Alienware Beware

Yea, I'm not too sure about Poser, but 3dsmax and maya are *definitely* multi-threaded softwares that will fully benefit from P4's HT technology. You will see a substantial performance improvement running them on a P4HT vs. running them on a PM.

The issue with Alienware isn't that the machine themselves are poorly made -- Clevo is the ODM for Alienware/VoodooPC/Hypersonic/Sager/a bunch of others. In other words, none of those companies actually make their own computer. The quality is the same. However, the issue with Alienware is that they are pricy AND supposely have sub-par customer service.

Sager is an OEM, and a Sager with the same exact configuration as an Alienware is anywhere between $800-$1000 cheaper. Sager has a standard 1yr warranty, but when you buy them through a reseller -- you are essentially at the mercy of their customer service quality. Alienware is nothing more than a value-added reseller in their own right, for the premium you pay for them, their service seems subpar at best.

For example, www.discountlaptops.com is a sager reseller, same as www.pctorque.com. Both highly respectable. In fact, look at their store ratings:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller3507.html

quite stellar I would say.

Here's Alienware...

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1650.html

and here's PCTorque:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller3048.html

Granted obviously this is not the most accurate representation, but it does give you some very GENERAL idea.

My friend got her Sager 9860 from PCTorque, and it is a SOLID machine. The service was also excellent when he had questions regarding his machine. Highly recommended. I've also heard good things about discountlaptops as well.

good luck,

yass

P.S. be sure to compare the "repair/replacement" sub-catagory of these sites. Notice something? lol

 

3D gaming wise, arguably the PM is a better processor than P4. However, that point is rather moot, as in almost ALL modern games, the performance bottleneck is not the processor, but rather the GPU. For all intended purposes the performance of gaming is wholly dependent on the GPU and not the CPU -- assuming you have at least a reasonably fast one.

As to some performance figures, I linked this in a different post earlier...
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2342&p=16

You can plainly see that in the majority of the rendering tests, P4 tend to perform better -- a great deal better tha PM in some instances.

I'm tempted to say that the 2MB 3.6ghz will offer superior performance over the 3.8ghz 1MB, simply because the P4 architecture would benefit more from double the cache than a little speed bump -- due to the chips deep pipeline -- if the cache can keep that pipeline full, performance increases. There are probably other more detailed reviews on the processors outthere thou.

hope this helps a little.

cheers,

yass

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche

 

This is very helpful, thank you. I do appreciate it. By looking at those comparisons it seems the Athalons really are the bread-winners.

I am so locked into the P4 mindset though... for whatever reason. I dunno.

I did actually notice that a 3.8 with 2mb L2 cache is available, so if I go with Intel I do think that will probably be the best option.

Do you have any opinion on the Nvidia 6800 Ultra w/GDDR3 as opposed to the ATI Radeon X800 w GDDR3? I have seen some studies where the ATI is the better value, but still unsure of the performance difference and which in fact is better.

Thanks,
Echo

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche

 

Ive had my alien ware for little over a year, and found this website by accident. I travel to Greece, come back, the entire sound system doesnt work, and the Outside battery to protect the computer (belkin), well, 4 out of the 6 sockets dont work. Hours of customer support later I hang up the phone to no avail.

 

