The "Why you shouldn't buy the M15x" thread [OUTDATED] [FIRST GEN MODEL]

Why?
I don't ... nothing pretty much is happening with me. I'm waiting to have a new M15x back. I'm unlucky I have to be for such a long time without a laptop, but if it comes back working fine, I can't complain.

Reading through people's posts in the past week I've just realized that there are still quite a handful of issues arising. So I think people should be informed about that and use whatever information they can to back up their decisions.

Here are some of the issues people just received their M15x came across:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=263843
http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...3&postcount=48
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=263196
http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...8&postcount=11

 

But you've been waiting a long time for it to come back, that's why I'm saying you had poor luck. But I've read all those threads and now I'm becoming very nervous about mine arriving.

 

Yours will, very likely, be fine.

You don't have the 8800GTX and your CPU will not give you any problems.
Don't worry. I'm sure you are going to love it.

I'm a patient guy... but in a week it's going to be one month since I've sent my laptop back. Everyone's patience has a limit...

 

My m15x has the same right hinge issue. I am on the phone with support right now. He asked me to take some pics and email them to him. Little pieces of plastic fell out of the right hinge area (come to think of it I ALWAYS heard something rattling around in there even when I first got it). Mine is so bad I cannot even open or close the lid without extreme difficulty.

I have been SUPER careful with this laptop and it has not been dropped, dented, banged, etc. I have not had it shutdown due to overheating, I suspect the problem is the crappy plastic they have the hinge attached to.

Last alienware purchase for me unless they bend over backwards to rectify this. The hinge system has always felt flimsy. Even typing on it the screen would wobble.

Sorry the attached pics are crap, I had to take them from my cellphone.

PS - I received my m15x late January this year.

 

Buzzin, that looks awful, in my life of owning 4-5 laptops, I never encountered such a problem!

It really makes me think twice about dropping my cash on this thing.

 

I will update my first post tomorrow. I will put your pictures there, if you don't mind. I am also thinking of writing a long letter to Engadget. It's a long shot but I've had enough with all the pain and misery that so many M15x owners have had to go through.

What amazes me the most is, how is it possible AW still manages to shake the dust off and keeps selling their products to uninformed customers. How is it possible that the only action we see from AW is new lid covers and new stylish websites? How is it possible that AW keeps just throwing dust to our eyes like we were ignorant customers? How is all this farce possible?

People keep believing, keep having faith... One thing is faith; the other is denying reality. But the worst of all, is AW that leads people to believe, lies to the world, takes people's money and feed their "faith" with nothing but disrespect.

If you are thinking about getting an M15x… think twice. This is the nightmare you will be getting yourself into.

 

unaware "costumers"??

Sorry couldnt resist

 

Corrected! I'm quite mad really... so thanks for the laugh. I was so mad that my brain is not even working properly!
Oh well... Honestly, I'm really shocked with all this.

 

Deep breath milcs, i know its annoying when we drop this amount of cash on a computer and it doesnt even meet the minimum requirement in terms of build quality and the fact that AW is doing bugger all about it...

Im Mad too because i have to hand in a dissertation draft by tmrw 3pm and i have so far 120 words...3000 left...REDBULL time!

 

What do Alienware reps have to say about this? Maybe it's time for some answers? Maybe it's time to something more besides "We are deeply sad for that. PM us with your account number and we will get right into it..."!
Why do all these problems exist (from overheating, to cases breaking, to no functional security lock, etc etc etc)? How is it possible that you disregard all that? How is it possible we have to be subjected to all these horror/surreal/dark humour stories?

Unless something real comes out from Alienware, I will do everything on my power to drive people away from Alienware. We have had enough.

 

Well the sad truth is the number of people who represent the owners of the m15x on this forum probably make up 5% maybe less then all the owners of the laptop. And about half of these customers are unaware of the nitty gritty of laptops. And to alienware the 5% represented here don't really say much to them cause they are still raking in sales to people who arent as computer savy as the people here.

