Concerned about 17R3 exterior finishes

We cannot know what may or may not happen in the future. How can we account for the different levels of hand sweat corrosiveness? Perhaps you should look into gamer gloves. As far as warranty, no, we would not replace the palm rest assembly due to cosmetic blemishes caused by repetitive hand placement and corrosive sweat.

I am in stitches - No Lie!!!  :)

usage, climate, location and so on all play a factor, so to say how long something will last is unknown, my buddy bought a tv same time as me, same tv.. 9 months later his died, mine is 3 years old now and going strong and i use it 5X more then he does.. (just an example)

i have a m18X R2.. was over 3 years old , it still looked like the day i bought it, BUT i never use the keyboard, the screen nothing on it, always was hooked up to external devices and stayed closed on my desk with the velvet slip over the top of it, its a pristine 10/10 condition, unfortunately the motherboard failed, and i sold it off , and purchased a X51 instead lol

as for the soft touch it was never used, but i heard of complaints that when laptops were in  bags, etc, it wore the corners of the covering off, so this might help with your insight.

Hi Chris,

We cannot know what may or may not happen in the future. How can we account for the different levels of hand sweat corrosiveness? Perhaps you should look into gamer gloves. As far as warranty, no, we would not replace the palm rest assembly due to cosmetic blemishes caused by repetitive hand placement and corrosive sweat.

Oh wow. Thanks for the reassurance!

I'm not sure why, but you seem to have missed the gist of my post, probably my fault for not being clearer. I assume you are not at all familiar with the problem. First, I'm not being at all critical of Alienware or their products; but I would like more information. I'm not even discussing warranty issues here. The plastic deterioration I described has absolutely nothing to do with usage, or sweaty hands (and BTW, if Dell does not know how to account for users hands on keyboards, after manufacturing laptops for decades, I would be extremely surprised. Dell should be experts at this - and I'm sure they are). The problem is inherent in the structure of some materials. As a friend of mine (who is an industrial chemist) put it:

These rubbers are a combination of a SBS block copolymer with a low tg and a hard plastic (usually styrene) with a high tg (look it up). The various components of the mix are not completely compatible and will migrate (usually the oil plasticiser) to the surface and become sticky. Place it in full sunlight and the tack will disappear, the surface will "dry off" (oxidise) but will never go back to it's former glory. The oxidised surface marks and scratches easily. You can surface wash the parts using white spirits but the  tacky soon returns. Horrible cheap injection moulded rubber. Mitigation = none - change the formula, toxicity = nil. "Real rubber" (SBR, Natural) uses different oils which are quite toxic but very compatible and rarely migrate. These compounds can't be injection moulded and are therefore (more) expensive. e.g car tyres. The reason it's normally black parts that suffer is because the formulation contains heaps of filler and re-work and without black pigment would be an unpleasant dirty greyish greeny brown. So the clever chemists add a splash of black pigment and it comes out jet black. Bootiful.

He then goes on to say: it does seem to develop in the dark ; maybe when it's exposed to the sun the surface oxidises faster and it feels less tacky. This stuff doesn't have to plasticise by migration. If the formula is balanced and good quality materials are used it remains ok. It's so easily tested for problems it's inexcusable for it to go sticky. 

So, once again, it seems reasonable to ask the question.

Are Alienware using the same plastics or coatings as these older devices, and will they deteriorate in the same way? Is there anything that can be done to mitigate this deterioration?

For an extreme example of what this looks like, see here: https://youtu.be/ppSgpZ7yIuY

Now, that really is an extreme example, but the same things happens with early Microsoft Intellimouse Explorers - the grey soft touch on the buttons and around the lower skirt goes sticky - even the areas that are never touched - and the only fix is to scrape it off. This turned out to be a really big deal for Toyota and Lexus (they're liable to repair as many as 4.5 million cars as old as 2003 at their own cost) so this is a real problem that Alienware should not be unaware of.

See also http://www.wptv.com/money/consumer/toyota-lexus-melting-dashboard-repairs-delayed-and-toyota-wont-say-when-they-will-start

The response I was expecting, was to be taken seriously; I would not expect this to be a question that you can answer, but I'd appreciate a response from somebody who can.

I'm not familiar with the M18XR2, does it have the same rubberised finish on the keyboard deck that the 17R3 has? And you noticed no deterioration? Sounds hopeful, since this doesn't seem to be caused by usage, rather, the lack of it.

yea soft  touch coating...

My Old AW 18 has the soft rubber coating which does get finger goo on it, I sneezed on it, sweating on it

playing Alien Colonial Marines Bug Hunt all the way through wave 30 which like 2 hours non-stop.

It cleans up with a soft towel or even a paper towel.

Anyway, I have had a chance to get my brand new AW 17 R3 dirty yet playing games since

it just beeps 4 times and has a blank screen when I turned it on for the first time.

Made in August and shipped with a bios version from march.

Gamer Gloves? .

How about Testing Gloves before shipping out a $3500 gaming laptop!