I subscribed to this forum on purpose to vent my dissatisfaction with my Alienware.
I have a 1.5 year old Sentia. It arrived and it did not boot out of the box; they tell you that they have a more-than-100-checkpoints test before shipping it, but clearly turning thecomputer on is not one of them.
It had many, many problems. I don't even remember them all, some examples are:
1. the "magically disappearing" DVD drive, in which the DVD icon suddenly disappeared and the hardware became completely unresponsive
2. the wireless card (software) was not set up properly
3. loads of incompatibilities in the software already loaded (paid for).
I just forgot the others, but I had many, many problems. I had finally had a good six months with it, but then I saw that the DVD drive had become "choppy"; I resisted calling the technical support for a while and just rebooted when it happened, but then I got a couple of "blue screen errors" and I decided to call them. Big mistake. Techical Support at Alienware is usually clueless. I have to admit that in 1.5 years, on occasion, I spoke with knowlegeable tech support, but usually they are absolutely clueless. The standar answer any is "format the hard disk completely and reinstall the whole thing as it shipped from the factory". A completely absurd answer; first of all, I have extremely important documents and data on this computer; although I have backups of all important files, I don't want to spend hours and hours to reload them after the formatting; second (and perhaps most important) is that the factory settings are the problem, NOT the solution. It took us hours and hours on the phone to bring the computer up to this level of stability and whipe it clean would bring back all the problems.
Another problem with their tech support is that they are not knowlegeable, right now he made me boot "ten" times pressing F2 to go into the BIOS. I remembered that you need to press two keys and not one to go into the BIOS (although I did not remember which keys); I told tech support so form the very beginning but he made me boot "ten" times pressing F2 until I was fed up, then he double checked and noticed that to go into the BIOS with my Sential you have to press DEL F2.
Another problem I just experienced from the tech support is that they sent me to one of their webpages to download a small software and follow the instructions; well, the instructions do not correspond to the software. So I called them again and told them so, the tech support was clueless; he did not even try to download the software himself and check it with his eyes; he told me to download it again; of course it is the same piece of software; the "best" part is the follow-up email with the what is supposed to be the summary of the discussion, "Windows is corrupted, need to reinstall the operating system"; my phone call had NOTHING to do with Windows; it was about the fact that their istructions do not correspond to their program, but (as I said) they only have one answer "reinstall all from scratch".
My problem is not solved.

 

Windows is corrupted??? What a load of crap. You know, I hate to admit that I consulted for Microsoft for quite some time in my past, and always run XP on numerous machines - none of which are alienware... but let me say this...

There is no reason you need to wipe and reinstall the OS like that to correct a problem. You should simply go back to the previously stored state right from within XP itself... the only time I have actually had to do this is when I have relentlessly loaded tons and tons of experimental software onto my system or drivers which didn't agree.

Regarding the blue screen of death however... this has got to be some config issue from all the supposid tweaking and lack of testing from AW, or incompatible drivers. One of the problems is that they install their GUI over XP, which is an absolute memory hog, and Video memory hog.

I have actually used their GUI, and I most certainly had to remove it entirely from the machine I was working on due to issues with it. Its that AlienGUIs junk, which looks pretty, but that's it.

Installing drivers on XP over and over can take a toll... however if you refresh your machine to a previous state as per functionality in XP, you can go back to the original state when you machine may have worked. You won't lose your documentation or saved files only the machine config will return to a previous date.

Its always worked like a charm on all of my machines. One option of what people could do is intall a fresh genuine copy of XP onto their AW machines, and not use that untested AW junk which looks pretty, but not resilient. They tweak things too much, and after reading all of these posts, its clear that much of the grief is due to configuration.

Sager 9880 machines are the same exact machine... right? So why is there not a bourage of failure complaints? It's not just that they apparently have great Customer Service... My guess is its the OS configuration... they do a fresh install of XP and they let XP be XP and don't screw it up with the junkie front end GUI's and configs.

I feel like I am venting now... lol.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche
There is no reason you need to wipe and reinstall the OS like that to correct a problem. You should simply go back to the previously stored state right from within XP itself... <hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>
I am familiar with the Restore function of WindowsXP and I always (when I remember) create a new restore point just before I call Alienware's tech support.
But I really don't think the problem is with Windows per se. I surmise (and you seem to think the same) that it is some driver compatibility issue. For fairness I have to say that the first tech support person did indeed list "update the drivers" as one of his suggestions. I did not get to that part yet for two reasons:
1. he did not give me any instructions on which drivers
2. I have been stomped with his other suggestion, the memory check.

<blockquote id='quote'>quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche
One of the problems is that they install their GUI over XP,<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>
You probably know better than I do, but I think that either mine came without a customized GUI or it was easy to disable. I remember it came looking like all WinXPs, and I reverted to the "classic" view on day one

<blockquote id='quote'>quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche
Installing drivers on XP over and over can take a toll... however if you refresh your machine to a previous state as per functionality in XP, you can go back to the original state when you machine may have worked. You won't lose your documentation or saved files only the machine config will return to a previous date.<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>
Yes, you are right but the problem is that I don't quite remember how long ago it was working properly. As I said in my previous message, I got a very hard time at the beginning and then a few months in which it worked well, so when the DVD became "choppy" I just ignored it for a long time.

