-->*OFFICIAL: Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge*<--

I agree. You should just pay attention to whom at Dell you are dealing with. The guys in the sales department are always more helpful than customer service. The guys in customer service do not have enough escalation authority...they are not authorized to give discounts or change specifications in case of a replacement.

Personally I will keep my order until it arrives and I will just replace it with an upgrade 8800 one when it comes out. My account manager already accepted the deal (though we haven't discussed price yet). This has the advantage of letting me use a good laptop until then (in Germany cancel policy is 14 days due to local regulation).

 

I meantioned earlier about Uk buyers sending an email to pc pro at [email protected] and let them know how dell are treating you if they decide to take a look into things it may help your case.

As to if you do go ahead with threatening to cancel this is what you will get here is a copy from my inbox.



Thank you for contacting Dell online customer care.

Please accept my apologies for the difficulties encountered when attempting to resolve your issue. I assure you that your situation is not indicative of the quality service Dell is capable of providing. I am truly sorry that we were not able to provide an experience that was completely satisfactory to you.

There is a huge demand for the order placed by you and we are facing some part shortages due to the demand. Hence there is a delay in the order being delivered to you.

However as per your request I have requested for the order to be cancelled. Please note that it will take 6 to 8 working hours for the order to be confirmed cancelled.

Once the order has been cancelled we shall mail the finance team to check if you have been charged for the order. In case charged we shall arrange for the complete amount to be transferred to your account.

As per records your query is being being taken care by my colleague under case number ******** who will resolve the query to your satisfaction.

Meanwhile, if you have any further queries in this regards, please do not hesitate to reply to this e-mail, I will be glad to assist you.


This is the email i recieved after i THREATENED to cancel note the threaten bit. They actually just canceled my order the sales guy was very $%^*& as he had a copy of my email and their reply.Despite his attepts at trying to reinstate the order I have asked to cancel anyway, my run in with dell will end when i recieve my money back all £3200. I'll wait for alienware or maybe just have to get a clevo.

 

i agree but why shud i be making the heart-felt plea dell shud be trying to plea with me to keep me a happy and content customer

 

This is the email i recieved after i THREATENED to cancel note the threaten bit. They actually just canceled my order the sales guy was very $%^*& as he had a copy of my email and their reply.Despite his attepts at trying to reinstate the order I have asked to cancel anyway, my run in with dell will end when i recieve my money back all £3200. I'll wait for alienware or maybe just have to get a clevo.[/QUOTE]

im thinking it all just dell's way of getting the order numbers down

 

Clevo is overpriced. Just reorder and use your bad experience to get a good discount in addition to the lower price...This will be a win win situation.

Since the parts will be soon delivered, your second order may well be ready in a 1-2 weeks...and Clevo will probably take as long and cost you more.

As I said, don't go through customer care...Always discuss with sales on the phone and you will be fine...

 

Doesn't your sales represenatative try to help you? In my experience, customer care have very standard resolution patterns, even at Dell. Many times they refused things that my account manager granted without discussion...

You need to understand them. Most customer care people are cheap workforce without decision authority. They only stick to standard policy.

Sales people on the other hand have some pricing adjustment liberty. They are the ones to contact for upgrades, bad screens, discounts, compensation...etc

I have been advising everyone to go through sales for the last week or so.

 

i understand totaly and i will be speaking to them tomoro but unless they offer me something good im off

 

just been on alienwares site and they are now offering the m9750 with 8700 sli dx10 im really tempted!

 

looks like its only the us site

 

Alienware don't seem to have the Xtreme processor, SSD or Bluray so I couldn't order from them. But the lapop looks nice and I am sure they will have similar 3D Mark06 results as the dell (with the same processor).

 

Well mine came today (Friday as originally intended), thoroughly impressed with it so far.

Not changed any drivers, I'm saving that for tomorrows reinstall. So far however, I tried a few games such as css, nfs:c, 2142 and ut3. All of them ran perfectly well at 19x12 with details maxed out and either a small amount of aa or none.
Sli works perfectly as does the ppu, I instantly noticed the difference between ut on my desktop (which doesn't have one) and this laptop, explosions are more detailed, shrapnel is more detailed and acts more 'real' and smoke, waves look damm good.

Battery life really amazed me, with some tweaking through vista and hardware devices I configured it to get 2 hours and 30 mins from a full battery, with wifi & bt on and screen set about 2-3/5 I can get about 1 hour 30, more than enough for college lectures.

Power supply had me laughing though, I thought it was a joke a first and looked to find the real one only to soon realise that this hulking black beast the size of a standard retail DVD case and about 3 times as thick was the power supply. At least I know it's getting as much power as it can get as even under full load from the laptop and recharging from 5% it only got slightly warm to the touch whereas my old m1710's would become red hot in the same situation.

