Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jmuns]

I havent bought a new computer in a long time, and have been looking around for something good. my friend said this might be a good choice for the price. does anyone have any experience with alienware? good or bad? please excuse my ignorance on this, like I said I havent bought a comp in a long time.

[ladron]

I have an older Alienware and I love it to death. It's been awesome to have a total desktop I can lug around everywhere in a backpack. You have to get comfortable taking it apart to clean it, however, as it will start to overheat quickly (being a laptop with a high-end graphics card inside located in dusty-ass Korea). Although I've heard horror stories about their tech support, and although I've never had to use it, I would definitely spring for the extended (3 year, I believe) warranty, just for peace of mind.

If it were a desktop, I'd recommend just getting the pieces and building it yourself. But for a laptop, I've been extremely satisfied with mine. (plus, some TSA guy always comments on it when I go through airport security).

If you ARE going to get one, go whole-hog and get the highest end of everything (except RAM and hard drives, those are cheap and easy to add). I mean, if you're dropping that kind of coin, you might as well get the best that you can.

I hope this helps, feel free to PM me with any other questions. Again, I bought mine before I cam to Korea, so it's about 4 years old, but I can still hopefully answer some of your questions.

[eamo]

[Gaber]

This is the Crysis capable netbook with the nVidia chip? Very tempting. Only $799 in the states. Imagaine they'll be unreasonable here though, once the Samsung protection tax has been levied. Also, only 2 hours of gaming.

[detourne_me]

I heard it's 3 hours of gaming and around $999 (this week's Tekzilla), but still it's only an 11" screen.
Alienware is of course THE brand for gaming PC's but you really gotta think if you want to be gaming on such a small screen.
I do have an ASUS eeepc 701 that I pretty much use exclusively for gaming (iphone has become my default toilet time browser )
But the only games I play on it are simple games from about 5-7 years ago, or cheap Steam games like Freedom Force or GTA.

If you're going to keep the M11x in your house you could get a kickbutt desktop for the same price probably.
But if you're looking to play WOW on the go, i guess the m11x would be good for you.

[darkjedidave]

I have an Alienware m15x near max specs and love it. The new ones are definitely of higher quality.

[Bloopity Bloop]

I always thought Alienware was like the Bose of computers. Has this changed?

[darkjedidave]

The previous alienware m15x, called area-51, suffered from cracked hinges and poor plastic case quality.

(pictured here: http://laptops.webhostingoverview.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/alienware.jpg )

Yes, I did pay abut $300 more for the Alienware specs compared to other models, but the customizable multicolor LED keyboard, grills and alien heads make it purty

[sAviOr[gm]]

I have an Alienware, got an M9700 with full options a few years ago. The initial price is absolutely insane--customer treatment doesn't line up with it. The release of drivers is SO slow, and they favor the newest laptops. At this point, they don't even support my laptop and it's less than 4 years old. Get ready to clean the heatsinks and apply thermal paste on the CPU/GPU cores.

Tech Support is pretty meh, bunch of dudes that walk you through 90,000 steps before they actually believe you when something is broken and will get you a new part. They don't know what's going on most of the time.

Heat and battery life are abysmal on the systems, though the specs are nice. For me, my next laptop will be a Macbook Pro. Amazing case, 8+ hr battery life, and Blizzard games work on them. I honestly only want to play Starcraft II for the rest of my life (Beta rules), so that's all I need it for. Editing photo/video was good on the AW, but it's also good on Mac's. I'll run bootcamp for things I need in Windows.

[Darkray16]

I was doing some research on Alienware stuff and, by chance, happened upon an unhappy customer. He gave me access to Alienware's private customer service forums, which you don't have access to until you've already bought their stuff.

http://gametopiaplanitia.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-you-should-know-about-alienware.html

for the most part, their laptops suck. I don't know much about their desktops as I was in the market for a laptop only.

[darkjedidave]

But if you look at the date of the postings, theyre from ealry 2009, and the old Alienware laptop models (m17x and m15x) werepieces of crap due to poor build quality as I posted earlier. but their new models from late November 2009 on are much better.

[eamo]

This will smoke any Alienware around at the moment.....

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/05/asus-rog-g73jh-launches-with-core-i7-radeon-hd-5870-bragging-r/

Roughly $1500 in the States......not bad!!

[darkjedidave]

^ $1500?! Are you sure? Seems too low to me. Screaming machine though, but I dont want a 17" monster. My 15" is a beast already and is near those specs (have a better CPU but less HDD and a 260GTX vs. a Radeon 5870)

If its around $1500, I might pick one up this summer

[bobranger]

www.falcon-nw.com

great computer company mid to high-end prices

[eamo]