Using an Alienware in Public: Tips to deal with Alienware-hating trolls and bullies

We will have to see how it works, since the M18x is made totally different in this regard than the M17x R3/R4. On the M18x, it is one or the other active, but not both simultaneously.

 

How is this different from disabling iGPU in the A08 unlocked bios and selecting PEG/ALWAYS ENABLE PEG in the BIOS? I don't think its any different, it has to do with how drivers map in OS X, and how Apple doesn't use a LVDS in the case of displays,

FYI, Apple doesn't use PS/2 in the case of mice/keyboard/trackpads, so we have to use special kexts.

For starters, I have created and modified a DSDT and kext package for M17xR3 users with all proper fixes for Intel 3000, sleep, and good sound (not that voodoohda crap)

 

Why worry about people? You bought it with your Money, so your money, YOUR Rules!

Seriously, for me I dont really care about it though, if I dont want attention, light out and MYOB

 

If it's an M18x or M17x, I would recommend rolling your sleeves up first.
Bringing them out from your backpack will definitely force you to flex those biceps and triceps.
Use them to your advantage.

 

Do not play around with the PEG setting on ATI cards, it bricks the lvds driver I believe, not sure if its on the motherboard side or the screen side, but one of the controllers is bricked if you switch to PEG rather than SG. Other than that the LVDS cannot be used to run the ATI cards as alienwares have a mux chip, whereas all apple products use software to control the card switching. Believe me, its not possible to route the dedicated GPU through the internal screen. What is possible is getting QE/CI working for the 6990 through DP out. The way graphics switching is done under mac os is each card has a dedicated LVDS which runs the display, When the OS switches cards, it reroutes the video out signal from one card to the other. In all pc laptops there is only one LVDS which connects to one of the GPUs switching is done when graphical processing is done by one GPU and display out is done by the other (What the mux chip does).

 

PCI option bricks the BIOS. PEG, SG, and IGFX are safe. Have not tested AUTO

There is an option in the bios to changed from muxed switching to muxless fixed or muxless dynamic or muxless fixed and dynamic. Wouldn't that change anything?

 

I would assume that changing the mux state would do nothing but force only one of the GPUs to load, but the issue still comes down to the fact that the 'LVDS' out from the ATI gpus goes to a video in on the integrated which then reroutes to the actual LVDS cable which means even forcing only the dedicated to load means that the internal display would run off cpu drawn graphics (Something which doesn't work at all under osx) meaning that once again it would work the same as just disabling the integrated GPU. Actually muxless dynamic may allow for os switching of cards, which could possibly allow us to force display out when the os switches to dedicated and internal display when running off integrated, not entirely sure about that one.

Ok, I found an explanation of what muxless is, as its essentially the same as optimus, not sure if thats what osx uses, but I'll give it a try sometime. BTW here is a graphical representation of how our dedicated gpu works although there is a mux chip which is what allows the user switching of gpus. http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/AMD-s-Optimus-Killer-Technology-Gets-Detailed-3.jpg

 

Well thats good info. Where have you been for the past year? I should have stopped this damn fool campaign on trying to get the 6990m working. I was pulling my hair out from trying everything under the sun, to find out its a hardware limitation. ATi cards are always such a damn pain in the .

Also, with GE=no, I get screwed up graphics w/ 4 desktops on my LCD. I VNC'd into my laptop, and everything appeared accelerated, but I don't know why it get screwed up so badly on the LVDS

 

Interesting, I'm running GE=yes and I have had no trouble with either, the only reason I've been running GE=yes is because otherwise I have sound issues. acceleration under the 6990 doesn't work properly as only 6970 code was added and the 6990 is recognised as a 6970 with invalid memory and shader counts. its rather interesting the way these things work. I only got my m17x about 2 months ago so I wouldn't have been much help a year ago. I'm just waiting for ATI to release a card which supports 3d over lvds as the 3d lvds cable is direct to dedicated gpu. in theory all those with 3d screens should be able to get their nvidia cards working fine. although then you have the battery life issue.

