Alienware Support - for poor people

Hi All

Tried to mail this to Juan, but the man seems to be in demand and his mailbox was full. So, this can be a general rant and request for some sanity for all us poor people unable to buy brand spanking new AW lappies. I bought the M9700 cos it was supposed to be the dogs dangles but couldnt (at the time) commit to buying a new one, I have now gone over to Dell because at least if I sell my 1710 it can have its warranty signed over. Now thats a good selling point if ever there was one. Anyway, the message follows:

Hi

I was posting a while back regards a used M9700 I purchased with performance problems. Due to the lack of suport for second user machines I have decided to buy an alternative brand this time around. My question is if there is a problem with the M9700 how can I find out, how can I get it fixed and why are AW being so short sighted, if I had gotten support even if I had to pay for it, I would have been happy to have followed my next purchase with the same company. As is I am now stuck with a fairly expensive machine that cant seem to achieve a decent performance level.

Just interested in your thoughts and if you have any suggestions on what can be done with this sadly neglected bit of kit.

Kind Regards


Dr. Les

Hi Duke

The guys on the forum here have already been brilliantly helpful but I believe it might be a problem with the hardware. IN which case I have no path that can be followed. I bough the machine from an ebay seller whom since has left the UK for a warmer location(Spain, not Hell) so I have no way to contac thim. When I first got it I though it was okay but felt it had been over hyped. I then had a chat with a friend of mine owning a 1710 XPS, he was curious as to what they could do head to head. the XPS totally smooked the AW, which we were both surprised about. It was at this point that I joined the forum and started asking questions.

Hi HH

I remember the your answers and that very point. It would be a winner in the event that they could accept chargable repairs for non-warranty job. As I mentioned previously the feedback from here was very helpful and its a shame that all the help I received didnt fix it. I did get a PM from Steve Lopez, whom seems to be a very helpful chap, just waiting for some feedback from our chat.

Never did find out, I dont have the diags to be really sure. Everything looked okay but it didnt seem to run both cards in SLI mode. Even taking this into account it was only getting sub 3K ratings in 3DMark 05 which is not anything like ewhat I would expect for the spec. I agree that it may we have been faulty when I bought it which would be a bit naughty but what can you do?

XP, using the original AW drivers it was okay but perforance was still very poor. If I tried any other drivers (inc new inf files) it would not recognise the SLI and there were no major performance improvements. Tried all the usual stuff, reseating cards/bridges etc but to no avail.