Alienware Nightmare - And Hello

[sjracer]

Hello All,

I am guilty of cheating on HardwareCentral.com. I went to notbookforums.com for a bit. Anyway some of you may remember that I had bought a $3500.00 Alienware 7700 laptop. My second as you recall. Long story short, bad move. Bad system. Big problems. I returned it, but it cost me the 15% restocking fee. Anyway I am back here now. Next notbook I buy will be a normal notebook, not gaming. Gaming should be left to desktops. Desktops are meant to be built by people like us. I am back and planning to build a new system very soon. Anway again, sorry for being gone for a bit. I hope all of you are doing well!! And if you want my opinion on Alienware, just ask. I will PM or email you. I will post the specs of the system I plan to build. I would like the input from you all. That is why I have been coming to this forum for over 5 years now.

SJRACER

[jankerson]

You really can't go wrong with Dell.

Also Sharp makes good laptops along with Toshiba.

[ThreeOnTheTree]

Care to elaborate on the issues you were having? It certainly would help those that might also be considering an Alienware laptop. The 15% restocking fee is totally bogus if the product was defective. Was it just a lack of customer satisfaction, or was it not working properly?

[Justintime]

Yup if you want to pm me, i'm curious, but it'd be good if you could elaborate more on the problems faced in public Sorry it turned sour, i remember how excited you were!

[CenturionStrategy]

Yeah, post your Alienware problems here - we may be able to help

I've only had good experiences with Dell laptops - so another vote there.

My view has always been that a laptop is just for browsing the net/MSN/MP3s, whereas my desktop has always been used for games and films. It's worth spending as little as you can get away with on your laptop, and using the rest on a Desktop hardware - it's much cheaper and easier to get a Desktop PC up to date.

[TurtleMan]

This thread inspired me to do a bit of online research re: complaints about Alienware systems. I was quite surprised at the quantity of negative feed back from Alienware customers. I'm not sure that I will ever do business with them, now.

t-man

[Justintime]

Consider me inspired too, gonna hit google

[sjracer]

Ok, Since yall asked here goes. It actually dates back about 2 1/2 years. I had bought an Alienware Area-51m (5620 model) Worked great for 2 years. Then 2 weeks after my 2 year warranty expired the onboard video card fried. Alienware would not help at all because the warranty was expired. So I sent it to a repair company who informed me that it would be $1600.00 to repair and only a 6 month warranty. So I scrapped it. I had done research about 10 months prior to it frying and found out it was a problem with that motherboard in the clevo 5620 version (Clevo is the company that actually makes these laptops) So I half expected it.

So now lets fast forward to more recently. I had been doing research. In spite of the negative feedback, I had found a site, www.notebookforums.com and went there. It has different forums based on brands of laptops. There is an Alienware one. Almost everything I read there was positive. A few negative things, but very few. So after joining, and posting there, I got nothing but postitive feedback. So I bought my new Alienware Area-51m 7700 gaming laptop. I was exited as hell. Then 3 1/2 weeks after, it just shut off in a puff of smoke (litterally) I had gone downstairs for 2 minutes to get a drink, and came back up. My computer room was filled with electric smelling smoke and the computer shut down. Long story short, had to send it back because the motherboard fried. After that, I dug a little and found 1 other post about that in that forum (www.notebookforums.com) So I posted asking if anyone else had that problem. I posted the specific details. About 15 people responded that they had the same thing. Most of them within 1 to 5 months of owning the laptop. Then one day I logged on and my post was gone. I posted about it, asking why my post had been deleted and a moderator PM'd me and said it was an accident. No big deal.

On with Alienware before we continue with the notebook forum story. I told Alienware that if they waived my 15% restocking fee, I would buy an Aurora 7500 desktop system. Ironically almost exactly what I plan to build after Christmas. They said they would not waive it. So because I had the laptop less than 30 days, I can return it, which is what I have done. Funny thing is that I pay $522.00 for a restocking fee, build my new system to the same specs as the Alienware Aurora 7500, and I still have about $300.00 left. I will be happier with what I build anyway. So I make out in the long run, except for loosing the money.