 

nVidia tends to be more forgiving when it comes to LVDS. I will try when I get my replacement M17xR3. With respect to sound, I have written a patched AppleHDA which provides 20x betttery sound than voodooHDA, and a dsdt that fixes nearly all issues, including sleep, brightness keys, etc... I wil include them in my guide. However, I could use some help with patching the DSDT for vanilla AppleSmartbatterymanager, I'm not sure how that patch fits into the DSDT.

 

Basically under the bat1 device you change all the registers from 128 and 16 bit down to 8 bit, just meaning replacing the code such as

sbat 16,

becomes

sat0 8,
sat1 8,


After that you just need to go find the places where these are referenced and replace their old names with the attenuated version of their new names. Just to point out the naming scheme doesn't mean anything really, just call them something so you can remember what they actually were. Here is a link with more information. AppleACPIBatteryManager/AppleSmartBatteryManager For Lion - InsanelyMac Forum

 

I'm not seeing where those values are in my DSDT, I check under BAT1 maybe you could have a quick peek at it?

 

That's pretty sweet.

 

First time and last time, it gave me an unpleasant experience so I picked a dark coner now.
Cant understand why people with macs never got treated special here even though their rig is more expensive than mine

 

I personally can't wait to show off my laptop. Being a gamer, and very much embracing that aspect of my life is something I truly enjoy. Hobbies are just that, hobbies. Everyone enjoys spending their free time differently and any chance I get to embrace mine I'm happy. Alienware laptops let me do that with some extra style

 

I've got many many Alienware products, been a huge fan since my Area-51x back in 2005. Besides the laptops, I've got an Aurora from many years ago, two (getting third when I get my 690) Alienware OptX 120hz 3D displays for my home-built desktop, TactX keyboard, TactX headphones, and two TactX mice. To make it short: I'm obsessed with the brand.

I bring a M17x r3, M14x r1, M11x r2, and a new iPad to school every day. I use the iPad's SmartCover to prop up the M17x for ventilation usually. Here's a photo:

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Because I go to a small school everyone tends to know me as the "Alienware Kid". I've also been able to sway a ton of people over the last few years to invest in Alienware machines. Here's a pic of the LAN day at my school:

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As for comments - yes I get them DAILY. I go to a nerd school. There are the groups of people who have their Sagers, Asus and whatnot lesser brands who hate on me. But they're prolly just jelly.

I've gotten discounts and free upgrades from Alienware from being as much of a fan of the brand I am (and the amount of people I've gotten into the brand), they actually CARE for their fans. When Apple fanboys trash on me, I ask them "Would Apple give you a free significant CPU upgrade just for a slightly bad experience? No. They'd make you pay the $200 "walked into store fee"." Then I also point out the in-home service, and the obscene amount of times they've replaced parts of mine purely because of scratches.

People usually don't rag on me too badly though, as I have guest accounts setup with my steam account Offline on all computers so people can play Skyrim in class.

 

I've been a Mac laptop user for many years, but I always have a gaming PC desktop to play games so I considered myself more neutral than biased when it comes to Mac vs. PC. I just bought my first Alienware laptop after I decided to not buy into Apple's super expensive "disposable" Retina display MBP hype. Already few friends are giving me crap for buying a PC laptop, but at least I dont feel like being robbed by Alienware compare to Apple's specs on the Retina display MBP. But being in NYC, there's definitely a bit more snobbish attitude of owning Mac laptops vs. PC laptops, it seems people just assume if it's not Mac, then it's not as good.

 

I also really like Dell and Alienware, my employers use it all the time. We have a mix of Vostro, Optiplex, Xeon servers, even an Aurora R2 in one of the editorial offices. (I envy that particular individual lol)

Too bad I couldn't get my m14x in stainless steel. That would have been awesome.

 

Wow, reading these makes me want to get one. The compliments and the trolling mac boys.

 

Do you really take all of those to school every day @BlakeE450 ? I'm worried about my single M17x being to heavy to carry this fall! I was set on buying a MALIBAL branded Clevo until I looked into Alienware and saw that I might get it cheaper. Many Clevo users prefer the subtle and blank expression of the brand and so they dismiss Alienwares as overpriced and obnoxious.


