AW horror stories... Valid?

I am in the process of buying my first gaming PC. I have decided I'd skip the midrange and go straight to the top. I would love to buy an AW, but am weary due to all of the AW slander posted all over any customer review page I find.

I am at the conclusion that overall, AW is a good company or else they would be out of business. Are most AW customers just learning to live with the temperamental machines and ignoring the problems? How likely is it that my computer will have issues within the first year of ownership? And Just how satisfied are you with your AW pc?

 

To be honest there is a certain amount of typical human nature involved in most of these complaints. Most coming from those who don't even have an AW.

I never liked the brand only for one reason: I felt their stuff is simply way over priced. Now that they have got competition prices are coming down, and then there is the outlet store for those on a tight budget like me (yeah am cheap )

But like any other company their issues are nothing abnormal, every brand has faulty products that gets out into the market. Most folks in here solve their issues on their own unless its a faulty component that needs changing.

If you have budget feel confident to buy AW.

 

I first tried out an Alienware laptop in 2006-7ish (it was an Alienware Sentia laptop).

That laptop was horrible, it overheated, had faulty fans, etc. I spent a total of 4-5 hours on the phone with tech support over the course of 3 nights until I was finally granted an RMA. I was sent a replacement sentia which came to me with several stuck pixels (one located directly in the middle of the screen) and a burnt out activity led (I can't remember if it was an HDD activity LED). I called them up again and demanded to be refunded in full and return the laptop. I was told that that wasn't an option since I hadn't given them a chance to fix the laptop (the 2nd one with the stuck pixels). After a couple of calls to management I was granted a full refund and returned the laptop.

Fast foward to 2 weeks ago. I needed an ultra portable laptop that had the ability to play modern games on medium-ish settings and had 6+ hours of battery life. I gave alienware a second chance and ordered an M11x R3 (which I received 3 days ago). Already my overall impression of the product is that their design has improved. I haven't had to deal with tech support yet (crosses fingers)...but I do feel as though their product design/quality has improved.

 

The newer AWs that have come out since Dell stepped in are built much much better than the rebranded Clevo versions of old. The warranty is also really nice and when I had to go through getting my M17xR1 replaced with an R2, it went much smoother than when I was trying to get HP to replace or fix a system where the graphic chip fried.

I don't think I'll own another brand for a laptop that isn't AW, Dell, or Apple because of the build quality and warranty.

 

lol, why are Asus owners who never "liked the brand" on the alienware section?

 

Because my m18x is on its way.

I am superstitious I don't like to add it to my siggie until its here in my hands

 

Every single manufacturer has its horror stories, it isn't going to be limited to just Alienware.

 

Well said. This and many other 'sites' where you find discussions on manufacturers will be littered with 'slander'... This is a support/technical forum - folks come here when they have issues.

Look around and I'm sure you'll find many satisfied customers - from all manufacturers.

 

Yes some horror stories are valid (like mine) but keep in mind you are on a forum where more people come to ask questions about problems than to praise a good product. That being said sometimes dell/alienware customer service/tech support can be great and some times it can be horrible. If you fish around for a bit you can get incredible deals on alienwares and that is exactly what I did.

I love my m18x despite its problems (which I have a customer care manager taking care of the issues) If you hang around and catch a good deal alienwares systems are very powerful and built very well from what I have seen. Yes, there are other manufactures that built performance/gaming machines but none of them were victorious in the appearence category for me. I have always been a fan of the looks of an alienware, so that combined with a good deal and the performance options were a definant winner in my book. If you happen to get a dud just stay on their butt until it gets fixed to your satisfaction.

 

I recognize that every manufacturer has its pitfalls, but considering the price and prestige of AW I am frightened of the number and intensity of complaints. If I were guaranteed not to have a horror story, I'd drop the cash today and go for the upgrades.

A $3500 laptop should at least come with peace of mind right?
What ever happened to "You get what you pay for?"

