Dell SLI 17" Laptop 984 @dell.com

I'd get this if I could sell my P-6831FX for more than diddly squat. This laptop isn't much of an upgrade over my upgraded laptop, but the options to add an SSD are CHEAP. You guys should be all over this. The 128mb SSD + 250GB hard drive for $175 seems to be the best deal in the options list.
 
ordovician said:
I'd get this if I could sell my P-6831FX for more than diddly squat. This laptop isn't much of an upgrade over my upgraded laptop, but the options to add an SSD are CHEAP. You guys should be all over this. The 128mb SSD + 250GB hard drive for $175 seems to be the best deal in the options list.
Click to expand...

SLI 9800M GT's > 8800M GTS by a lot... I think it would be a very nice upgrade for you as long as you don't skimp on the CPU.

Yeah the 128gb SSD is priced really well, but I'm wondering how fast it is compared to more expensive offerings. I would totally buy this laptop if it were not for that fact that I already have a powerful gaming desktop and I need portability for college. I kinda feel like I'm losing for not jumping on this, though.
 
aznofazns said:
SLI 9800M GT's > 8800M GTS by a lot... I think it would be a very nice upgrade for you as long as you don't skimp on the CPU.

Yeah the 128gb SSD is priced really well, but I'm wondering how fast it is compared to more expensive offerings. I would totally buy this laptop if it were not for that fact that I already have a powerful gaming desktop and I need portability for college. I kinda feel like I'm losing for not jumping on this, though.
Click to expand...


The problem is that I don't game on my laptop enough to justify spending any more money on the ability to game on it. My 8800 is good enough. The only things irking me would be the potential to do this without really spending anything.
 
I have Gateway 7811FX so don't need it but would grab this Dell in a heart beat if I needed one.
I'm tempted to get it anyway. Current Gateway 7805u lacks the 1920 screen and I would not go lower after having 1920. The increased real estate alone is worth it.

I wonder how the speakers are on this Dell unit? Gateway is plain vanilla in the speaker department. Yes, ear phones are the answer.

I would expect this baby would run a slight toasty with two graphic heaters. Just guessing.
 
The speakers on the m1730 are definitely above average, probably even for DTR notebooks. There's no dedicated sub but that's not such a big deal.
 
Dang, it is tempting. I've let deals like this go before and kicked myself later. Oh, the agony of it!
 
Holy shit. If you follow the regular links to Dell's XPS 1730 listing, you'd be paying about $1600 for this.

Sweet deal, too bad "gaming laptop" is one of the worst price/performance propositions to begin with.
 
this will only further lower the price of the affordable gateway laptops.

9800m GT in SLI is substantially faster than an 9800m/8800m GTS
 
how did you find this link? cause i don't see it at dells, this one has the laptop labeled as 1730 instead of M1730
 
I'm really considering buying a T8300, 128gb SSD (Seems like they're the $300 Samsung ones), and teh 250gb Hard Drive upgrades, stealing the SSD from it, then selling it about what I got it for.

I'm worried though that by the time I get it, these will be ALLLL over ebay.
 
The Dell Check out thing refuses to kick out a sales tax estimate.. however I'm sure that they will ding me fore Sales Tax on check out.
 
i have never owned a laptop. i have been looking at the 17" toshiba, asus's and gateway for a gaming laptop which are all around $1250 configured.. how is dell reliability compared to the others i mentioned?
 
Deal's dead. Good luck those us who ordered -- I have a strong feeling Dell will be cancelling most of these unfortunately, or will string out shipments until most people cancel. It's what they usually do with to-good-to-be-true deals like this.
 
Crap... I feel bad for skipping this deal. Big props to the OP for finding it, though.
 
i feel bad for skipping it too.... but i think they made a mistake on their site, i think they meant to put sli 8700gt's or whatever they are for 999 not 9800gt's... the deal will come around again soon enough if it really is the legit specs so im not worried about waiting for it. they might be trying to clear out old video cards before they start offering the 260 and 280 in the XPS line.
 
Yeah, too bad the 260M/280M are still based off of desktop 8800/9800 architecture... so they're not that much faster 9800M/8800M.
 
Looks like Dell is doing one of two things with these orders: they're either not shipping them or pulling a bait-and-switch. A number of people over at Slickdeals have had their specs reduced in their confirmation e-mail to a single 8700 GT 512, and most others (even those who ordered last week, myself included) are still waiting for an order confirmation. I'd bet Dell will pull the "price mistake" bullshit on this one... which is utterly ridiculous considering this deal has been live since May 7.
 
Last edited:
harmattan said:
Deal's dead. Good luck those us who ordered -- I have a strong feeling Dell will be cancelling most of these unfortunately, or will string out shipments until most people cancel. It's what they usually do with to-good-to-be-true deals like this.
Click to expand...

harmattan said:
Looks like Dell is doing one of two things with these orders: they're either not shipping them or pulling a bait-and-switch. A number of people over at Slickdeals have had their specs reduced in their confirmation e-mail to a single 8700 GT 512, and most others (even those who ordered last week) are still waiting for an order confirmation. I'd bet Dell will pull the "price mistake" bullshit on this one... which is utterly ridiculous considering this deal has been live since May 7.
Click to expand...