My main concern is having my computer stolen because it is a higher profile laptop then your usual school grade notebook. I don't want my computer to stand out. I could probably turn off the lights though to made into the rest of the crowd. Most notebook consumers know two brands: PCs and Macs with know knowledge of the vast differences in the PC market.


I understand that Macs have a very practical use in the Audio/Video production industry. The problem I have is when the Mac Cult doesn't understand and purchase their overpriced systems anyway "just because they're better". Plus when I have to do tech support on someones Mac and they don't even know what they are looking at.
When I try and tell Mac users why I like PCs (the more powerful GPUs and ventilation) they don't know what I'm talking about. I was talking to a die hard Mac fan and they wanted to take their laptop through a whole path of upgrades including replacing the entire case, and they didn't know where to start!

 

It seems impractical to bring a single m17x to school on a daily basis, as does bringing three laptops.

 

Yeah, I really do bring all that stuff with me daily. I'm well-aware of how dumb and unpractical this is. I also run into the issue of Macheads wanting to do impossible upgrades to their machines.

My stuff usually never leaves my sight when it is out of my backpack, but I would be much more nervous about my stuff if I went to any other school other than where I go now.

 

What's the point of having portable laptops if you are going to lug 3+ laptops around with you anyway? Why not ditch the portable(s) and just carry the m17x? It just seems like this would be getting to the point where it interferes with your ability to actually get anything done.

 

The time I have to lug them around is quite minimal, and I bring the portables because simply an iPad is too much of a toy to get any real word processing done, let alone the high end CG that I use the M17x to do.

That being said, if I don't want to pull out the M17x, take off its cover, take out the massive power brick, then get up to plug it in, then setup anything additional that I want to use (mouse, external drives, hotspot, 3D glasses, etc.) all takes a lot of time, so I'll either take out one of the two other machines relative to:

a. The amount of processing power I need for what I am doing.
b. The length of time I'm going to be on the machine.


Additionally, as I mentioned in my first post in this thread - I bring the portables for friends to use as well. Some of them even have accounts on these machines.


This upcoming year, I plan on giving a simplification to my mobile setup. I'm looking to sell my M11x R2 and probably will leave the M14x home. I have been liking this Macbook Air after putting a real operating system (Windows) on it. It is a great piece of hardware basic tasks that are a "step up" from the iPad.

 

What the hell are you doing on a daily basis to need to carry those around?!

I'm studying animation myself, I fully understand the need for processing power and multiple setups for rendering, but good god... I hope ou have a decent backpack with good back support with a waist strap... If you don't, get one!!!

I used to lug my M15x to the city, a 2 hour trip for about 8 months, decided it was just too heavy and was a pain to carry around in general... I got myself my M11x recently, and just use that for carrying, the processing power is fine for the minimal work I do on the go, most is done at home or at uni... even though we have imacs and they crash a million times when in Maya or AE...

But yeah, just wondering what the hell it is you're actually doing???

Also, generosity is one thing, but why do you let your mates use your laptops so often on a daily basis to even setup their own accounts?

Just curious.

I manage to handle everything just fine on my M11x, every 3D modeling software, sure, lag once beyond 2 Million poly with high-res texture mapping in Maya... Zbrush is a different story, the poly count goes into the millions in the matter of 5-mins...

PS - only ever lags with a complex brush with smoothing 5px under or 400px over...

Painter 12 - laggy on any setup, uses so much RAM it isn't funny...

Rendering is different altogether, thus I understand the multiple machines... but sheesh... we're talking like $9000 being lugged around daily... Be careful!!!

Just stunned that someone carries that around so often...

 

I do a lot of environmental design, motion graphics, and that sort of thing. Might get a chance to do some industrial design with a current client. I use a wide range of Adobe's CS6 master collection, Vue 10.5 xStream, and a few others (3ds max included). I work with anywhere between 1 billion polys all the way up to into the trillions typically. Rendering isn't usually handled very much on the actual laptop (that goes off to my homebuilt farm).