I not a cheap person, I value quality, but it's a large investment and if I'm slinging around the cash for this, I want to be assured it WILL work, and if the product is sub-par it needs to be replaced without hassle.

Some may say I'm a dreamer, but...

 

Your expectations are hardly unreasonable and I perfectly understand.

But electronics is a fickle business you never know when something fails right out of the box, true with every device, every vendor, you name it.

 

I appreciate the input. I've decided to go with the 17x. Now I've just got to decide how to build it. Thanks again to everyone who posted. You really did help.

 

The quote before this is 100% accurate, every manufacturer has horror stories. What most never know is exactly how many. If I have one poor experience anywhere I tell ALL my friends and enemies for that matter about it. If however I have a good experience I generally tell far fewer people. Sadly humans kinda suck in that we all like drama in some form hence news ratings are based on how many bad situations happen.

Toshiba for example is supposed to be one of the better manufacturers with HP considered one of the worst for reliability. My mom has a Tosh notebook and an HP netbook. The Tosh is on it's way for a third service while the HP has never had an issue that I can remember. I once had a Tosh as well, lasted me a solid few years and worked flawlessly when I sold it to a friend of mine a little over a year ago.

 

There are exceptions to everything. Shoot, people say that Acer sucks. I have two, including a 4 year old netbook that operates flawlessly (remember how netbooks were "cheap" and were only designed to run for a year?) On the other hand, I've had several Dell's, most of them issued by work. They all ended up with broken hinges. Even a Dell my dad has suffers from broken hinges. At the same time, I went through a phase for a long time where I'd pick a laptop up from the edges of the screen, I don't do that anymore.

Sometimes when we have problems with hardware we blame the manufacturer instead of looking in the mirror.

I think for a most Alienware users there are a couple of factors in common.

1) People are spending 2K+ for a laptop that, in general, is designed for geeky people that are online all the time and tend to not get much sunlight. Is there a group out there that is going to voice complaints more loudly on the internet?

2) There seem to be people that game on their LAPTOP exclusively. I know that Alienware's are good on cooling, but at the end of the day, people are still using a device in a manner it's not designed for.

Alienware may have done an outstanding job of adapting a laptop form factor into a gaming rig, but it's still not an ideal form factor. I would venture a guess that people that game on an M17x 3 hours a day, 5 days a week are, as a group, going to have more problems than the person that buys an M17x and uses it for normal PC use and plays maybe 2 games max each year. A lot of problems I see hinge back on heat. People may never nail that down as being what caused the issue, but at the end of the day a LOT of laptop problems in general go back to heat. Batteries frying...heat. I've never had a laptop battery last longer than a year before starting to crap. That's completely due to the way I use them. Issues with LED's/AlienFX Illumination Fizzling...heat. Charging plugs that die...heat. CPU's that fail...heat.

Some people seem to think that they're going to buy a laptop, hide in their basement and play games on it 8 hours a day for months on end and avoid all problems. I'm sorry, but I'll never be convinced that's the norm. Does that mean that people that do are going to have their systems crap on them? Nah, definitely not. If we had a way to poll/interview Alienware users with problems I'd be interested in seeing the correlation between seriousness/number of issues and time spent either gaming or doing other CPU/Graphic Intense computing.

 

charging plugs I'll argue are sticking a gigantic piece of wire into and hanging off a hole likely held in place by a few relatively weak joints. I'd be interested in comparing the failure rate between Apple products and Windows based products my educated guess would be that Apple has far fewer failures due to the shallower plug combined with the fact it's magnetic retention.

 

ive owned a m17x r2, an R3 and an m18x. never had ANY problems with them other than driver issues. but drivers are not the laptops fault, thats the GPU makers (IE AMD) .

trust me, you wont go wrong with an alienware

 

Yup, AW all the way. My first m18 showed up with a LOOSE sounding screw in it and dell phoned me asking if I was happy. I said yup but there is a loose screw or something..................... BOOM, no problem, we are sending you a brand new one? Really? wow!! I'm very happy with AW

 

Take it from someone who has owned an Alienware (An M15X to be specific)

Most alienware's encounter serious problems within the first six months of ownership.