So on with the other story about the forum. I read a post a few days ago about a guy going through the SAME problem as what I had. All I said was, and I quote "Welcome to my world. I had the same problem, posted about it, and it was deleted" I went on to say that I had returned my 7700 because it was a poorly designed system that is prone to problems and overheating. One of the die hard Alienware supporters bashed me in the forum for making negative comments about the 7700 system. This went on for a few posts. I basically told them that both sides of the story needed told. If people ask for an opinion, they deserve to hear both positive and negative. I recieved 2 PM's from moderators saying that if I didnt stop spewing my poison on the forums that I would be banned for life. I messaged both of them back saying that I had thought that www.notebookforums.com was an unbiased forum. I explained that it was their posts in that forum that pushed me over the edge and made me decide to spend my 3500 bucks. I said that it is messed up that they were even PMing me because I had made a negtative comment. Then I realized that the thread that started this whole arguement (the other guy that posted with the same problem, that I had responded to) was deleted. Strange eh? I thought so. I PM'd the mods and asked why 2 negative threads were deleted. I never got an answer, or at least one I was allowed to read. I have been banned for life from that forum as of tonight.

So bottom line, I am done with Alienware. I build my own desktop systems and have for about 9 years now. Next laptop I get will be for listening to MP3's, surfing the net, watching movies and stuff like that. I will leave the hardcore gaming to my desktop systems.

I had made a comment at the begining post of this thread that I had "cheated" on hardwarecentral.com. Well I never left, I just visited that other forum for a while. It really made me appriciate all of you here. I have been reading this forum for about 7 years, and been a member for almost 5. I have fixed ALOT of problems just by searching through these forums. I like to think that I have helped a few along the way as well. Bottom line is you guys all ROCK. Thanks for the good advice. I look forward to continuing being a proud member of this forum. I love the fact that there have been some heated discussions here over the years, but never once have I seen a post deleted. Locked a few times, but never deleted. This has been and always will be my main sorce for computer problems.

Sorry for the long post, but there it is.

SJRACER

[Justintime]

wow.. sounds like a forum with intervening sponsors

[ThreeOnTheTree]

Yuk. That forum is a joke. Maybe their big sponsor should have handled your notebook problems better, and none of this would have been necessary. By them giving you the shaft on the restocking fee, you have every right to be bitter. If only they would have refunded your money, then you wouldn't have trashed their product, and there wouldn't be the need to "accidentally" delete threads and ban members.

[jankerson]

Interesting, that forum was talked about a lot on the Dell Forums.

With comments like: "Go to bla, bla, bla and they will set you straight on xyz."

[DanceMan]

I've visited there. I was curious, since Asus sell barebones, assemble-yourself notebooks, and are known for their performance desktop motherboards, whether their notebook bios have any memory settings, or are as limited as the big OEM notebook bios. I asked nicely twice in review posts on Asus models. No answer.
Somebody committed enough to post a lengthy review can't get into the bios?
Curious place. But I didn't find any forums on fixing the things, my initial interest in going there. It seemed to be 90% fanboy.

[jankerson]

It seemed to be 90% fanboy.

Yes I thought that too when I saw some links to that board in the past, who knows.

[ThePerson98]

Yes I thought that too when I saw some links to that board in the past, who knows.

I dont fanboy anything. Only thing I will get and nothing else is AMD processors. And that may be considered fanboy junk.
With like Nvidia and ATI, my brother has had much luck with his Nvidia cards. But I have gotten ATI two times. Im gonna try an Nvidia next. Seeing how well the 7800 GTX performs.
My brother 6800 GT kills anything you try to throw at it. My 9800 does suprisingly good too...It runs HL2 at high graphics. Battle for Middle Earth max graphics. Age of Empires III high graphics.
Im pleased with ATI so far. But with what Nvidia is getting, Im getting one of their cards for my next video card upgrade, which will be awhile...

[Akrid]

I know that many companys hire people to hype thier products online in chatrooms and messagebords. I belive Alienware is doing this bad. Some of the forums I looked at where their was accoutn after account of AW horror storys, then soem fanboy post "Alienware is the ultimant gaming machine!!! you guys are crazy!! dont wine!!! bla bla" It seems like its one of those payed to rave kids that work for companys. I know that the anime cowboy bebop was marketed that way from a tv documentry I saw about it.