can think of anything else then I'll post a bit later...

 

Cons...
1. I have always hated that volume slider and it drives me crazy AW didn't put some type of key combination to lower or raise volume. I had to add my own.
2. For me keyboard only has flex near the arrow keys
4. Not sure about that, Its kinda wierd never had that happen to me.
5. Mine too but that just the parts getting hot. doesn't do it all the time.
6. This also pisseds me off but I think AW was going for a smooth look that would explain the touchpad.
7. Agree with you again but I have more problems with it being so close the the NIC

 

I'm very curious about the screen creaking stuff. Mine creaks like crazy. If theres been a revision I want in on it.

 

Arghhhh when will I ever get that !!!!

 

4. OK not sure if this is an issue or not. Last night I was using Live Messenger and I type pretty fast. Every now and then there will be a pause in the text coming up on the screen, then several words will appear at once. Is this some sort of keyboard buffer lag?

This isn't just with the M15x. I type very fast, and the same thing occurs on my Presario, and back when I was still using a desktop. It just seems to be some sort of lag MSN has.

 

yer i get that in MSN as well its some MSN lag with vista... it will be patched..

as long as your keyboard seems to be working fine typing in say notepad... then its not hardware.

 

yeah -- there is a keyboard lag issue with the m15x but that isn't it.