Alienware is it worth it?

[Deleted]

Personally I prefer Asus, but alienware are like mac or BMW cars, the quality is very good, there's no denying that, but deep down you know full well they're using a badge for huge profit margins.

[fruitypebble]

2nd post ever in 4 years of lurking on this site, I feel that strongly about this topic.

No. No. A million times no.

Do not buy an Alienware, I swear it has been BY FAR the single biggest headache I've ever had with anything customer service related. I had to go outside of their Customer Service department and get with a buddy of mine with contacts in Dell just to speak with someone who wasn't based in India and reading off a script. The customer service once I was outside the 'outsource box' was decent enough, but it's my understanding that the department I spoke with only deals with the most irate and/or profitable of customers.

The laptop I bought conveniently broke within a week of the Return window, and so did it's replacement. My experience with them has convinced me to not only NEVER buy a product from Dell or any of pseudonames or partners ever again, but to do everything I can to stop my friends and family from doing so either. It's overpriced, poorly put together, has horrible service, and is likely designed to break in order to boost replacement profits.


Oh and by the way, the entire replacement process didn't wrap up until almost a year after the original purchase, conveniently falling very close to the date my warranty wore off.


For the love of god, don't do it . It's a tarp.

[Deleted]

Dell own Alienware but having nothing to do with the build and quality of there laptops. However, I have had two Dell laptops a Inspiron 9200 and a M1710 XPS, both are excellent laptops and still going strong. Both are over 3 years old and sill play wow, not with all the details admittedly.

Nothing wrong with Dell/Alienware laptops, usually just haters that cant afford them :P

[Dalinth]

I agree. My Dell Studio laptop's battery and AC adapter broke, and neither of them was covered by warranty despite me foolishly having paid extra for more warranty. Every call I have been answered by some generic annoying redneck American with no idea what he was talking about and asking me to do such inspired things as restarting my computer, updating my drivers and running a virus scan.

[Snowbell]

I'd recommend one of MSI's Gaming laptops, they're amazing.

[sinofasin]

nope, not at all. its very much overpriced. you can build your own pc with that value and it will turn out so much better, or you can just purchase the parts and ask a tech to mount everything for you. thought for laptop alienware is the best choice.

[purpledrannk]

Macbook pro 17" I7. the best $2800 i ever spent.

[Deleted]

Dell own Alienware but having nothing to do with the build and quality of there laptops. However, I have had two Dell laptops a Inspiron 9200 and a M1710 XPS, both are excellent laptops and still going strong. Both are over 3 years old and sill play wow, not with all the details admittedly.

Nothing wrong with Dell/Alienware laptops, usually just haters that cant afford them :P

Some lovely uninformed opinions here, always a good start.

Anyway, a couple of things. If you have the money, and wan't what is admitidly a lovely looking and feeling laptop, then by all means go with the Alienware. But remember, you are paying for the name on this one.

On the other hand, have a look at the Spec, and then find if there are any other Gaming laptop specialists in your country that can do similar for a better price. Both the Toshiba Qosmio and the Asus G73 offer far better value

[Rukah]

Macbook pro 17" I7. the best $2800 i ever spent.

I am pretty anti-mac, but in this case mac > Alienware.

[Deleted]

Some lovely uninformed opinions here, always a good start.

Anyway, a couple of things. If you have the money, and wan't what is admitidly a lovely looking and feeling laptop, then by all means go with the Alienware. But remember, you are paying for the name on this one.

On the other hand, have a look at the Spec, and then find if there are any other Gaming laptop specialists in your country that can do similar for a better price. Both the Toshiba Qosmio and the Asus G73 offer far better value

Please do tell how its uninformed when, 1, there my laptops, and 2, thats how it is with Alienware

[Kheirn]

Please do tell how its uninformed when, 1, there my laptops, and 2, thats how it is with Alienware

Or you're just like most Mac owners, trying to find a way to justify paying 30-40% more for a cool brand. Alienware has never been worth what you pay for it. It's cool and unique, of course, but it's just like clothing brands. Also, the fact that Dell now owns them does mean that their customer support is utter and complete shit. Dell is shit, Alienware is cool stuff under a shit brand.

[fruitypebble]

I agree. My Dell Studio laptop's battery and AC adapter broke, and neither of them was covered by warranty despite me foolishly having paid extra for more warranty. Every call I have been answered by some generic annoying redneck American with no idea what he was talking about and asking me to do such inspired things as restarting my computer, updating my drivers and running a virus scan.

Yeah, Dell's tech support completely busted up my laptop when trying to 'repair' what I knew to be a hardware issue by installing Windows XP drivers for a video card I don't own on my Windows Vista laptop.

