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

From production to shipping they might take a week, I have suffered that on 2 of the replacements... But again, we are one step closer to getting our new computers... Yet you have to remember they are in the US, if I were you I would contact your Account Manager and asked if they have some stock in europe or not, or at least the date they expect to have stock from nvidia...

 

Actually when I had the 8700m GT for my M1730 the heat didn´t increase with overclocking. I had mine raised. Overclocking is easy, done through Rivatuner. You can of course flash the bios too but you risk more by flashing.

 

Oh well, yet another day of rubbish service by Dell...

09:30 call the guy pointed to by my sales persons out of office - leave message no response
11:45 speak to the person finally "yes know about the issue can't give you an order number", will call you back in 15 minutes
13:30 call, leave message no response
14:30 call leave message no response - ask for any kind of update
16:30 call leave message no reponse
16:55 call customer services get reference number, explain situation the promise to escalate and get me some kind of response...

Not heard a peep

So 5 days after they messed up I still don't have a confirmed order...

Think its probably time to give up and take my money elsewhere....

Amazed at the way they treat customers.....

Is this Normal for Dell ?

Cheers

 

^^^
Not normal, well not from any experience Ive had.

Take today for example, I rang customer care since my normal account manager was in meetings all day. I just wanted the estimated date for my order. The guy from customer care gave me the estimated date, then told me how I could keep check on it via the Dell site. He then went on to take my email address and phone number, and said that he would continually track the order, and with any change he would email or phone me to let me know as it went through the various stages etc.

I was quite impressed. Usually my account manager just gives me the link to check my order, but since he was busy today it was the first time I decided to contact customer care.

My account manager got back to me after his meetings, and informed me he had just emailed production and told them to prioritise my order.

miprs4 - I think you should ring and threaten to cancel the order. If you still get nothing then cancel it and reorder a day or two later to start afresh.

 

Mine is also still in pre-production, though only on the website.. When I call in by phone theyre telling me it's in production.. And I've called 3 different people now.

 

hey ifti. are you selling your m1730 for a new one with 2 8800s??

 

No, Ive ordered one for someone at work, and Im gonna swap the cards over

 

Though I'm sure they're not able to deliver the 8800 atm.. It's taking too long.. They also marked my order as a "priority" order because they f...cked up on another order.. Still, it's as slow as ever.

 

Just called customer service, my laptop is in production and due to ship by February 18th.

I keep waiting for an email saying they screwed up my order again and that i'll need to re-order. I think this is my 6th atttempt with the exact same configuration.

I'll keep my fingers crossed here.

 

The UK Dell site has the 8800m GTX drivers finally up!

http://support.euro.dell.com/suppor...n&ServiceTag=&SystemID=XPS_1730&os=WLH&osl=EN

I wonder how long Nvidia will take to release some better beta drivers for this card.....

 

Just downloaded and checked out the 8800M GTX Driver from Dell. It supports many different mobile GPU's including the 8700M. Driver version is 167.55 with a date of 12/21/2007. Nothing really new about these imho.

 

^^^
Doesnt sound very promising.....

On another note - a few pages back a couple of members stated how the Cleva/Sager needed a mainboard swapout, and that the M1730 may also need one. I argued that a mainboard swap would not be required.

Anyways, I decided to try email XPS Support with the question, and they just came back with this.......

Obviously they still dont know anything about the upgrade program, but I reckon the upgrade program will be announced pretty soon now, and will probably start some time in March.

 

Hi

Long time reader of this forum, however this is my first post.

I ordered my M1730 8800gtx sli on the 31/1/08 and was quoted a dispatch date of 21/2/08.

I have just checked the status of my order online today at 10am and it has been DISPATCHED!, okay still technically in Ireland but its finally on its way.
There is now hope that everyone does not have to wait until the quoted dispatch date.

Yay! I shall post when it turns up.

Chief

 

nice one chief - welcome to the forum - it'll be nice to see the first results from the 8800s

 

I'd be well excited! lol
Maybe the cards have finally come in and systems are being built now!

 

What a great news!!!
I'm waiting a laptop like your!

 

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!

Awesome news, maybe I can get it before 2009!!! XD

 

Hey Chief - what are your system specs?

