Jason Pool

Congrats! I got promised a replacement for my current system with one of these, but that never happened. At least I got a better system. Gonna get a haswell i7 and mobo for my desktop tomorrow, at least.

Even if the Quadro 4000M was a better card, its a workstation/business GPU. Both the hardware and drivers are not tooled for gaming; you're going to get lackluster performance by putting it in a gaming laptop.

Whatever you do, don't assume that a quiet system means its done and try shutting it off. It takes a long time for the End button trick to work, and I learned that the hard way. Permanently bricked the motherboard and had to have it replaced, which was a headache dealing with Dell in it's own right. At least the new system is a better refurb model than the old one.

I just picked up a refurbished M17R4 recently. Dell made it a headache, though. I got it using Dell Financial Services, and they had the account locked pending verification for months. Then I bricked it with a BIOS update, which took weeks to get anywhere, since DFS refused to let the warranty department repair the machine until I cleared up the verification situation, which was mainly caused by me using an old number on the app to avoid Dell trying to sell me shit, which meant they couldn't contact me at the number on the account to verify. I had to restore service to the old phone number to get it fixed, otherwise I'd probably still be having problems. Anyway, they replaced the motherboard twice, first motherboard, the sound was dead, windows didn't even detect it, not even an "Other" entry in the device manager. Second motherboard caused problems with the keyboard. Their policy dictates I can get a replacement system if two repairs failed. First guy says I can get one of the new Alienware 17 systems, even confirmed that when calling back in to check on it, only to find out later that they hadn't realized it was a refurb and a new one wasn't possible. Guy tries to send me the best refurb unit available, but dell requests fedex return the package when it was about to be delivered (they did the exact same thing with the original system due to the DFS problem). Eventually, I convinced them to send an even better one with a 680M, so in the end, I went through a huge headache, but made out quite well: i7-3610QM -> i7-3840QM 750GB HDD -> 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD 8 GB RAM -> 16 GB RAM GTX 660M -> GTX 680M 1600x900 screen -> full HD 1920x1080 Nearly twice as powerful, going by the 3dmark scores, and nearly twice as expensive. I just hope I don't have any more headaches with Dell.

Does the unlocked BIOS by chance have an option for an EFI shell?

I tried to downgrade like this to do an upgrade to A11 unlocked. After beeping quite a few times, it just hung there. I made the mistake of unplugging it, and now not only do I get no response when trying to power up, when I try to repeat the process again to restore the BIOS, that won't even work. Holding power with no power cord/battery to discharge system doesn't help. Do I have any hope on this except to have Dell repair it? I got this under Dell Financial Services, and they are refusing to do the repair until the account is verified, which I've been trying to do for 2-3 months with their incompetent Indian call center. Funny how they can bill me and send the product, but still act like the account isn't open, and not only not allow me to pay online through their website, but block warranty service.