If your in canada and you ordered a AW lappy with the 500GB drive, seems they are backordered.. m17x ordered jan 28th, delayed twice to March 18th. Contacted Dell Canada and was told the 500GB 7200rpm is backordered..

Have things started clearing up with delays?  I ordered a system on Monday and I just received a tracking number today.  The configuration is:

Aurora Cosmic Black
i7-975 overclocked
24GB DDR3 1333mhz
Dual 5870 w/ crossfireX
Dual optical drives (BD burner)
SSD Hard drive

That seems like standard turnaround, doesn't it?

I didn't get the soundblaster because it said I couldn't with the dual video cards.  In fact, before I got the notification I had just found this thread (I was looking up overclocking because someone told me it was stupid to pay for it to be pre-overclocked).  I was going to cancel my order and buy the Area-51 so I could get the larger PS and the Dual 5970's with the soundblaster card.

Now I can't cancel and all I can do is refuse or send back.

Ahhhh!  i just posted that I didn't get the sound card.

How did you manage to get the sound card anyways?  don't you have dual cards? 

Well, I was thinking maybe issues were due to a shortage of i7-920's ... but I guess that's not it either.

Did you order with any special discount codes?  I ordered mine through dell preferred accounts.

Hecho en Mexico. In checking on my just-shipped Aurora, I found that the origin for Fed Ex was El Paso, TX. For those of you unfamiliar with the Lone Star State, that's the western-most major city in the state and shares a long border with Mexico. So that would strongly suggest that the Aurora (at least) is assembled just across the border and then trucked to El Paso where it is turned over to FedEx for shipping. FYI.

Really?  I thought that the systems were assembled and shipped out of South Florida?  Isn't that where Alienware is based?

You're right on the website. I see the $1199 AW ow. Maybe they were in process updating some pages or something. But All I saw was the higher end Aurora and Area-51.   BTW I noticed the price difference also. One would think too, that Area 51 would have option of faster RAM that 1333.   In any event. Only reason I answered as follow ups are sent to my email address, which I will turn off now.   Good luck.

Yes, that's the only thing that would make some sense -- if the Area-51 memory was really 1600Mhz instead of 1333Mhz; but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Has anyone ever bought from ibuypower.  right now they got a val day special.  pretty much the same thing as the aurora but with faster memory.  they quote 11 days to build and ship.  http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Configurators.aspx?mid=553

I just checked that out and for the same price I spent on my Aurora, I could have gotten the larger case, larger power supply, and a motherboard that supports SATA3 and USB3.0.  I just don't know about their warranty and support.

From personal experience, I had a problem with my lappy about 7-8 months ago and made a post.. It was removed 4 times due to violation of the ToS.. And why was it in violation? Not to sure other than the fact I copied and pasted an e-mail from dell to my posting...

Well thats more info then i got. Thanks. Im going to wait it out untell 3/4/2010 if its not shipped by then im going for a full refund. No way i could wait as long as you have. This is for school as well as fun. Not getting any projects done is going to get me in deep water. =/ Best of luck.