Most users on these forums have recorded that they have contacted Alienware support and have had multiple parts/components replaced.

Most major Alienware series tend to have major problems.

I can give you three major examples:

M11X Hinge failures on over 25% of machines
M15X faulty fans recorded
and M14X shutting down when attempting to game on battery

Typically, when I buy something so high-end as you have yourself stated and so expensive, I expect top notch quality control but clearly there is minimal quality control.

 

If you should have a faulty unit, most of the time, you'll know right away.

My first M17xR3 was plagued by issues...but the return went fairly smooth. The second time around, I opted for a better build and it has been perfect out of the box.

 

Price shouldn't affect quality IMO. We sell 299 eMachines, and most don't have issues, but we get a whole ton of 800-900 dollar HP Pavilions in all the time for service, so it is feast or famine.

Also old school ThinkPads had GPU cracking issues, even though being marketed and generally accepted as the ultimate business laptop (and durable).

 

I was in a similar boat as you a couple of months ago. I decided to get an M17X R3 and I haven't had any issues with it yet. Coming from a family that has been strongly Apple since as far as I can remember, I can say I am pretty impressed with my R3. I've had long, intensive gaming sessions and I haven't experienced overheating or other problems.

I'd say go for it. If you don't like it within the first 21 days or so, return it and get your money back.

 

Is this of all machines or all machine's you're aware of? My psych prof told me a funny statistics story once. A student interviewed two people, the claim made from said TWO interviews is that 50% of students have with their professors. Consider in the grand scheme how many students there are and just how disproportionate numbers of teachers would get getting hot college girl tail. At Boise State for example there are 20,000 students and pretty good chance half of them are female. Pretty good chance their faculty is 50% male and there's likely only a few hundred of them. Poor fellas would be gettin' so much they wouldn't have time to teach.

Can't go spouting numbers without a sample size. 25% of 100 is a pretty good number. 25% of 1,000,000 while 250,000 means there's still 750,000 that are non-issues instead of 75.

 

If Alienware was a bad product way over priced and full of horror stories.
It would not have such a large and busy forum, full of so many people all helping each other out. There is no other forum for any product with so many devoted users and fans, except Harley Davidson which I own.

 

would there be a forum at all if they had zero issues i wonder - owners just verbally slapping each other on the back for making such a good decision & discussing the weather.

 

No major problems with my m17x r3 yet. Already want to get a new one with the HD screen and better graphics card though

 

Not sure if your aware or not but Dell/AW issued a recall last week on all M11x with a hinge problem. Send your M11x in for the recall and have them replaced free of charge. I own a M17xR3 as replacement for a 6x Failed XPSM1730. I must say the build quality of the AW is on another level in comparison to any Dell machine I've ever used or had to work on. Honestly, IMHO if you are not somewhat tech savy or have the patience & persistance to become Tech Savy buy yourself a iPad and be done with it. If you on the other hand want a system thats going to destroy most anything else comparible buy AW. I also use mine in public a lot & its really cool to have everyone that walks past it stop & say "Man whats That?" or "Hey look at that AW" Good luck to everyone who owns a AW system or plans on buying one in the future.

 

Some of the horror stories are valid. The build quality of AW laptops are generally pretty great and they seem like reliable machines but there is always a chance they can fail and in that case you are in for a huge headache.

The customer service you will receive from Dell is horrific. I have been lied to, hung up on, told conflicting stories, endured 2 failed repairs, and encountered some of the worst customer service I have ever dealt with. To say that Dell honors their warranty on Alienware products is somewhat subjective. You have to pay close attention to what they consider a warranty. Basically if something goes wrong with the product they are free to fix it on their own time frame in which ways they see fit. None of this wouldn't be a monumental deal if the products weren't generally portrayed as being the highest end laptops available, they certainly don't have a problem charging a premium price. I think the amount you spend compared to support after the sale is the main issue with Alienware.