Although, as previously mentioned, if I went to any other school I would be really nervous about bringing this kind of pricey hardware into a high school setting. I go to a school of nerds and other "misfits" called High Tech High.

As for why I bring the laptops for my buds, I can't really give you a good reason other than just saving them from having to use the MacBooks in the classrooms.


EDIT:

Forgot to mention on the bottom of my site it says, "Developed on Alienware computers."

 

Checked out your website/youtube channel - very talented. I'm always fascinated by graphic designers, animators, electronic musicians - basically anyone in the field of art, I always admire the ideas/creativity. Midday Pacific is so realistic!

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As for 'trolls and haters':
The amount of uniformed people spreading misinformation on other websites about AW is staggering. Youtube comments are a perfect example ..people claiming the M17XR4 catches on fire, others say its 3,000$ for an M14X in the U.S., another guy says the M11X adapter melts if you game, etc. People are so jealous about not having one they will create a negative fictional story about the brand. I defended the brand in a YT comment and a few people went to my YT page and disliked all my videos - really? Get a life! Some of these people really need to get their head checked.

 

Thanks! I'm hoping to make this into a career as I get closer to going to college (turning 17 on Wednesday of next week).

In non-commercial works, I try to always hide something relating to Alienware in the video. For example, the video you just commented on in YouTube there is a crop circle of the Alienware logo around 1:15 in the video. Also, any time there's an Apple product in my noncommercial videos I always put an Alienware logo in its place. This is viewable in the video on my channel that had an iPhone in its video thumbnail. (Not linking to them in case you're not supposed to on these forums)

This. On BF3 the other day, people were talking smack on me for asking about if there was a way to disable the lights flashing on the keyboard when you get shot. They stopped when I worked my way to 1st place. xD

 

I wish i had parents like yours. lol

I got my first computer after i graduated high school and bought my first alienware when i was a sophomore..

as for the comments

everyone likes it and i get any hate from anyone. I am from NYC and a lot of the college students have a mac and they appreciate the alienware m11x

I am going to wait till next year and hopefully a better revision/model comes out for the m17x or related to get my 2nd alienware laptop.

 

I pay for them myself. The only one which was gifted to me was back in 2005 and was an Area-51x. I still have that thing today (both HDDs are dead in it though, considering seeing if a low-end SSD would work in it).


Another thing to contribute to the hate/love:

Since I find that the average consumer cares more about looks than functionality, they immediately "judge the book by its cover". The way I believe this applies to the AW case is that it seems to be a design you either really love or you really hate. I have met very few people who say that they are just "okay" aesthetically.

Because of this, there tends to be that divide between people who are infatuated with their looks and those who loathe it. (I find those people tend to be Apple "clean" design-lovers)

You could even go as to far to say that they judge it first by the color scheme the AlienFX is set to... I think this is why you never see on the Alienware website them showcasing on the homepage the split color keyboard capabilities of M14x and up.

 

Blake, what is your opinion on the m18x line? Are you planning on getting one at some point? Seeing as its pretty much a portable desktop, it seems like it would be an attractive option to a power user such as yourself.

 

lol from my experience, the western digital HDD's never break down. I fixed many old computers and the ones with WD's were always working 100% XD.


about the alienware keyboard coloring, I always turn mine off in public.

but when people come up to me and have an interest in it(the m11x), I show it off with the colors and they get amazed and love it even more

 

In my opinion, the M18x is a beautiful machine. Both heavy in performance and physical weight, I've even questioned whether I can lug that beast around. If I did get one, I'd only bring a MacBook Air (running Windows of course ) with me as well. The "deal sealer" for me when I was getting my M17x vs the M18x was the 3D capability. I work with stereoscopic content, so it has been excellent to be able to do so mobile.

I've seen two in hardware stores around where I live - visually the machine looks almost exactly like the M17x until you take a closer look. The screen larger, and then you've got those buttons to the left of the keyboard reminiscent of what the desktop TactX keyboard offers with one or two less buttons. The front of the laptop is also obviously looks taller.