Screen looks fantastic on mine, the whole laptop was in mint condition when i got it, speakers pack a punch but my m1710 defiantly had better bass. The media remote is actually quite handy and the free inner canal earphones from creative are not too bad either, they really do stop any outside noise.

Have got my two 200gb 7200rpm drives that I picked up after college sitting on my desk to replace the 250gb 5400 in the laptop, which I must say is pretty quick anyway.

When I reinstall tomorrow I will be using the 169.04's, the beta logitech display drivers and a spare copy of x64 ultimate I have here.

 

yea still not quite the powerhouse though im looking at desktops just to pass the time away there are some monsters out there lol and not that far from my price range i really want a laptop though grrr got to think straight

 

They are?? I just took a look and it still shows the 7950.

EDIT: Oh the US site. Wow hmmm, thats kinda interesting that the 8700's in SLI cost MORE than the 7950's.

 

Oh for god's sake Mr Greenfingers... WOULD YOU STOP WHINING! I'm trying to read this thread and find out info about this cool laptop and every other post is you whining and moaning. I know you are a pom but can you give it a rest please!

Dell have given me awesome service and have a cool track and trace website. Mine is 9 days away now. I even had a personal call from an XPS rep who gave me his number and email address should I have any problems.

I don't give a stuff if it's a Samsung or LG screen. I don't give a toss about light leakage. I know that after the 8700 cards there will be 8800 cards. And I also know that then there will be the 8900 card then the 8950 card then the 8990 extreme card. But I don't moan about what I cannot have. I just enjoy what can be supplied and are grateful.

But then, I'm from New Zealand.

PS: docmars - I was enjoying your posts, how's the laptop going?

 

Finally a positive post!
Where are you based and what is the brand of your panel (see previous posts on how to determine this). Should be SEC5443 or LPL0032 or SHP139D.

 

glad your from New Zealand and your not having any problems good for you but im more speaking to the ppl in the uk the ones who iv been talking to for the last month or so and share my pain with uk customer support i dont care aboout the cards there is always something new out if you read from the begining you would know this im botherd about the delay and the price drop if i had my system when i shud have on the 29 oct we would not be having this conversation

 

im still a big fan of this laptop just not the dell service

 

The Australian Dell 4GB XPS M1730 has gone up $500 bucks and the specs are worse!!! Glad I got in early.

 

The price to upgrade to 4gb is a rip off anyway

 

And you stop whining as well mate...

 

does anyone know if the 2 gb o ram is four 512 of two 1 gb? I want to upgrade. Can I put 800mhz ram in this thing?

I dont know about the rest of you guys, but im very very very disappointed in mine.

its not living up to the way it was marketed

 

The Alienware 8700gt cards are better, as they have dual 512 cards (1gb bettween them). I am not sure how much of a difference this will make but because the memory interface is still only 128bits OI doubt it will make a big difference in performance but, all in all they are still better cards. But the major disadvantage is that they are not using the new centrino duo precessors and they also do not have the 2.8 overclockable extreme processor, so the dell is still the beast.

 

more like dell is still the fairy

 

well it got kinks, but it still wields great potential. I think the main performance issues stem from the vista issues and nvidia's sli being in a infant stage with drivers. From what I understand the sli is not even well supported on none nvidia motherboards for desktops, and since m1730 uses intel motherboard it could also be an issue.

 

i got the first one, turned out to be a dud, got a replacement, which has a squeally screen when I move it, light leakage, slow, and just overall not impressive. I have both systems in my apartment, and im sending both of them back. this is unacceptable. I will wait until its the "beast" for real. I didnt pay 3200+ for potential you know. What am i gonna say when I take it to school when people say "...wow...", im gonna be all like "...ya, this bad boy is potential really fast..."

I get more and more upset just sitting here infront of it. Whats sad is that I need a fast computer for CAD and photoshop. Sometimes I wish I majored in psychology

goodnight people.

 

Oh please don't go... I want to hear you moaning some more...

 

tgchiriga, I totally understand you cause I do maya, 3d max, photoshop and all those things too so that is one of my main motivation to get it. There is now excuse for light leakage and those other things that reduce the performance (which seem to be a lack of proper and successful testing), I think it is a rushed system, so it got kinks. Well right now I decided to wait it out a litttle before getting one, and i'm just toughing it out with my inspiron 9300 ( really slow and annoying). I was allways skeptical after I read the specs on the video card (it being 128 bit) and SLi being a somewhat new thing to laptops.

I'm just waiting for the first really next gen card for the laptop, the 8800M and then hopfully dell will get their logistics together and provide quality builds.

 

I'll be back tomorrow Hey man, im upset because to me this system was very expensive. To some here, its just another state of the art piece of equipment.

 

it is expensive that why I'm chilling, despite my system giving me headaches, to seeing how it pans out

 

listen if all you want a one sided view of this laptop then just spend your time talking to your fab dell suport team i want both sided of the story from ppl who know

 

Can someone confirm this for me but isn't that exactly the same as the Dell 8700M. They are both 512 Mb but they don't stack memory, that's the way SLI technology works isn't it?