Here's a list of the problems I had within a month of owning it:

- Freezing/crashing at frequent intervals.
- Non-functional USB ports
- Non-functional touch bar used to adjust volume, CD eject, etc
- Grainy picture across all activity, be it WoW, browsing, or sitting at the desktop.
- Battery didn't charge
- FPS was incredibly inconsistant, going as low as 30-40 FPS in a low traffic area of Ironforge (trust me when I say it was more than capable of doing 100+ under those conditions)
- Mouse Wheel sensitivity would randomly alternate between being obscenely high and so low the mouse is unusable, all without any change made by the user

It's replacement had the following issues nearly straight out of the box
- Freezing/crashing at frequent intervals.
- Non-functional touch bar used to adjust volume, CD eject, etc

The freezing/crashing started happening more and more often (every 5 minutes), which we eventually discovered to be due to a faulty video card. This made doing anything graphic related completely lock up the machine. I couldn't even go to youtube.


Their support (including supervisors) is awful, uneducated, and dish out internal policy TO THE LETTER, regardless of the circumstances. Every single rep I spoke with, be they your baseline phone rep or a supervisor, gave the impression that they had no interest whatsoever in resolving my issue, and every response they gave felt like it was scripted. They transferred me whenever possible, put me on hold for extended amounts of time, and in the end did nothing to help.

The outsourced tech that visits your home and tried to fix my laptop made it worse, by not only increasing the grainyness 10x over, he also failed to put it back together properly and killed the lighting on the keyboard. He fixed neither of these, and left without saying a word (I wasn't in the room at the time).

Just don't do it :/. Hell, OP, I will build you a computer myself if it means you don't buy a Dell.

---------- Post added 2011-01-07 at 06:37 AM ----------

Please do tell how its uninformed when, 1, there my laptops, and 2, thats how it is with Alienware

It's uninformed because the only difference between any Alienware made in the last 2 years and any Dell made ever is the label and the pricetag. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the M17x, the model I purchased, was the first Alienware laptop created under Dell ownership. All laptops after that have also been under Dell, using Dell techies, Dell warehouses, Dell suppliers, and so on.

When you're buying an Alienware these days, you're buying a Dell. Plain and simple.

[Deleted]

The M17 is a Dell not Alienware.

[fruitypebble]

Oh, and they also implemented this feature that allows you to switch from your GPU to integrated video on the fly.

Cool and all on paper, until you accidentally press the button to switch, and then are forced to shut down all the way to the BIOS to reverse it. It's a one way switch, you can't switch it back in the OS.

That almost made the non-functional touchbar worth the hassle. It meant I didn't have to worry about accidentally turning off my video cards. So stupid.

---------- Post added 2011-01-07 at 06:44 AM ----------

The M17 is a Dell not Alienware.

Lol. Do me a favor, google search 'm17x' and click the 2nd result.

[Jsox]

I'm going to be the voice of reason here and rather than casually dismiss the question with a callous "no", I'll say that the answer is subjective.

Personally, I feel the answer is yes. I own (and love) an Alienware M15x. Some of the statements people make boggle my mind - statements like they have "poor build quality". This may have been the case on some other, older models, but is absolutely not the case with the current ones. The M15x is built like a TANK. Seriously. The lid is like 3mm thick solid metal. This thing is a weapon. You could kill somebody with it. The bottom isn't all metal but is likewise solid. I've also seen and used the M15x's bigger brother (M17x) in a store and it was quite literally just a scaled up larger version. I have had zero hardware problems with it and have owned it for 8 months. It handles just about everything I throw at it. It chews through WoW like a hot knife goes through butter. It also looks badass and all the external goodies (LEDs, the casing etc) have held up well over time.

I know there is some dude a few posts up that's QQing because he had a bad experience with their tech support. Boo hoo. Everybody has one of those stories to tell about SOME manufacturer. I could repeat the same thing almost verbatim about some previous experiences I have had with Dell. Admittedly, I haven't had any hardware issues but I did call in to their support to get a log in for their support pages and ask a few miscellaneous questions, and their support staff was helpful and friendly.

So back to the point. Is it worth it? Depends on your expectations. Alienware machines (laptops in particular) have a lot of neat perks like facial recognition login, a SWEET keyboard with 7 or 8 different "zones" that you can CHANGE THE COLOR OF or even make them phase from color to color. Right now my main area of my keyboard slowly changes colors and goes through the whole rainbow. It's sweet, and you can seriously do something like that with 20 min or so of work using a program ALREADY INSTALLED on the laptop when you get it. What other laptop can you do that on? However, that might not really be a "worth it" feature for you. For me, it's cool and makes the laptop more unique. Likewise there are a few things I would NEVER use like "stealth mode" which lets your laptop draw less power than normal (but only when it's ALREADY PLUGGED IN - wtf is that, how about making this feature available to save extra power when I DON'T have an endless supply being piped out of my wall?) which actually causes more problems than it is worth because the feature is retarded (imo) to begin with, and sometimes you accidentally turn it on and your performance goes to shit. You will basically be paying ~$500 dollars extra for these unique features, the logo, and some fancy packaging. Worth it to you? Not sure. Worth it to me? Yes, I wasn't so sure if I had made the right decision with the Alienware, but I love it, and unless something terrible happens, I WILL be making future purchases from Alienware. I am not one of those rich kid Alienware buyers who bought one because it was expensive and I know nothing about laptops - Quite the opposite actually (definitely not rich and I know more about laptop internals than I care to) - So my decision was not made out of ignorance.