 

Just updated my signature, hope it covers it

btw, just had an automated call from the delivery company, it will be delivered tomorrow.
This is a right pain because I am off sick at the mo and need to be back at work tomorrow. I guess this is the karma for getting mine first

 

Engineer arrived to replace my light leaking Sharp panel yesterday with a refurbished Sharp panel - I told him to politely shove it up his arse.

Another engineer is coming this afternoon with a non refurbished Samsung - which again, I will shove where the sun doesnt shine.

This is just comical now - what does it take to get a decent screen (LG) - I think im going to order one from the US and fit it myself - i'll post pics when I do it.

 

Nice specs there Chief.
I'll be getting my 8800 soon so I'll have similar specs to yourself.

I fit the HDD's myself after I received the laptop.

How come many people dont go for the BluRay drive though? Just because of the cost etc?

 

By the way heres some vids for you to familiarise yourself with your coming Beast before it arrives.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=206068

If you're anything like me, you'll open it up to take a look about before you even switch it on for the first time! lol

Then again, maybe you prefer to play things safe and arent as silly as I am! lol

 

I just did not really want to pay for something I could not see myself using.
I don't watch many movies on laptops, I am a film buff and I prefer watching Hi-Def on a big TV.

 

True. I got it to futureproof the laptop a little more. I thought I would be getting a BluRay reader, but it turned out that I have a BluRay writer So Im pretty chuffed with it!

I gotta wait 3 weeks for my 8800 though
I want it NOW!!!
lol

 

I think you should contact your Account Manager since they are allready shipping 8800GTX he might be able to speed things up.... Tell him also to speed my delivery... XD

 

^^^
yeh I emailed him but he hasnt replied yet - I'll ring him later.

 

Quick question, you ordered your laptop on which date?

 

31st january

 

None of my HD content is on BluRay disc (nor HD-DVD, for that matter). Also, my external monitor doesn't support HDCP so even if I had a BluRay drive and movies to play on it, I'd get poor quality output.

Also, the price is prohibitive. I rest safe in the knowledge that such drives will be a fraction of the price a year from now (same as happened to CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-R/W and DVD-R/W drives). This might not be so much of a consideration on such an expensive laptop, but I'd rather spend my money on things other than pale pachiderms!

 

Hi Guys,

Great thread and very informative.

I just got my XPS M1730 with Vista Home and 2GB of Ram.

I was wondering if it was worth getting 4GB of Ram or not?

Also will PC2-5400 memory fit? I was thinking of getting the OCZ ones - but not sure if they work - as Dell seem to state PC2-5300.

Are they the same thing?

Also any benefit in upgrading to Vista Ultimate?

Finally - do the M1730 have 3 antenna as I ordered a 4965ABGN card off Ebay?

Thanks in Advance. Keep up the good work and informative discussion.

 

Welcome to the club

4GB will not give you any measurable speed increase. If you need to ask the question, you don't need 4GB

The benefits of Vista Ultimate are negligible. It's not faster, leaner or more optimised. It just has a few extra things (snazzy backup util which is still not as good as some freeware programs, bitlocker drive encryption which is not useful to home users and merely slows down disc access). The only cosmetic extra is windows dreamscene which gives you a selection of desktop background videos.

Leave the memory alone. If you do upgrade to 4GB, buy only 667MHz RAM. 800MHz RAM will work perfectly, but will be clocked at 667MHz. Limitation of the chipset. Any DDR2 667MHz SODIMM should work.

I have an Intel draft-n wireless card in my M1730 (as supplied direct from Dell) and it works fine. Sensitivity to b/g networks isn't the best I've seen, but works well enough for me. You appear to have ordered the same card I'm using.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I did not buy the memory from Dell as you can get it cheaper aftermarket and keep the old ones!

I have the urge to upgrade my machine but will resist and wait for the 8800GTX SLI card.

I guess the 4965ABGN card is the best upgrade for now - I ordered it from the guy on ebay who sells them for £10 - that is cheap!!

One more question - I have a 200GB Seagate drive - if I want to add another for RAID 0 - do I just drop it in or do I need a Caddy and to reinstall Vista?

Can I add the Hitachi or does it not matter?

Cheers

 

The brand doesnt matter as far as its 200gb 7200k, if you do raid0, you will lose all your data, and the m1730 comes ready for a 2nd drive.

 

i tried to get a single 8800GTX card and thought i almost had it but was denied again lol

 

Hey could ypou tell me how you get on with this upgrade cause i also looked at those cards on ebay but was wondering if they had the third antenna.
Cheers

 

Soo Im running 8700 Drivers 167.51 Anyone have any feedback on the Newest drivers? Good bad? Crysis?