<blockquote id='quote'>quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by echo-oche
Its always worked like a charm on all of my machines. One option of what people could do is intall a fresh genuine copy of XP onto their AW machines, and not use that untested AW junk which looks pretty, but not resilient.<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>
Yes, I should have done that when I bought it, but now it is too late. It is my understanding that when you do something like that you risk to loose at least some and possibly all your files (I might be wrong on this); as I said, I have huge datasets that I would have to back-up, moreover I have these huge datasets in specific paths, and my programs (I program in Stata) call those paths and call each other in specific locations (I should have probably programmed them more smartly) so I would have to back up the whole thing as is rathar than breaking it up in several CDs.

For everybody, here is the details of the latest complaint (described in my previous post). They told me to go here "How do I run the Windows Memory Diagnostic?"
http://help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/alienware.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2977&p_created=1099005532&p_sid=ynibJdIh&p_lva=809&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzE4JnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfc2NmX2NfbGFuZ3VhZ2U9MjA1JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9bWVtb3J5IGRpYWdub3N0aWMr&p_li=&p_topview=1
Download the file and follow the instructions; now I claim that the file does not correspond to the instructions because image 7 is completely different (and I don't know what to do). Of course it could be me who is making a mistake; if so, the tech support has been unable to tell me where I go wrong.

 

echo-oche, The NVIDIA Quadro FX Go 1400 is more suited for the work that your doing. You can use a Gaming card but if your putting together a system specifically for professional work then you should look into the Quado series.

Dissatisfied, The copy of Windows XP that comes with your system is a full version of the OS. There is no junk included. The AlienGUIse (windowblinds) program is on a seperate disc and doesnt need to be installed, if you don't want to. If there is a coruption of the OS then reinstalling the OS would be the best thing to do. You can contact Alienware a number of different ways. Their own forum, their chat system, calling, etc. Alienware reps also frequent notebookforums.com and can be sent private messages from that forum. If you want, you can even contact a VP in manufacturing from that forum. They do offer excellent support, but one would not get that impression from this forum. Yass has posted that he might not be anti-boutique but he IS anti-alienware. He is biased and it is understandable that people will be angry when they have computer issues. He enjoys seeing complaints. He practically wets himself with joy.

Sager extended the rebate on the 9880 and it now includes drives with Lightscribe Technology. Also, Sager is now offering a 17" glossy Wuxga screen. Sager owners post excellent reviews and are very satisfied. Yass wants to be anti-alienware, good for him. I never said Sager was a bad choice. yass, If you feel that there is anything I said in error then please enlighten me. Otherwise stfu.

 

Holy crap aurora this is the first time you have ever posted and didn't argue the fact that AW were the best bar none. congrats on turning over a new leaf.

this isnt like you are you still recouperating from the smack down you got at NBF?

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by aurora

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Gargoyle

 

thats pretty funny. do you even know what your talking about? you really shouldnt take all this crap so personal. even yass knows none of this fighting between us matters, or he wouldnt have reached the status of maderator. things cant be so one sided. just because some people have a personal dislike for things. as far as smackdown goes, Ive dealt out my fair share. and it makes the difference between a successful forum, a forum that system owners use for support and advice, and a craphole. Its not a bad thing to bang heads once in a while. Ive gotten more emails from people that realize how negative things are here.

 

lol. and I expect nothing less from my number one fan bmwrob. that post was actually for gargoyle. so much love here. I gotta come by more often.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by aurora

 

happy fathers day!

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by aurora

 

whatever

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by aurora

If there is a coruption of the OS then reinstalling the OS would be the best thing to do. You can contact Alienware a number of different ways. <hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

Ok, first of all Aurora, there should be virtually no reason to reinstall the entire OS, unless you are simply wanting some efficiency back into your system, and a fresh start with a clean new OS. It is so unbelievably RARE that you would EVER have to reinstall the entire OS due to a DRIVER issue. Its assinine. Especially at the frequency that AW throws this option up according to these posts.

The only option you should ever "have" to choose is to "repair" straight from the Windows XP disk. Never hardly re-install.

Seriously... if alienware's first option is to constantly reinstall the OS as I have seen posted about 20 times here, then they aren't doing their job.

You know, honestly, I would pay 200$ for the aesthetic value of the laptop... and the "rubber grips" (apologies Yass 8). These laptops are heavy and the rubber grips are incredibly useful, and maybe some people are not quite so price conscious as opposed to getting what they want. But after hearing of all the poor customer service... for that reason alone I will NOT order my two new machines though them.