TL;DR
-Current Alienwares have exceptional build quality
-You will definitely be paying more than necessary for the hardware
-Your extra $$$ that was spent will result in you receiving a more unique laptop and having a above-average experience
-You can spend less for similar hardware, and you'll just have a boring average laptop

My advice is to ignore the haters. Read the reviews out there on the Googles and on Alienware's own site. Decide if the extra stuff is worth it to you. If you got the money, I say go for it. As a side note, my local Best Buy had these in-store so I could physically play with them beforehand, see if this is an option for you, it might sway you one way or the other.

Sorry for the long post. Good luck whatever you do, and have fun with your new toy (whatever the logo is).

[Dalinth]

Oh, and they also implemented this feature that allows you to switch from your GPU to integrated video on the fly.

Cool and all on paper, until you accidentally press the button to switch, and then are forced to shut down all the way to the BIOS to reverse it. It's a one way switch, you can't switch it back in the OS.

That almost made the non-functional touchbar worth the hassle. It meant I didn't have to worry about accidentally turning off my video cards. So stupid.[COLOR="red"]

Mine came with a button to launch an even worse version of Windows Media Player. Always fun when playing Team Fortress 2 or other games that get shitty when you alt+tab.

[wolfwood888]

As stated above, many times before, alienware laptops, and anything made by them for that matter, are overpriced, you pay alot for the brand name, and yes they are different, and cool, but not worth an extra 300+ dollars. They are also well built and sturdy. The above guy doesn't know what he is talking about, dell tech support is awful, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and I don't mean like the normal awful that 90% of all tech supports are today, I mean, dell has unequivocally the worst tech support on the face of this planet. Basically, if you have the money to throw around, sure, go ahead, but pray nothing goes wrong, because if you can't fix it yourself, its much easier to go pay a local computer store 80$ to fix it then spend 5+ frustrating hours with dell's tech support. However, if your looking for something that is affordable, don't go alienware, it isn't the best bang for your buck, so to speak.

[Dalinth]

The above guy doesn't know what he is talking about, dell tech support is awful, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and I don't mean like the normal awful that 90% of all tech supports are today, I mean, dell has unequivocally the worst tech support on the face of this planet. Basically, if you have the money to throw around, sure, go ahead, but pray nothing goes wrong, because if you can't fix it yourself, its much easier to go pay a local computer store 80$ to fix it then spend 5+ frustrating hours with dell's tech support

This guy gets it. 2 and a half years of experience talking here.

[Snowmist]

Don't forget, laptops are generally out of date in a year or two, and can not be upgraded.

[fruitypebble]

Everybody has one of those stories to tell about SOME manufacturer. I could repeat the same thing almost verbatim about some previous experiences I have had with Dell. Admittedly, I haven't had any hardware issues but I did call in to their support to get a log in for their support pages and ask a few miscellaneous questions, and their support staff was helpful and friendly.

A bad experience doesn't really cover it. It took a year to finally get a reliable laptop, and even then it still became nothing more than a paperweight who's warranty had run out.

Don't get me wrong, they have have the right idea in trying to build these systems. If they manage to get it right and nothing happens as a result of user error, I could hypothetically see it being a very positive experience. The components have more than enough power to handle anything you throw at them.

The actual experience just doesn't live up to those expectations though.

Even with a system that works great out of the box, if something goes wrong, you have my sympathies. A product like this is only as good as the support that backs it up, and their support fails on so many levels it's hard to comprehend how they stay in business.

Not 1, 2, 3, but 4 tech support reps managed to not only not fix my problem, but break something else in the process. The tech that came to my house left without saying a word, and also broke something else (I think he stole a beer out of my fridge too lol). The 2nd tech that was supposed to come out *didn't show up at all*. I spent over 1000 minutes in one weekend on the phone with Dell getting denied, transferred, disconnected. I was on hold for nearly 30 minutes on numerous occasions.

While your experience was positive, any amount of research will show that your situation is overwhelmingly rare. I do wish that it stays that way, because I really hate saying I told you so.