Alienware M9700 - suggest alternative options please

Vista isn't Alienware's fault. As far as I've heard, the m9700 handles SLI very well in XP. What made your warranty experiences qualify as poor? I compared various other boutique and high-end laptop models before I finally decided on Alienware. In my opinion, AW is the best option out there.

I'll agree AW could work on their repair side. Took them 4 weeks to swap a video card for me, but the worst part was they were supposed to swap the mobo. Laptop came back as dead as it was when I sent it the first time.

Does AW even offer Vista support for the m9700? I know they don't have any drivers for my laptop at all for Vista.

You answered my questions honestly and calmly (we'll say you passed the troll test).
Check out these other boutique companies:
Sager
Falcon Northwest
Hypersonic

Stay away from Black Widow PC. I'm not big on Voodoo (bought by HP) either, but that's just me.

Do you have the bios for Vista installed? I think it's 3.18?

I've not had any issues with my m9700, but I'm still using XP on the platform. It was designed, built and sold with XP as the OS, with upgrades to Vista near the end of it's run. I chose not to move to Vista due to the memory requirements, and the dreadful condition of Vista and it's issues when it was released.

Having said that, since AW did support Vista for the platform, it should be functional. If you're having problems with coming out of sleep/hibernation, I've seen people here that had that problem due to the video drivers they're using. I've not seen the SLI issue at all.

I would make sure you have the 3.18 bios, then reinstall Vista with the drivers AW certified in the order they use at the factory, especially the chipset and vid card drivers if you're still interested in trying to get it to work. There have been some issues with XP on the m9700 when the drivers are installed in a different order than AW does at the factory.

Here is the drive install order as listed by AW.

If you're using a dual boot setup, there are several posts on these forums regarding how to install, which OS to install first, and how to get it working without conflicts. Dual boot setups can be problematic due to conflicts in the boot sector.

if you want a compact but powerful notebook take a look at the Alienware m15x. the worlds only 15" notebook with the Nvidia 8800GTX gpu (and only 15" with a GTX ever)