I haven't had an issue with dead pixels and such, but I have the feeling that if I were to pay 4grand each and receive two new AW 7700's which had dead pixels... (and I don't care where the dead pixels are)... given AW's previous response, I would probably throw the machines through their lobby and charge back to my visa and keep my 15% restocking fee.

It would be worth the drive.

 

I don't know whether reinstalling the OS is AW's first option, but it is an option way to high on their priority list. The tech support labors under the misguided impression that the machine was perfect when they shipped it and then the user corrupted it by intalling crap on it. WRONG! It might be true that some users install crap on their machines, but the machine certainly does not ship perfect from their warehouse -- mine did not even boot when it arrived from their warehouse. And they should know that given that they have all my support history in front of them when I call or write.
Moreover I did not call clueless, I described a very detailed circumstance (a circumstance that had to do with the instructions on their webpage).

Now they even sell "Alien Respawn", which supposedly would bring back the machine to the perfect status in which it shipped. I don't think there is one thing in the universe that could convince me to use Alien Respawn if I owned it.

 

I figured it out.
I mean **I** figured out how to solve the problem that I have described in my post #108 in this thread; basically the instructions on their website do not tell you that when using Nero Express you have to select "Disk Image or Saved Project".

Unfortunately all this is for nothing. This problem cropped out in following their procedure to test the memory, but now that I can finally test the memory I found out that the problem is not with the memory at all.

Well they offered me two pieces of advice (test the memory; and update the drivers); maybe I'll be luckier with the driver update

 

Let numbers speak for themselves... or let the people who made those (currently ~<avg) numbers...

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1650.html
(Reviews 1 - 7 of 915+)

g05

(No affiliation with AW, RR, NR, or MS - especially MS)

 

Now for more Alien-bashing. OK, maybe not so much Alienware, though I've just sent back a system that I spent $5600 on after only 5 months. I bought a fully loaded Area 51M 7700. I came home from work to find my system frozen. I did a hard reboot and got nothing. I do tech support for my company so I did my own support and found that two of my memory banks had gone bad. Not the chips the actual SO-DIMM slot. It took me an hour and a half to convince Alienware's Tech Support that the memory banks were indeed bad. At one point the service tech had me strip my machine completely down. I'm thinking that I'm doing this because they just wanted the shell back to exchange. No, No, No, the tech was having me strip it down so that I could reinstall all of the components one at a time to see which one was causing the boot halt. This was after my explaining that it boots just fine as long as I didn't put a memory chip in one of the two bad slots. Long story short I'm now in a holding pattern until they get around to fixing it.

This is the second system that I've owned that has failed the common factor in each is that they are both made by Clevo. My first system was a Sager 8790. My own personal lapsized blast furnace. I first received the system and noticed two areas on the display that looked like finger prints. Except that they weren't. A few emails back and forth resolved nothing. Then a month or so later I was unplugging my head phones and the plastic around the jack broke off. I sent the system back for repair. A month later I got it back without the screen replaced. It was alleged that the spots were caused by pressure on the outside of the screen. Whatever! I had problems with the Windows XPSP2 upgrade because of bios issues. This was followed by the system randomly freezing up and then not booting after a power down and power up cycle. More troubleshooting reveiled a bad Promise controller chip. Wouldn't have anything to do with the excess heat would it? Anyway I shipped the system back to have the MB replaced. Another month later I got the system back. The system is now just over a year old and the Promise controller chip has fried again and I'm waiting for Sager to email me back with what they plan to do about it.

I blame Clevo for both system failures.

Why did I write all of this? The bottom line is the neither Sager nor Alienware have their customer priorities right IMHO. My company deals with Microns predominantly. I can tell you that they have the best warranty service hands down. They don't care what you do to the system. Well mostly. I had a user who's cat pissed all over his machine. They wouldn't fix that, called it a biohazard. But, anything else they don't care. If its just a part they will send you a new part. You box up the old one and send it back in the same box. If the system board is bad. They will ship you a new shell the same way. If it is something that needs to be sent to them for repair they will send you a box overnite with a prepaid overnite return. They will fix the system within 72 hours and overnite it back again. That is how customer service is should work. I would have bought one myself but they don't have any real gaming notebooks.

