Finally took the plunge and got an alienware. (the only other brand laptop I haven't owned yet) I recieved it yesterday and noticed there was no touchpad stickers and no screw holding the smart bay in place. The laptop was not set up as specified in my order either. Anyone else have any problems like this? I wouldn't think they would ship out a screw and stickers from what I hear about their service.

Good call on the smart bay screw, I just noticed mine is also missing.
I’m not sure what touchpad stickers you’re talking about. But the system does include stickers in the owners book (the leather book).
With my older m5550 they did not ship the free AW mousepad, I gave support a call and in a week the mouse pad was in the mail. I’d assume they would do the same for the screw and sticker.

I have to assume by your order was not set up as specified you mean you purchased extra software and it is not installed? If so, I’d run the alienware respawn (option at boot up) and make sure your programs are installed. If not you can send her back, but its honestly just a boot partition running Windows RE, which you can do yourself. Still, that’s a pain to set up and you did pay for it, all your software should be loaded in your respawn…

why would there be a screw holding the smartbay inside the laptop... that would kinda defeat the purpose of quick changing out the optical drive for the battery...having to unscrew a screw to change out... I thought they it was a simple push-in switch that popped out the smartbay...

Yes that's true but I am not planning on using the smart bay often and there is a place to secure the spring assembly of it to the chassis.

Its for security. It's too easy to pop out the BD-RW drive and put it in your pocket.

I had one order that was missing a peripheral, just call them and they'll ship it. They also have a forum section in the official forums for missing parts with your order.

Contact them right away though, as I've seen a couple people wait a long time to let them know something was missing, and it was a problem due to the timing.

they didn't send my control.. but i called n they said they're gonna send it

There isn't suppose to be a screw on the smartbay. If you want to keep your BD drive safe, keep an eye on it.

Wow, you're right Spartan. I just checked out the AW owners manual and they do not say anything about the security screw. ODM intended this as a security lock (hence the lock icon by the screw hole) but i guess AW will just cover ya under warranty

yeah i thought the screw thing was kinda dumb for a quick change out...

I actually started looking this up. the screw on the bottom basically removes the ability to push the quick release button.
By definition, the m15x does not have a certified Kensington Security Slot (standard laptop lock) because of the lack of security on the optical disk drive. It appears the ODM here was prepared for this and fitted the device with a security screw to prevent someone from taking the optical drive out. For whatever reason AW felt like removing this… note on the tech specs page it says “Security lock slot” not “Kinsington security slot”. you'll also notice that they dont use the Kinsington security lock icon, just one thats close to it. Of course all they need to do is unscrew it but they can pretty much steal all the notebooks components if they start unscrewing things

Interesting...