 

the dell is 2x 256 in sli

 

the alienware from the conversation iv just had is getting a new laptop with an extream cpu overclokable 17in screem dual 8700gt 512 in sli if they have blu-ray im going to be very tempted but dell still winning so far just need to watch this space

 

Alienware is more expensive aren't they? In Ausralia the m9750 default config is nearly $4000 i paid $3575 for the m1730 in my sig. Maybe they just like ripping Australians off.
lol

 

Both the Dell and the Alienware have 512MB in total, but the Dell is configured to tap into the RAM as well, so in fact it has up to 768MB depending on your system.

 

The real value of the Dell service lies in the Tech Support compared to other companies. Next-day on-site support including parts. They don't argue with you and come straightaway.

I think their customer service is just average. They can only arrange same-config, same-price replacements. I am sure Sales could have deal with your problem in a satisfying manner.

But again, as long as you are not a customer, you can't really test their tech support...There it is a different story.

 

Well, I'm back in the UK and I've been looking at my new Dell Backpack. It looks similar to the old 1710 one but the internal notebook compartment is as think as the 1730 so it's a perfect fit. I will take some pictures and post them up when I get back home after popping out for a bit

 

I live in Crewe, laptop was made in Ireland and my screen is a sec5443, don't know if that's good but it sure looks fine against my 2407 a04 to me.

Expanding on from my previous post, I've just reinstalled it and my god is it fast with the two drives and a clean install. Using the 169.04's my fps have gone up some more in all games but my major problem with this system is anti-aliasing.

To say it kills fps would be possibly the biggest understatement ever. 2x doesn't take much of a hit and looks great thanks to the massive resolution, 4x is playable in many games and looks slightly better but when you crank it above that, fps dips faster than a roller-coaster.

Could make do with some 8800m gtx's but only for 8-16x qsaa and keeping the fps high all the time with the settings and aa on/high.

 

Can you remind us what your problems were? What were the disappointing things in your laptop? Most people get bewtween 8010 and 1010 on 3DMark06.

The Crysis demo is the only thing that seems to cause issues, but that's because it doesn't fully support SLI yet. The delevopers confirmed it. Other than crysis everyone seem to be playing their games at max resolution and detail...

I thought you had chosen an assembly desktop system.

 

AA does the same to all graphic cards, 2AA reduces FPS by 2 thirds. I saw a comparative of all major graphic chips and this is happening with all of them, even on desktop solutions. The Nvidia GT/GTX chips handle this best of all chips...


So what you are observing is perfectly normal.

 

Hey 3NZO,
glad to hear it's fast. Is it worth it to reinstall Vista? And what did you leave out in the reinstallation (what bloatware). Do the 169.04 work well with no bugs?
Another question, I installed the 167.26 yesterday and a thing happened when I played games and used programs like 3dmark. A string that showed how much the SLi was working appeared in the left side of the screen, and I couldn't figure out how to remove it. It was quite annoying seeing as it was very visible in-game. It covered 2/3's of the screen in the height and was about an inch thick. Anoybody know what to do with it, to get it removed?

 

Yeah, higher memory bus width certainly comes into play here, along with the paltry 256mb of video ram. My 8800gtx can handle the same settings with considerably more aa with more fps but it was a shock to see just how low it got.

 

The 8800GTX is an exception I think. All other desktop chips fail miserably. Look at this French review of the cysis demo using various chips at different resolutions and detail levels:
http://www.revioo.com/articles/a10708_4.html
http://www.revioo.com/articles/a10708_5.html

 

At the moment the Crysis demo is not optimized for SLI. This has been confirmed by Nvidia.

This means what you see in Crysis with your 8700 GT is single chip performance.

I think this is the reason why some people are disappointed.

The same French reviewers tested 8800 GTX against 8800 GTX in SLI in Crysis and saw virually no improvement in performance.

Now all of a sudden the 8700 GT SLI becomes shiny.

 

Load up the nvidia control panel and click the 'set sli configuration' page, in the top toolbar, '3d settings' should now appear, click the 'show sli visual indicators' so it is not checked.

I reinstalled with just the drivers for all the hardware and quickset. 55 processes over 90 when I first powered it on. 169's work for me with no problem.

 

Fantastic 3NZO, thanks for the help. Do you have to format the harddrive, or are you set just popping in the Vista DVD and reinstalling it?

 

I formatted the whole drive from scratch.

 

Found this on YouTube ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbqv_FRpD58 ~ Nothing special for current owners, but thought some people might want to look as there are not a whole bunch vids/reviews out there. So anything is better than nothing.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxYGkNjozOQ

 

Hi lucky 1730 owners, I have some questions regarding upgrades of the 1730, would be great if anyone of you who has some knowledge about this could share in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=184704