 

I don't own an Alienware, but I did want to check out this forum as I have to make recommendations to customers....and wasn't it a SURPRISE to find Aurora hanging around in here....the one who caused ALL sorts of trouble in Notebookforums.com. You see, he's a Mod there too...and he's been given Mod status on the entire site. So just to warn you, NBF is now basically the Extended AlienWare Forums. So don't you dare post anything remotely bad about AW there....you can read my blog post for more detail if you like.

Anyway, considering A: Alienware's lack of support and B: The intense effort by official Alienware moderators and supporters to cover it up, no one in my area will be buying Alienware systems. (Pretty much any company around here without an IT department comes to me for advice...along with several who DO have IT departments)

And if Aurora is still nosing around here...I told you there'd be trouble. Deleting all the threads in NBF was a nice try at a cover-up but you can't control the entire Internet.

What I'd like to know is how AW can POSSIBLY think they can get away with such rotten technical support and still maintain a buisness? We used to have "custom" computer shops around here that claimed the same stuff, and DID have better customer service, and they all went under.

 

Because they think they can strongarm the entire world into doing what they want. They'll pelt you with ads, destroy every bit of negativity about themselves, and pursue places where negativity about themselves is allowed to proliferate and then cry home to mommy when they get shut down. Then attempt to discredit such sources. Poor service and quality aside, I just personally don't care for their demeanor and actions towards consumers who don't buy into their whole marketing campaign. I'd rather have a company I can scream at like Dell, HP, Fujitsu, etc. that doesn't respond STFU the moment there's a problem.

 

I strongly do not recommend alienware, esp. not the area 51 model. Mine cost me a little over $3,200 and I've had problems with it since the day I opened the box. Literally. They gave me the wrong power cord! Then, when it was just 2 months old, the CD Rom drive stopped working. Now, after only having the computer for 4 months, the screen won't turn on. I've never had a laptop do that, it's ridiculous! The laptop has always gotten super hot verheat: , so I even got a cooling pad for it when I first bought it. It's been kept clean, out of the sun & heat, and maitained. I've taken better care of this computer than any of my previous ones, yet it's given me the most(and worst) problems. It is a fast computer, when it works, and it would be great if it weren't for all of the problems. I really don't think that alienware products are checked as thoroughly as the they say they are, judging on the poor quality of product that I received.

 

That's a real shame - you go out and spend $3k plus on a specd out laptop, then only to have it give you problems.

Yeah, A-W is definitely having quality control problems.

I think A-W should drop their notebooks - both of them - and get some new, more reliable models. Because it's just ridiculous! How could anyone mess up a laptop that bad?

 

They certainly are not. Oh, I don't doubt that the checking actually has as many steps as they claim they have (they risk liability otherwise), I just think the steps are uselss.
The steps do not include turning it on, since mine arrived that it could not boot out of the box because of a software issue (so it can't ahve been damaged during trasportation)

 

I also bought an Alienware Area 51 766SN3. At first it worked great. For the first month that is. Then the screen would go all pixilated and nothing was visible. I just took it for granted that the game was a little much for it. It had worked fine for the first month with the same game. Finally I called tech support and they had me update bios and remove the battery under the keyboard. That didn't help so they sent me a new video card. I installed it and sent them the old one back. After playing games on it for about an hour it would do the same thing. Finally they had me send it in. They replaced the video card again. Once I recieved it I tried it again. After an hour it sstarted to shut itself down. I sent it back again. Yhis time they replaced the video card and the DVD drive. Unfortunatly by the time I got it back my warrenty had expired. So I had an expired warrenty and a $3000.00 piece of junk. I tried calling them again, since once I recieved it the new DVD drive they installed wouldn't read DVD's and it would still overheat. They told me my warrenty expired and they couldn't help me. That I would have to go to a local computer store.

Mind you during the time I had it and it had issues I had used a laptop cooling mat, which didn't help. I had resorted to removing the bottom plate to expose the CPU and video card, with the coolong mat under it. Then that progressed to an actual big window fan. So in the end, even with the big window fan I could only use CD's and the laptop would run for about two minutes of an actual game, set to it's lowest settings.

I went to the computer store and they said it was probably my cpu fan. The CPU fan worked fine. So now I have a pretty blue doorstop/paper weight.

I have been tempted to get a desktop case and tear my laptop apart and install all of the components into a case with a bunch of fans. But haven't dared do it yet.

I am still holding out hope that there is a way to fix it. Atleast i'm not holding my breath.