 

my graphics card fried on the 22nd of this month, i got it on the 19th. trying to return it now without the 600 dollar restocking fee (15%). most likely i will still have to pay it, and then i will get something in the 2000-2300 range that will work for more than 3 days at least before needed repairs. not worth it. alienware ftl.

 

sorry to hear that cricha, i hope that the same doesnt happen to me

 

Crricha you could probably fight them to get you to give you a full refund as it is on the basis that there was a faulty GPU.

 

yeah there is no way you should have to pay the restocking fee. Sorry to hear about your issues with your GPU

 

i think you have to let them repair it once before they will waive the restocking fee.

 

yeah once they rapair it once it will work for 2 weeks then that 30 days and i cant refund it and then im 4k in the hole. :'( why oh why did i have to have a sliver of hope i would get a good one.

edited: funny thing is it was a defected so they say, which it could have been or it could be it got too hot, i dont know. i just dont want to pay 4300 or whatever it was for it and then it broke after 3 days having it, which its more than likely it will break again.

 

crricha13 you should pm the AW reps on this forum; you are supposed to get a full refund with a defective product.

 

i just did earlier today, he asked me if i called csomething(section of AW) which is in the pm. and which i called already.

 

Sorry to hear that crricha13. Yes, if it's a defective computer you should not have to pay the restocking fee.
Good luck on getting your money back and sorry you have to go through that bad experience.

 

in a way its not a defective computer just a defective graphics card, which they can replace but yano who wants to pay 4000-4300 for a laptop that something goes wrong with in 3 days, and most likely will again in the future...near future most likely. waiting to hear from a rep on here.... /sigh

 

Well... defective GPU, defective computer... it doesn't really matters. The truth is that your computer is not fully functional after 3 days of use. And if you look around, on the same week as you, 2 other people reported defective GPUs as well.
What if one year down the road the GPU gets "defective" again!?
Anyway... Good luck with solving your problem.

 

Remember though, AW doesnt manufacture the graphics cards. Nvidia does. So its not AW's fault if the graphics card that is not made by them is defective. Its more Nvidias fault. Even though they test the comps b4 they ship them out, they cannot possibly take 3 days of testing to see if it will fail after a week, or a month or a even a year, so its hard for them to tell if it will be defective. Give aw a break, they cant help if the GPU fails. Cracking cases, touch controls, overheating, you can blame that on them, but not GPU's being defective.

 

Line, is true... it's Nvidia that manufactures them. Probably all the GPU's that have been defective are all defective due to NVidia's fault. But that's not the point in this case. If a owner gets a computer and it fails after 3 days and he doesn't want to have the risk of having it repeated anymore... if he decides to send it back for a refund... I don't see why he has to pay 15% restocking fee for a non functional computer.

Anyway... What would be interesting and informative would be to have people that own Clevos or Dell 1730 with the same exact GPU to see if the defective GPU is also as common with them. Maybe we would find interesting facts. I'm sure that if its all Nvidia's fault, the rate of failure has to be high on other manufacturers as well. If it is not... Then I don't think we should blame Nvidia for it.

Anyone from the Sager/Dell forums have any idea about this?

 

Well put lineazy

 

As usual... we disagree though. AW is responsible for absolutely EVERYTHING they put in their machine and their stability.

Let's use the car comparison...
If you go to Chrysler and buy a mighty powerful and fast car. After one week of use, the car fails while you are driving and you die. Who is going to be responsible? The AC manufacturers? The Brake manufacturers? Or Chrysler that failed on putting them all together in properly working order?

Use your head to think... not your hearts!
Thanks,
M.

 

First off, thanks for all the info man. I am considering picking up one of the AW Area-51 m17x laptops. Does anyone know if the 17"s are having the same problems as the 15"s? I have been reading on the net, but there isn't a lot of feedback on the 17s yet.

Thanks a lot for all the great infomation guys.
Chewy

 

true, but it might not have beena defective card, could have been in got too hot in the laptop that alienware put together and designed? you dont really know what it is, and i figure best to return.