If you do get one I would strongly advise keeping it under warranty for the duration of ownership because even with the warranty issues I have mentioned repairing one of these on your own is extremely expensive.

 

i think your missing the mark on what a high end laptop and warranty is. It is hard to build a system in a laptop sell it to the general public including kids, who by the way are not all (all knowing geeks). The times I have read on here the people who screw their own systems up not knowing what they are doing is huge. Yes there are high end power users here that are truly on the cutting edge with these systems. But there are also many that half read the posts think I'll do that and really mess things up. Or how about the guy that up grades his system sell the replaced parts on ebay then gets mad when he is told not covered under warranty you sold them. Or the one that reads do a fresh instell right out of the box, which is fine if you know what you are doing but he has no clue about the driver order and fries the Fx and asks where do I find the drivers. Point is providing Tech service must be really hard and why many other companies do not provide in home service the way we get it from dell. Remember most people that purchase an Alienware have no clue that there even is a forum the ones that do mostly came here looking for help. Just a thought.

 

My personal experience is that tech support is great, but they often make you wait.

Things I've had replaced:
- Palmrest - Rubber falls off
- LCD - Slight amount of dust under the plexiglass

I've had mine for like a year and 3 months now. (M15x)

 

Your post makes me think that you have never had to deal with the in home service yourself and if you have and had a positive experience you were probably lucky. The guy that showed up at my house was rude, unprofessional and handled my hardware like it was a $200 netbook. I'm almost sure that Dell outsources their in home service calls to a 3rd party. He did not even have the proper parts with him and the GPU he brought did not work right out of the box. When I asked him what he planned to do he said, "Sorry Dude cant do anything for you but look at the bright side at least you have the day off". Having to burn a vacation day to sit around and not even have my computer fixed was less then ideal for me and his response almost seemed like he was rubbing it in. If you think that having my computer broken for over a month after that experience and sending it in to be repaired and sent back broken is acceptable then I'm sure if the time comes for you to have your system repaired you wont have any issues with the service you receive. This is not the first piece of hardware I have attempted to RMA and have never had such a difficult time getting a company to honor a warranty.

 

Well Uroboros the truth is the m17x R2 in the sig was a new build replacement took about 3 weeks of phone calls and 3 service calls before they agreed to a replacement. For my trouble they upgraded the CPU the GPU's and extra 4 gig's ram. The Aurora took a sent to me video card, 2 service calls to replace the mobo left with it not working the second service call to replace the mobo and CPU and GPU did not secure the CPU and would not post till he figured it out. After I stated concern for the state of the repair, Dell shipped me a Aurora ALX and upgraded the 460 SLI to the ati 5970 an extra HD and doubled my ram. Now tell me where what company is going to do that? Yes it was a pain to go through. But any other company is going to have you ship it back maybe fix it, hope they do or ship it back again. No one offers the upgrades or would ever build you a new system for a refurb. I agree it is stressful and a pain but it is one of the reasons I stay with Alienware\Dell with all there faults these are by far the best systems anywhere. And yes they are 3rd party Techs one company wants me to work for them, I would consider it if I only worked on Alienware..

 

Yes are valid, but this a good laptop

I have a big problems with alienware m17xR1
I install the windows 7 i need first install windows vista and so upgrade to windows 7
If o dont use this, i have a problems with wifi and bluetooth(i dont no why this)
I buy in USA my alienware but i live in brazil

Now i think in buy another alienware, m18X, with AMD6990.

I never buy video card nvidia, poor support, only gave me trouble.

Like all systems is not perfect, but alienware is good and cheap

I like alienware

 

Once you have an Alienware laptop everything else seems like a cheap toy. If you can afford it, buy it.

Let the haters hate.

 

I had my own share of horror stories with my m15x, however besides those problems it has proved itself to be a sterling gaming laptop. I would recommend the brand, they seemed to have improved a great deal since Dell took the reigns.