John T. Overath

Have an R2 (which a guy from work is going to be buying soon) and an R3 (which is currently being worked on) and love them both. The R3 was a definate improvement both in speed (went from i5 to i7) and battery time.

But in another 8GB in the upper slots. Not as bad as I thought it would be, a little nerve wracking prying the keyboard bezel piece up, but once that is done very easy. If your just after the memory slots you don't need to unplug the pieces the bezel folds up and the keyboard down. Also you don't need to remove the left most keyboard screw as the programmable keys are on a separate board and that screw holds it in place.

Sorry to hear your having issues Brian. Hope you rejoin our little cult soon

Ordered 5/3, delivered 5/19.

I just broke one of the tabs that holds the bottom part of the control cover. No idea how it even happened as I'm very careful. I guess after opening it 3-4 times the tab just broke due to fatigue. It doesn't affect it at all, it still sits flush but knowing it broke is annoying. One of the tabs that hold down the macro key cable also came off and I had to push it back in. Very flimsy internal setup this time around, the R2 was far more solid in that sense. Given all the issues I've had, I'll probably push for a refund or exchange on Monday.

Making me nervous about possibly popping another 4GB into those top slots.

I have to say i think the screen looks great. The RGB may be better but darned if I can tell the difference. After the reboot from having removed the Dell video drivers it came up in 800x600 and still looked great. i'm used to those non-native resolutions looking crappy.

Nice. It's not really that noisy even on the xfire cards so far. I'm currently in my office which has a lot of ambient noise and I barely here the m18x. Haven't done more then jump into several games to make sure they are all configed right so far so haven't really stressed the cards yet. Still need to install the 11.5 driver as well.

So far I am loving it. Did some default benchmarks and the thing is fast even before tweaking. Of course I am coming from an m17x with 4870s and a desktop with an older i7 and single 5870. Doing some installs now.

I have to say I think the case looks even better then the m17x. Both color and accents (softtouch on the palm rest and the shiny border around the keyboard especially). Boot time seems a lot faster then the m17x, but then again I don't have a lot installed yet.

Uploaded a few more pics:

m18x - Imgur

Looks like the folks who ordered in the first day are getting them in about 2 weeks +/- a few days.

Here are my pics. First time I ever did this so i apologize for the quality.

m18x - Imgur

Mines on the truck now!!!

Contacted Chris M through the official Alienware Owners lounge over on he Dell site. He setup the service tag in there system and said it will be about 10 days until it's available to use on the internet facing websites.

FedEx home operates Tues-Sat from what I understand. Surprised they do NBD though, thought only regular FedEx did that.

Imgur looked easiest to use. Even already setup the album (imgur: the simple image sharer), now just need to wait on the machine to get here. Hopefully FedEx iws accurate and it will arrive tomorrow.

What is a good (free) site for hosting pics?

Happy Day! Finalizing Production on one page and shipped on another. Fed Ex already has the order number in there system. Not sure how accurate the info is there though as it says "shipment information sent" but shows tomorrow as the delivery date. We will see I guess

The Order Status page is down for maintenance! What will I do if I can't hit refresh every 10 minutes to see if my order has shipped!!!!

Unfortunately it won't stay in Cali long. It's going to go to TN and then back to CA. Don't ask me why, that's just the stupid way fedex does things with dell packages.

Let us know if it does that. I know Dell used to ship all there laptops from TN for the US (after getting them from where they were built), but my m11x seemed to direct ship from where it landed in GA.

Not looking to good for me for next week. Still in build so unless it ships soon and i get it much faster then the 7 days my EDD of 5/31 may be accurate.

Ordered mine on the 3rd, still in build state

Anybody else having trouble registering there R3 service tag on the Dell site? I like being able to see on one page info like when warranties expire, plus it's quicker to get to the driver download page.

Man I knew that show was scary!

I think one of my fans may be going as it occasionally on start up sounds louder, with almost a grinding or whining sound. A shutdown and restart usually makes it go away. Need to get that looked at soon.

Off topic:

How are you guys getting such long sigs? I tried copying mine over from NBR and it told me I could only have 2 lines which I had, indicatign that one of the lines might be auto wrapping.

As I found out - if you don't play games, there are much MUCH better laptops than M11x.

Depends on what you want to do with it. I rarely game on my m11x, though it is nice that I can.

It's not super loud, not like it is when you game, but still loud enough to hear it across the room.