The difference becomes a lot more apparent when you set an M17x right next to an M18x.


Regarding the topic of whether I ever plan on investing in one - When I go off to college I think that I may get the whatever the current revision of the machine is, as I'll need that sort of mobile performance. However, there's a big problem here. The college I am looking at currently, ( extremely prestigious design school) literally requires you to have a Macbook Pro. So we shall see.

I love WD as well, especially after a terrible 1.5TB data loss on Seagate. But I've actually had 3 WD velociraptors fail in my render farm after about 1.5 years of constant heavy use in my farm. The strange part is they all failed within 2 weeks of each other.

 

Holy cow! fantastic work, man.

Better than I could produce at that age! Even now... And to think I was wanting to become a chef at that age... Well, atleast I can cook. lol.

A review of my passions final year of high-school then made me finally decide to delve in animation/illustration.

I fully understand now... Vue is a killer... Fantastic program. I would love to learn it more, I have a copy, but due to prior studies, hasn't been on the to-do list. I've been working on a short film similar to "A Scanner Darkly".
Any links or books for Vue tuts would be fantastic!!!

Thoughts for any links/books/tuts fo Vue???

I'm wanting to do matte painting once I finish, 3D animation due to the high demand, but I love 2D as my hobby.

I've subscribed to your channel. I'll be sure to keep a look out.

As to everyone else, I bought both my computers.
Plan to keep them for a while, plan to upgrade the M15x to a 920xm, and eventually a 7970 when they release stable drivers, plan to keep it for anoter 2-3 years then get a desktop.

But yes...went so off topic to this thread it isn't funny...

Only issue I get is with Apple fanboys/girls... -.-" Atleast the M11x can run Maya/AE without crashing instantaniously! FTW!

 

There is also the fact its chassis is aluminum unlike the m17x r3, so its more durable, which is important in a college environment.
The MBP thing is a stinger though... At least their not "bad" computers though.

I myself am getting an M18x in the next year or two, and I can't wait to see what the next generation has in terms of power.
First generation Haswell i9 processor and dual 780's are gonna pack a punch.

 

Thanks! I'm glad you like my work. I own the book by Dax Pandhi (really cool guy) called "Realism in Vue" but at least for me, his tutorials under the company QuadSpinner have been more useful. Matte Painting pays very well, and I hear Vue helps them out a lot if incorporated in their workflow properly.

Feel free to ask me any questions via PM. I'd like to aplogoize for getting so offtopic in here, so I'll post a relevent story to get things back on the right track.


The story:

As previously mentioned, my school has Macbooks. They're all Apple tech based. Thus, my school kind of has ties with some of the local Apple stores and we present projects at one of them every year. (Our school is all about project-based learning; no textbooks at all.) So, naturally, I bring my own hardware into the Apple store as we're going to present a Spanish project. I tend to be the only one to do this - everyone else just uses the Macs to present. (Having Alienwares also help because I don't get questions about my project, just about the laptop's lights. This is good because I can't speak any Spanish. xD) I really should of taken pictures of my Alienwares looming over all of the petty Macbooks on the tables. xD

As I was setting up the M11x, this one random lady came up to me and asked, "What kind of Mac is that?" I said something along the lines of, "It's not a Mac, it's a PC - an Alienware." She said, "Ohhhh! Right. That's the 64 gigabyte one, right?" I really didn't know what to say after that.

Later on, one of the employees told me that I "really shouldn't have these computers in here". lol

I didn't know the chassis were aluminum in the M18x. That probably contributes to the weight. xD Good to know that though, kinda makes me want one more.

And yeah, I really hope they do pack in some hardware that we can't even dream of performance-wise today. Maybe even outpowering my 60 core farm.

 

To be fair, BF3 doesn't inform the other players what brand of computer you are using. You must have started that conversation, which easily could have come across as snooty, regardless of your intentions. If so, you brought that upon yourself.

 

The conversation started out somewhere talking about keyboards and which are the best for FPS's. That had reminded me that it started to get annoying having the keyboard flash every time I got shot, so I asked about it in case someone had figured out a way to make it stop (simply turning off AlienFX wasn't working for me). Then people were like, "Flashing keyboards? ZOMG." so I mentioned Alienware.

