First, know I am not a Dell or AW basher, as my 10 year old dell desktop is still flawlessly usable and my M11x r2 is a beast and with me everywhere everyday. It has only been serviced for hinge replacements. I'm well seasoned and will get up into a laptops guts in a minute. So I'm not whinny or squeamish.
I got my M18xr2 from the dell outlet. I chose the 660m because I did not want automatic switchable graphics on this one.
Machine is beautiful and when working is magical. Big screen, outstanding graphics, and never seems stressed runs cool all the time. Zone 9 lights and media buttons not working on arrival.
Then there is the breakdown. After a series of updates, the soundblaster card drivers conflicting with the nividia drivers causing sound card unable to be found. Sorted that out by trial and error resulting in Nvidia driver 320.49 (great driver for 660m) and windows HD sound driver (windows loads by default) used with creative thx sound pro combination . Issue appeared solved for 3 days perfect machine but for the zone 9 area.
On the fourth day any movement of screen lid caused shut down. would restart but now sound card not always found on restarts.
On day five system would just shut down randomly, restarting sometimes, other times black screen with 7 beeps.
Latest and final for me. After a series of shut downs led to the windows unable to start prompt, system wont stay on long enough for the repair to run or for windows to boot normal. What is happening now is if fans don't kick in of restart, black screen and 7 beeps mode occurs. If fans kick in it will post and run until the cpu fan turns off, then 20 seconds later system shuts off. So it may in fact come down to system shutdown to avoid over heat or actual over heat of cpu once fan stops running. So with 340 some odd days of warranty and a beast of a m11x r2 as trusty as ever, I'm just going to settle in for the long haul because I've seen the Magic of the m18x r2 and await its return to glory.
Dell techs here I come.