Welp, I took the plunge! Put in the order...

I went with this configuration through the Employee Purchase program which gave me 10% off since I'm in the Army, and then on top of that, since it's going to Iraq, I don't have to pay tax or shipping. Which saves money that I can put towards that QX9300 and a 640GB second HDD, and faster/more ram. Going to order that tommorrow. Maybe an SSD down the road. Best part is I got the black case I wanted, through the EPP website they only had the red available, and it only cost me $3,132! I'm pumped for it to get here in like two months lol Oh and I talked to an AMERICAN girl with no accent and easy to understand! sounded hot too

Can't beat it, No tax, 10% off, and no shipping. $3,132 total shipped.

Question on the RAM, by going to 1333MHz from 1066MHz will I see a worthwhile improvement? Whats the Best/fastes/most realiable RAM for the M17X? I'm not sure if I'll go for more RAM, I may not need it, aside from gaming I may be doing some CAD and some HD video editing for some friends who do short films. I was going to go with the 256GB SSD, but without the trim support I decided to pass. Also I'll be selling the processor, and RAM that came with the computer when I upgrade to offset the costs. Going to keep the T9300 in my Inspiron. Either way, I'm excited for it. It'll have over a 1TB of space. The 2nd HDD will be a data drive with all my pics, music and other files. So total for a maxed out machine I'm looking at $3,850 if I stick to 4GB RAM. That'll get me the QX9300 and 640GB HHD and 4GB 1333MHz RAM. $4,200 if for some stupid reason I put in 8GB 1333. Anything else this thing might need?

224-5967 1 Black Metallic
317-0819 1 Intel Core2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz (3MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
317-0856 1 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz 2 x 2048MB
320-8140 1 17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X
320-0759 1 CrossFireX - Dual 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870
341-0004 1 500GB 7,200RPM (xMB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
330-3924 1 Name Plate Engraving
421-0724 1 ALIENFX AQUA
421-1398 1 Genuine Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit, English
421-0406 1 Avatar 3
421-0389 1 Window Style, DFT
410-1883 1 ADOBE READER 9.0 MULTI- LANGUAGE
313-8570 1 Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner (BR-R, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
421-1304 1 CyberLink PowerDVD 8.0 Software
421-1305 1 Nero 9 Media Burning Software
430-3558 1 Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n 2x2 MIMO
421-0405 1 Automatic Updates ON
421-0398 1 Power Plan, BAL
421-0399 1 Time Zone, CENTRAL
410-0201 1 MCAF,36MTH,MUI,ANW - 3 Year Macafee(sp?)
410-0181 1 Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007-Eng, QS
421-1724 1 Soft Contracts,Dell In Home,Alienware
994-7017 1 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus At-Home Service, Initial Year
994-3660 1 Next Business Day In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis , Initial Year
990-8029 1 1 Year Limited Warranty and Next Business Day,Desktop
994-3730 1 Warranty Support,Initial Year
988-7347 1 No Warranty beyond 1 year
430-0628 1 Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
421-0361 1 Wallpapers, C03W
421-1360 1 Steam and Portal Factory Installed
330-5087 1 RESPAWN DVD
421-0381 1 RSS Feeds,AW

 

bing is having a 20% off that would save you more than epp

 

Note that apparently you can;t use bing for Alienware systems

 

just ordered another pc for work and it didn't work with xps either?

 

Quick question. Are there going to be any updates to the system? My scheduled delivery date right now is 15 Jan 2010, but it'll get here maybe a week or two later then that since I'm in Iraq. Are there any upgrades I should try to get that are coming out in the near future for the M17X?

 

The biggest possible update it'll ever get is the nVidia GT300 series, or the ATi 5000 series, provided the cards come out in MXM 3.0.

You won't notice a difference between 1066MHz and 1333MHz memory. 8GB of memory is so expensive because in order to get that you need 2x4GB sticks, and 4GB sticks are still insanely expensive. Same is true of 6GB because it uses one 4GB stick and one 2GB stick. There's no point right now of any more than 4GB unless you use really RAM intensive programs.

 

Those series will take a while before notebooks get updated, ati faster though nvidia sometimes is so slow. So if your in the military you get free shipping and no tax awesome another reason why i want to join air national guard or af reserves. What base are you stationed at?

 

Right now I'm in the greenzone in Iraq. But I'm still in the Army Reserve. I just took a year in the IRR to take a contract job to Iraq. I'm making much more then what I would if I was deployed. My unit let me transfer to the IRR while I took the job for a year. May stay a few extra months. First 92K is tax free if you remain overseas at least 330 days out of the year. And it doesn't have to be a calender year. Saving for a house and wedding when I get back. Took the job to build on my experience and had no luck in the civilian job market with the economy right now. It's what I did in the reserves so it's a great job opportunity for me to build up my resume.

 

congrats. for your purchase man and enjoy it