They better not do any of these.


Update: It appears as if they pulled my order already, dell has no record of the order, the purchase or anything related. Yet I have the confirmation email and the shipping date that seemed to have moved back a week already.
 
Last edited:
I made an order and got an order acknowledgment ID via email; I called customer service and even after getting bounced around 3 times the best they could do was pull up a 'quote' for the order. That said, the customer service rep I spoke with said it may take up to 48 hours for the order to be processed and confirmed. I'm not giving up hope yet.
 
I've been waiting since Friday morning now for my confirmation. Same deal when I call CS: they bounce me around, then tell me it could be up to "72-hours" for the confirmation to arrive. Funny, it was only "48-hours" when I called yesterday.

A poster at SD reports Dell CSRs are now stating this was an "illegal configuration/pricing error" and all orders under this e-value code will be canceled before they get to manufacturing. Dammit. Well, if it's too good to be true... Still really outlandish to think Dell is not doing this on purpose.
 
I know it's not a smoker at almost $600 more than the OP quoted but $1600 isn't a terrible bad deal for an 9800 SLI'd machine, even if it only has 2gb of memory.
 
Tremek said:
I made an order and got an order acknowledgment ID via email; I called customer service and even after getting bounced around 3 times the best they could do was pull up a 'quote' for the order. That said, the customer service rep I spoke with said it may take up to 48 hours for the order to be processed and confirmed. I'm not giving up hope yet.
Click to expand...

harmattan said:
I've been waiting since Friday morning now for my confirmation. Same deal when I call CS: they bounce me around, then tell me it could be up to "72-hours" for the confirmation to arrive. Funny, it was only "48-hours" when I called yesterday.

A poster at SD reports Dell CSRs are now stating this was an "illegal configuration/pricing error" and all orders under this e-value code will be canceled before they get to manufacturing. Dammit. Well, if it's too good to be true... Still really outlandish to think Dell is not doing this on purpose.
Click to expand...

I'm getting the same results as you two.
 
I am now getting completely different results from Dell... Here's what I did:

Earlier in the day I called and got someone who could give me a phone number to the order modification department, phone # 1800-247-2076. I called them just now, spoke to someone who told me this web 'quote' wouldn't get converted into an order because 'the price is too low' and it was a 'marketing error' on the web. I told him I wasn't happy with this, and proceeded to get transferred away from the modification department to an operator, who transferred me to sales, who transferred me to the modification department again.

Now I was speaking with a different person, who told me the order also had a 'price too low' coupon on the order. I told them I had only applied a $15 off coupon, he said he was going to talk to the online department. He put me on hold, came back, spoke two words -

... and hung up on me.

So I called the order modification department back. He told me he DID see the order as being confirmed and that I should be getting a confirmation email in 2-3 hours. I asked if there was any way he could help me confirm this, he said yes, one moment.... He put me on hold, and suddenly I was being transferred. ... To an operator. I told the operator what was going on, and he transferred me to sales. That sales person then transferred me to the order modification department AGAIN.

Well. This person seemed to be an entirely different sort of Dell agent. I explained to her what was going on, she looked up my 'order' and told me the $15 coupon I had also applied to the order couldn't be processed on it. I told her I didn't mind that not being on the order.... And in a matter of 60 seconds, she had given me an actual order number!

She also emailed me an order confirmation upon my request to do so, and it's now sitting in my inbox.

So after 7 transfers, 1 disconnect, and entirely different answers from all those people - mission accomplished? Maybe... We shall see what happens from here.

If you are in the same position I was (am?) in, keep trying. Apparently different people at Dell know and do completely different things from each other.
 
i don't think the only problem is the coupon code, think of the amount of people who tried to hit this laptop after it being posted all over the internet, they blatantly made a fuckup with the graphics cards as the 999 bux one is 8700m gt's in SLI, not 9800's.... also that's the only laptop with 2gb of ram in the 1730 range.

think of the amount of people they screw over all the time with graphics card amongst other things when deals go on, it's almost like they go out of their way to mess shit up.

im just glad i didn't accept the offers on my desktop to try get in on this, i knew something dodgy was going on as it always does with Dell.
 
Wow... this reminds me of what stupid ass Ecost did a few days ago, offering THREE different Shure earbuds that originally cost $110-$500 for $53.99 and under, then emailing cancellations to a large number of unhappy customers afterward.
 
I think the old adage "If it's too good to be true, it probably is" applies here.

Still pretty shitty how often Dell has been doing this. This is not even remotely the first time I've heard of Dell doing this exact same thing.
 
I spent 2 hours of my day yesterday with Dell clearing this up so now it should be easy for you.
Call Dell Cancel Re-enter--1800-247-2076 only if you received a purchase id confirmation email after you ordered the XPS 1730. They are the only ones that will have it in there system and they will immediately go over the specs with you, shoot you an email and place the order.

The bad, I wasted 2 hours of my day. The good, the lcd they send is the 1920 X 1200. It's the same price but now better screen.