 

Hi Chewy.
People can't really tell you much about the M17x. People that have received, have received the lower end GPUs (like 8600GT). So it's too early to tell.
Atol and someone else have received it and say it's solid. Given it's a bigger laptop, stability and "strenght" of materials must be improved.
I would wait for someone more "professional" to make a review of it (like our friend Chaz) as there is VERY LITTLE information on the M17x so far.

 

I see you have quoted me..use your brain..not your heart..
But I agree, AW is responsible for everything

 

How can it be speculation when Atol actually owns his own m17x??

 

I am going to remove that part of my post... as you seem to be very sensitive to what I said.

What I'm trying to say is that there's very little information regarding the M17x. Is that acceptable now?

 

amen......

 

Well, it sounded like the actual owners' opinions shouldn't be trusted...if I don't speak up then who will?

 

Thanks Milcs. The problem is that I am going to be ordering a laptop in the next 2 or 3 weeks, and it really is down to three choices. Lenovo t61, Alienware m17x and the Dell Studio 17. My #1 determining factor for just about anything I buy is quality. I am willing to pay more for something that is well built over saving a few dollars. I have had a couple Lenovo (IBM) laptops over the years and they have been rock solid tanks. That quality thing tends me to shy away from the Dell, and if the t61 had a 17" screen, it would already be ordered. As this isn't a going to mainly be an insane gaming machine, I had just left the video cards as the base, (8600gt) but I needed to step up to the m17x to get the processor options I really wanted.

Thanks for the quick feedback. If I do end up going with the Alienware I promise to come back here and give you guys some feedback.

Chewy

 

Good luck Chewy. And do come back if you become part of our happy family!
Take care and choose wisely.

ps: I hope in 2-3 weeks more "professional" reviews (as well as more user reviews) will be out. Try and write to Atol and ask him about his experience.

 

Lenovo t61, Sony or Sager, I have been hoping for Voodoopc to launch a new 15 and Panasonic ( Panasonic you can stand on.. http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webap...pId=12871&surfModel=Toughbook-Y7&displayTab=O )

now if that got upgraded soon.. I know what my next laptop (job laptop) would look like

 

Chewy, I'm sure you have seen it... Just in case you didn't...
Atol's laptop: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=266325

 

Thanks Milcs. Yes, I had. I am just in the process of writing up a response for him. He had some nice pictures, but his posts are a little light on solid details.

 

Send him a PM. He is very helpfull.
Good luck again and keep visiting us!

 

Wish I were here half an hour back to join in on 'Clash of the Opinions' but was watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico - No one leaves Rodriguez for anything IMO
Anywho, since we're throwing out possibilities we should consider that there being three GPUs failing in such a short span but now nothing seems to be going wrong... I would take a shot at saying faulty batch by Nvidia..

Just my two cents

 

Fair opinion... If you can find me 3 owners on the Clevo Forum on the same week saying that their GPUs got screwed up, I think you have a point. If not... I can't really say you do.
More, one of those owners has had the M15x for quite a long time. So it wasn't new. It wasn't a batch...

More... Maguai. The same. Something failed with the GPU (and then he re-set it and it worked again).

More... Groove reports 104ºC for it's GPU. I'm sure lot's of fans and AW's admirerers are going to say... It's OK! Anyway...

I could go on... But I don't really think I need it.

It's ALL AW's problem. Are you going to blame Bridgestone for your car losing control on a curve (when you just bought it 3 days ago)?

 

I think we're missing a huge issue here: the terrible customer service and shady legal practices.

Jayonhavok and I were both denied warranty coverage for our problems, and I suspect that buzzin will receive the same treatment. If not for intervention by Alienware-James, I am confident that I would have needed legal assistance to claim what was rightfully mine: warranty coverage of an obvious manufacturing defect.

How many people have just bent over and coughed up whenever Alienware denied them warranty coverage in the past? If breach of contract is a regular part of their business practices, I'll bet they've made a fortune.

 

Twas 104°C using ATiTool.. It's given that temp to a couple of users in the past too I think.. Does stress the GPU to the limit is what everyone says

Sorry I came across with my opinion like that milcs. Meant it in a 'I guess it could also be this' kinda way. Any news on when your laptop is shipping back to you btw ?

