ATTN: Alienware owners, are they worth it?

Hey all, I'm looking at buying a new laptop and want it to be reasonably hardcore. I'm willing to spend between 1000 and 1400. A few people I work with have Alienware and say they are pretty badass, but they're not the most computer-savvy people. I know there's alot of hype around them but I'm having a hard time finding reliable reviews online that weren't written like 5 years ago. I'm looking for any current owners that would either recommend or not recommend them. It would help if you didn't just get it last week, because one of the main issues I have seen in old reviews is reliability. I've also read their customer service sucks. Again this is stuff I read from years ago; anyone shed some light on their current status?

I'm probably missing something obvious, but why are you interested in the manufacturer rather than the laptop specs?

You're paying for a name. You could be spending that money on better hardware. Your workmates are nubs.

Ditto. "Gaming" and "hardcore" laptops are no more an exclusivity of Alienware or any other company. Sure enough, the very last thing you want in a laptop is low reliability but I don't own an Alienware to speak about it. I guess it will be as reliable as the parts used to build it (especially hard disk, AC adapter, battery), the cooling of the CPU and GPU and the use you make of it.

Chances are no one here owns that over-priced junk.

Well I thought the specs on some of their laptops were really good for the prices; I'm not as up on this stuff as I used to be though. If these guys are just a ripoff, can anybody steer me in the right direction? I have no idea who makes good computers these days.

Bang for buck, go with Dell. Support wise they are a bit crap though.

Otherwise, Asus and HP have decent offerings. My current laptop is an HP, good solid performer. Used mostly to play Team Fortress 2.

Main limiter will be the GFX chip - the better this is, the higher the cost.

Real "bang for buck":

Build your own damn computer.

There are pros and cons to building your own. For one, you can't do it for laptops.

I use to frequently check the prices of prebuilt oem machines, which I could match/better but only if I did not include the wide screen monitor, printer, keyboard/mouse and speakers. Oh and the Windows license.

That said, I will always build my own PCs.

Airman266 said:

Well I thought the specs on some of their laptops were really good for the prices; I'm not as up on this stuff as I used to be though. If these guys are just a ripoff, can anybody steer me in the right direction? I have no idea who makes good computers these days.

Protip: Visit manufacturer/shop websites and compare models between different manufacturers.

Kat had several bad things to say about Alienware. Knowing his knowledge of computers, I'd have to side with him.

My experience (rather, my dad's experience) with his ~2003 Alienware system is that they seem to use proprietary drivers to control the SATA hard drives. Without those drivers, the hard drive slows to a freaking crawl, and the driver is conspicuously missing from the restore disc and can't be downloaded from anywhere. So poor Dad has to put up with constant lagging in World of Warcraft due to it constantly caching and recaching the hard drive. It's only partially remedied by quadrupling his RAM - it lags less often, but when it does, it's still debilitating and tends to get him killed. I don't know how the hell he puts up with it.

Steeveeo said:

Build your own damn computer.

A gaming laptop is generally really expensive as well.

I got an Acer. It's solid. Can't say if it's economic to get it though. I didn't actually pay for it.

To get the best for the least ammount of monies. Check out places like Tom's Hardware, that benchmark and test products so you won't have to.

Yeah, from what I heard, Acer is one of the best for laptops. Dell is usually pretty good too. Compaqs can be pretty solid, but they don't make computers for gaming.

I never bough a laptop myself. This is just talk from some friends who have been getting themselves laptops recently.

If you want your computer to be "reasonably hardcore", then you pretty much have to accept the fact that what may be hardcore today may be "obsolete" in about 6 months at the most. Trying to keep up with the "cool" crowd in PC technology is not only costly but wasteful and useless also. It goes like this:

You try and buy a hardcore PC for somewhere around $4,999.95. You're proud of yourself, getting the absolute latest ultimate in the PC technology field, without giving a second thought about the colossal amount of money you shed. As you marvel at the awesomeness of your PC, you go on and play Crysis on it for a few days. After you've completed the game, you play World of Warcraft on it for a few months. After you get a grasp of reality, you eventually find out that there's an even more hardcore PC at the market. You gape your mouth at the $6,499.99 price tag, but begin to worry that you computer is becoming "obsolete". You don't want to become obsolete, don't you? So now, you go out and but the overpriced PC. A few weeks later, you go massively in debt and are knee-deep in bills and invoices. Because you couldn't pay the mortgage, your house faced foreclosure. You eventually lose your mind and go out in the streets, living off of garbage and leftovers in some random alley, punching yourself in the face wondering why you were stupid enough to buy such a ridiculously-priced semi-supercomputer THE MOMENT IT COMES OUT, because you fear that "obsoleteness is comin' to gitcha!"

But hey, at least you still have your PC! ... but in a few months, it becomes obsolete, too...

As for the hardcore laptop, discussion, I've never owned a laptop, but I wouldn't recommend Alienware, because all their PCs and laptops do is play games. Surely you'd want to do more than just play Crysis on it, I mean, is it really worth it? I would recommend the Dell or Acer brands. At least they're not as costly as Alienware, and they're more reliable and stable, also. If you want further information, you can look on such websites as Tom's Hardware or Newegg. The people over there are really computer-savvy.

EDIT: You know a certain brand sucks when this appears as the fourth result of an "Alienware" Google search. I'm not kidding. Try it yourself.

Danarchy said:

Compaqs can be pretty solid, but they don't make computers for gaming.

They do, the HP Pavilion I have was sold as a gaming machine (not a top of the line, 5000$ machine, but pretty good).

Well thanks for your input everyone; it's looking like I'm gonna pass up the alienware. I'm not really worried about my laptop staying up with the newest stuff. All I really needta be able to do on it is netsurf, run some messengers, and play games at work. I want it to be able to run D3 with no problems, other than that I don't have any goals; all the other games I really like are less graphics intensive than that. I'm not worried about spending a ton of money building a really badass PC until Doom 4 comes out. Last time I built a PC was when D3 came out and it still runs strong today. I'm gonna follow suit. I just need a good laptop, so I will check out the sites and manufacturers you all suggested and thanks for your help. If anyone has any further comments I welcome them.

Planky said:

They do, the HP Pavilion I have was sold as a gaming machine (not a top of the line, 5000$ machine, but pretty good).

Although modern Compaqs are titled as HPs, Pavilions are actually HP models. "HP Compaqs" are today's Compaqs.

Airman, if the "best" game you want to play on your laptop is Doom 3, you probably shouldn't need to pay $1500 for your laptop. :P Just find something with enough ram and a graphics card that doesn't suck.