Good Luck!
 
Tremek said:
I am now getting completely different results from Dell... Here's what I did:

Earlier in the day I called and got someone who could give me a phone number to the order modification department, phone # 1800-247-2076. I called them just now, spoke to someone who told me this web 'quote' wouldn't get converted into an order because 'the price is too low' and it was a 'marketing error' on the web. I told him I wasn't happy with this, and proceeded to get transferred away from the modification department to an operator, who transferred me to sales, who transferred me to the modification department again.

Now I was speaking with a different person, who told me the order also had a 'price too low' coupon on the order. I told them I had only applied a $15 off coupon, he said he was going to talk to the online department. He put me on hold, came back, spoke two words -

... and hung up on me.

So I called the order modification department back. He told me he DID see the order as being confirmed and that I should be getting a confirmation email in 2-3 hours. I asked if there was any way he could help me confirm this, he said yes, one moment.... He put me on hold, and suddenly I was being transferred. ... To an operator. I told the operator what was going on, and he transferred me to sales. That sales person then transferred me to the order modification department AGAIN.

Well. This person seemed to be an entirely different sort of Dell agent. I explained to her what was going on, she looked up my 'order' and told me the $15 coupon I had also applied to the order couldn't be processed on it. I told her I didn't mind that not being on the order.... And in a matter of 60 seconds, she had given me an actual order number!

She also emailed me an order confirmation upon my request to do so, and it's now sitting in my inbox.

So after 7 transfers, 1 disconnect, and entirely different answers from all those people - mission accomplished? Maybe... We shall see what happens from here.

If you are in the same position I was (am?) in, keep trying. Apparently different people at Dell know and do completely different things from each other.
Click to expand...

I tried the same thing as you, after two hours of being nice, nasty, and professional (tried all the personality options), none of them got me anywhere. The dell reps have no clue what is going on.

I gave up eventually.

nightwalker said:
i don't think the only problem is the coupon code, think of the amount of people who tried to hit this laptop after it being posted all over the internet, they blatantly made a fuckup with the graphics cards as the 999 bux one is 8700m gt's in SLI, not 9800's.... also that's the only laptop with 2gb of ram in the 1730 range.

think of the amount of people they screw over all the time with graphics card amongst other things when deals go on, it's almost like they go out of their way to mess shit up.

im just glad i didn't accept the offers on my desktop to try get in on this, i knew something dodgy was going on as it always does with Dell.
Click to expand...

Actually, if you go to dell right now (the main site) and you configured the system, the dual 9800GT's are only $50 more than they were during the sale, so I don't see how this could be so blatant.

MavericK96 said:
I think the old adage "If it's too good to be true, it probably is" applies here.

Still pretty shitty how often Dell has been doing this. This is not even remotely the first time I've heard of Dell doing this exact same thing.
Click to expand...

It was not too good to be true. It was a hell of a deal but it was by no means a steal in terms of pricing.

The system I priced out originally worked out to $1480 somewhere around there, this was a great deal. I just priced out a new one (identical) via the dell website last night and the figure came out to $1949.

So this is basically a $400 discount on a $2,000 laptop, not exactly too good to be true. I bought dell servers in the past with THOUSANDS of dollars in discounts. It's not uncommon. The other day I bought 10 dell servers which were marked $600 lower each (servers were only 800 to start with).

So no, this is not a "too good to be true"

Also, factor in that the sale worked since 5/7/09, that's two weeks it took dell to stop it?

The base laptop M1730 sells right now on dells site for 999 fixed price, the sale was the same for base, the options were only made cheaper.

Lastly, people had theirs shipped, but with alternative specifications which were not ordered, which would assume that dell was aware of the issue or at least aware of that checkout process.



This is a real big foul ball on dells part. I also have an online store configurator, I check my configurations by checking out. Most shopping cart systems have a fake checkout process with a fake id so that store vendors can checkout with test configurations to ensure that the pricing structure is appropriate.

What I found interesting is that I was being up-sold while on the phone too, they told me that I can push this order through right now if I can get a 2 year warranty with it and pay full price.
 
Looks like my order got 'Acknowledged" but never "Confirmed". My Purchase ID isn't even recognized in the system. Good riddance I suppose--I'll definitely be wary of any of my future Dell purchases. Good luck to those that did get it though ^^.
 
Ockie said:
It was not too good to be true. It was a hell of a deal but it was by no means a steal in terms of pricing.

The system I priced out originally worked out to $1480 somewhere around there, this was a great deal. I just priced out a new one (identical) via the dell website last night and the figure came out to $1949.

So this is basically a $400 discount on a $2,000 laptop, not exactly too good to be true. I bought dell servers in the past with THOUSANDS of dollars in discounts. It's not uncommon. The other day I bought 10 dell servers which were marked $600 lower each (servers were only 800 to start with).

So no, this is not a "too good to be true"
Click to expand...

Ockie said:
Pretty amazing deal if you ask me. Normal price on these were 2,700 each, got em for 1,449.
Click to expand...

:confused: Your information doesn't match up. How does $400 = $1200?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top