Question about m15x.

Well, this is my first post here, but I frequently come here to look for helpful information. From what I have been able to tell over the past year this is a very helpful forum.

Now on to my question. I have an m15x and have already sent it in once for hinge repair on the left side. Now both of my hinges are destroyed and I'm on the verge of having a rare, two-piece laptop. My laptop is now out of warranty and, while it would be nice to think that since it's an obvious design flaw and should be fixed regardless of warranty status, I am not optimistic. I've tried sending emails to Alienware seeking help, but since they have restructured the customer service dealing with Alienware devices I haven't been able to make contact with anyone yet. Dell is impossible to get in contact with if you don't have a service tag or a warranty and paying just to talk to someone seems like a pretty ridiculous option for those of us with problems like this that are out of our control.

In the meantime, I've been thinking of alternatives. I want to find out if anyone here can, or knows someone who can make an aluminum lid to replace the stock one. Even if it means a less appealing or completely absent AW head. I thought about buying a lid from ebay and doing the epoxy trick, but if I'm going to be paying for something that I shouldn't have to be, I want to do it right the first time.

 

I have been thinking about making a carbon fiber one off of a mold. Aluminum would be a little harder to make since you would have to bend it and stuff.
A machine shop with a cnc machine and some major CAD work would be your best bet.

 

A machine shop is going to be my next option. I just figured I would ask on here first since it was a fairly major problem and affected so many people. I thought someone might have gotten ambitious and already found a person that can make quality lids.

 

why not replace all the plastic if you can get it to work, that would be cool.

 

I've never seen pics of a broken a51 m15x is it the part of hinge attached to the body of the laptop or the screen that always breaks?

 

It's not actually the hinge that breaks. The breaking occurs because the plastic mold that the hinge screws get screwed into are part of the lid itself.

 

It is the area were the hinge screws into on the lid that breaks/explodes. If you look at a picture of one, they are very very poorly designed, stupid engineers, there should be a flat metal hoop that goes all around the screen in the lid that screws into the hinge.

 

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The gold part in this picture should be surrounded by plastic.

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So there ya go, that's what it looks like.

 

yep that is a explosion

 

AW should stand by their defects in my opinion. People who have this particular problems, should get a petetion going. I have read where many consumer with this m15x has that hinge problem. I bet that if you get a petition going on, it might lead somewhere.

Note: When i first bought my Vaio VGN-FZ260E back in Oct. 27 2007 and everything went fine, till a year an half after purchase the Nvidia 8400m GT went bad. And the warranty expired already. So what people did, who had the sony laptop with the 8400m gt chipset , petition or did something that cause an impact to let Sony know that the chip is defective. In the end, Sony recognize that it is a defect(due to everyone complaining) and did the repair for free. On top of that, Sony gave 3 additional years of warranty on the Nvidia 8400m gt chipset.

 

I agree Rengsey, one problem was that regardless of a known problem people kept on buying them which does not give the manufacturer a good reason to stop and fix their problems

 

Unfortunately I was a victim of advertisement and pre-release reviews, and I bought it when it first came out.