 

i just pulled off my keyboard the had a look and yes, you do (well i do) have the spare wire for the 4965ABGN card, so should be an easy upgrade

 

Is it any better than the 3945ABG on G APs???

 

Sweet jesus.

My order is actually going to ship by feb 15.

Estimated delivery date is feb 29, but the CSR I spoke to says there's no way it will take that long to delivery, and that I should expect my laptop before feb 22.

Woot.

 

I loaded up the 167.55 drivers. Performance is no change as far as game perfromance Crysis, COD4 and COH-OF.
I did see a change in Fan operation as it looks like high speed is kicking in sooner. Never noticed before but now I can tell 3 GPU fan speeds low, med at 73 degrees C and high at 77 dregrees C. This also could be in part that I have A06 Bios installed. I also cool from 77-78C to about 69C in a matter of seconds on game exit.

The only item to really note is Sli enabling now requires reboot where as with 167.45 and 167.51 one was not required.

I will keep testing- "Gotta have something to do waiting to upgrade"

 

Hello all. Stumbled upon this message board during my research on the M1730. I originally had the M1730 ordered as a powerful video editing machine (even though it's targeted for gaming) to go along side my 2 other Video Editing Desktop workstations. I had maxed everything out on my M1730 order EXCEPT for the video card seeing as video editing applications are said to not be GPU intensive. Either way, after reading through the notebookreview message board posts, I ended up getting hyped, cancelled my order, and put in a new order as follows:

XPS M1730 - Intel® Core 2 Extreme X7900

NVIDIA SLI Dual GeForce® 8800M GTX (went ahead for the sli 8800s instead of originally a single 8700 - work hard....play hard)

120GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) Free Fall Sensor (Originally had 2 x 200gb Raid setup but just went for 120gb to cut the price down a little and will install a 200gb on my own)

I went with Microsoft XP because my Video Editing software is Windows 2000 / XP only with no sign of updates to work with VISTA. Hope they won't just suddenly stop XP compatibility for Windows games. I might need to do more research but wasen't Shadowrun 'Vista Only'?

But either way, i'm looking forward to getting the machine in. Estimated ship date is March 3rd. Hopefully it's sooner. What went from being a work machine for me (with a gaming edge) will hopefully end up as a long lasting investment.

 

Seems to like they're shipping much sooner then estimated.

Time will tell however.

 

Hi!
Does anyone know when Penryn processors will be available? They're on DELL HK since 1 week but nothing on DELL.com...
Thanks very much for your answers!

 

So.. given my crazy saga of tying to get an M1730....

New customer number and sales person
New order in the system yesterday
Proccessing to pre-production this morning....

Lets see what happens.....

 

Short question to you guys with the X7900 CPU:

What speeds have you managed to overclock your X7900 with a stable system?
About what speeds can you overclock to without having the fans running all the time and the comp being very hot?

If some of you have tested a bit

 

Congratz, that`s one powerfull machine you got over there As for games' support of XP....i can't think of the names from the top of my head, but there are a few out there, that won't run on XP. But most of the games still support XP and will support it for a loooong time. The only drawback of XP is that you can't see all the benefits of DX10 graphics and that's what 8800GTX is all about Hopefully vista support will be added to your video aditing program.

 

Nice, hope you`ll get yours by the end of this week. Will be waiting for some reviews, especially crysis performance

 

Ive just had a call from Dell telling me exactly the same! He said its in production now and will ship by the end of this week, so hopefully if this is correct I should have it by mid next week, and I'll be whipping the card out of that machine like no mans business!
Cant wait - gonna buy my cooler and Gears of War this weekend

Good luck man! Seems like Dell have stock of the cards in now so it should be with you in the next few weeks........hopefully!

Online my order still says pre-processing as well, but the guy from Dell rang to tell me its actually in production now....

 

Mine ran at 3.4 fine all the time with no problems. Didnt get that hot either although the fans automatically run at the highest which is very noisy!.

ten

 

My M1730 8800 sli turned up at 11am, I am pleased with it. However the reality of spending £2502 on a laptop has hit home.

I have just finished running 3d mark 06 on it (The free version)

I got a score of 9192, is that good?

Just off to install all my games now.