What I didn't mention in there was two out of the three or so people who were talking smack by the end of my playtime that on the server ended up on my friends list after learning I actually contribute tactical data to the team during gameplay.

 

Where's a brick wall when you need one???... *looks around* Oh, right there! *Starts bashing head against it*

 

It would need to be an aluminum wall, I was in an Apple store remember? xD

Careful though, some of the panels are attached with Velcro and may fall off with a hard hit. xD (Actually true)


To contribute more to the thread:

When someone tries to explain to you how much better their Sager is compared to your Alienware... ask them what happens to their warranty if they were to change things themselves. Also ask them what happens when something goes wrong. Then explain to them they come to YOU, rather than not having a laptop for possibly weeks a time.

 

Alienware laptops today are less flashy then they were a few years ago.

I once took my M5790 to high school and i got a bunch of unwanted attention and a mesican wannabe gang banger threatened to steal it from me.. The thing was silver and had the rubber grip design on the back of the monitor, which just screamed look at me.

I carry my M17xr2 on my college campus almost every day and no one really notices it unless i am using it during class. I never have had any negative attention while using it, but i will get the occasional compliment. I could care less what someone else thinks anyways.

 

I think the green M9700 was the most flashy laptop alienware made.

 

I take my machine to school almost everyday and it doesn't really stand out next to my buddies G73 Till I turn the lights on.

 

^
Hahaha - then it becomes a dead giveaway that you are a extreme enthusiast!

 

A couple weeks ago, I went to the local Starbucks to have some coffee and do a little typing (yes, AW's can be used for more than just gaming). The woman sitting across the table from me blinked when I fired up my 17, did her very best to stealthily check out the lights, curves and design of my laptop, then after a few minutes asked me about what kind of computer I had, as she had never seen one before. I gave her the standard company line--laptops designed for gaming, any multimedia needs and serious power consumption needs with a few bells and whistles that makes everything look really pretty. She nodded, and then the following exchange took place:

SHE: It's a very sleek machine. So, what do you use when you're at home, then?

ME: At home? What do you mean?

SHE: Your home workstation, I mean. What sort of a tower setup do you have at home for doing the really intensive operations, like music and video editing?

ME: (looking at her very nice Macbook Air) Oh! Oh no, I don't have one of those. It's not necessary.

SHE: (raising an eyebrow) It's not necessary? Really? You can do everything you need to do multimedia-wise on a laptop at the quality you need to?

ME: (grinning) About the only thing this laptop can't do is make lasagna, and I'm sure somewhere out there, somewhere's working on a mod for that, too.

We laughed over that. Be proud, and sport your Alienware in public! It's a conversation-starter almost every time.

 

Wow, talking about waking up a necro-thread. 2012? Really?

Sadly, they no longer make genuine performance enthusiast machines. They now only sell anemic BGA gamer jokebooks like most of their competitors.

 

I'm stoned on pain medication and bored. Looked fun and I've been waiting to tell that story for a bit.

("necro-thread" has a bit of a ring to it)

 

lol, was thinking the same thing, haha

Gone are the days of Alienware laptops competing with Toshiba toughbooks and original xbos's on which was toughest vs a bullet or axe or tank or 50 storydrop... etc

 

Using an Alienware in public is like using a Macbook or any Apple product in public.

People will want to try and steal it off you, and it will turn heads, even with the lights turned off.

The older Alienware laptops (Clevo ones) won't really make people look, unless it's brightly colored like the m7700 or the m9700, or if it's the mALX.

 

LOL thankfully these days the "stigma" (was it really a stigma? anyways,) using alienwares in public at least from what i see isn't really any different from macbooks so just flaunt what you have its not any more flak than whipping out a retina macbook pro 15 or anything. I have to say though i still think the old alienware m14x/17x/18x got the looks and performance down to a t. No wonder the msi gt72 takes so many homages from them. Alienware really killed it with the new design and transition to BGA.