 

I think this Clevo comparation is misleading, since you won't find any gpu faulty notebook, because there is no clevo, atm, with a 8800GT on a 15,4" notebook.

Rest i agree with.

 

True there is not 15.4''. But people are claiming that dead GPUs on the M15x have to do with faulty batches from Nvidia. Now... all the 8800GTXs coming from Nvidia are the same. So... if there are batches that are defective for AW... then, there are batches that should be defective for other manufacturers (independently of the size factor).

And... this is obviously, not the case. So saying that this is Nvidia's fault is really not a fundamented theory. It's so obvious it's AW that I really can't understand why some people suggest it might be someone else's fault... Oh well!!!

Regarding the ATItool. I can guarantee you I never got above 90ºC running ATItool or Furmark for hours and hours. If you know M15x's story well enough, you will also know that with ATItool and Furmark, people could not reproduce downclocking of the GPU (on older versions of the BIOS). This is because of the sustented intensive stress that makes the fans spin constantly. During gaming this does not happen and this leads to peaks of temperature (while the fans are running lower) and consequent downclocking.

Sort to say... what Groove is experiencing is irregular and should be looked at if he wants to avoid complications in a near future.

Which makes... well, I lost count of the problems people have reported during these past weeks. I guess it might be because Alienware improved something on the M15x...

 

As a reminder, nobody should buy a m15x before the Clevo/Sager makes his appear.

Personally, i am more interested in the mothership (m17x), and it's taking too long for some reviews come out (with 8800GTX, of course).

@Milcs

well, maybe AW got in the "Sh!t happend´s" factor with the 8800GT

 

Yea, I just wanted to clarify that the 104C that I experienced with the gpu was running ATITool and I've never had that temp with a real world application or game. Now, I haven't had time to do some really long gaming sessions yet, but after 15 mins or so of Oblivion and Crysis each, I was only getting mid 80s from what I remember. That's a leveling out of the histogram, not an end peak of when I quit the game. I'll do some more thorough game testing next week and update.

@milcs, I don't understand the explanation about temps reaching higher during games. If the fans are triggered by their respective thermal thresholds then that should be triggered irrespective of the application or environment. So, unless there's additional logic being programmed in the functionality of the fans, I don't see how the gpu could reach "high" peaks of temp without the fan threshold being triggered. Now, perhaps ATITool is enforcing a max rpm on the fans while it runs the tests whereas games are reliant on the thermal threshold being reached for initiation of max speed, but if they are only running at medium rpm and allowing high peaks of temperature then that would seem to indicate another bug in the bios/driver. I haven't experienced that yet though.

 

@Milcs... The hinge is fine. The problems jason and fex had did not involve the hinge. That is a problem with the LCD enclosure. From examining those pictures it would appear that the constant heating and cooling is causing the screw on the lower right to dethread overtime. Without that screw properly in place what you see in those pictures will happen. There would be a few ways to fix this but the easiest is to change the fan logic to make sure the laptop stays within a stable thermal range.

 

@Groove- If you go and dig the thread about GPU downclocking and read it through (like I did), you will notice people had a hard time finding the downclock because ATItools would not push the GPU to high enough temperatures. On my laptop, as I said, I never got past 90ºC (actually I think it hoovered around 84ºC) with ATItools or Furmark (and I didn't have downclock with Bios X30). I did get the GPU to go over 102ºC while playing crysis and stalker. What's the explanation... I don't know. I just know that's this is what happens.

@kefka- I don't know if it's the hinges, if it's the casing... I just know this is what all of us are in risk of experience. And it's not fex and jason... It's fex, Jayhanavok and now... buzzin. Three exactly equal experiences.
I initially suggested that I this was related with the high temperatures on the right part of the laptop (GPU and GPU exhaust). I don't really see any other explanation. Why does it happens THREE times on the exact same hinge (or side of the case, or whatever we might call it).

Oh well... I guess most of us will end up with a broken lid in less than one year time. Maybe then people will start believing...