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4 out of 5 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"$4,000.00 Fully Packed laptop lasted a month before burning out!"
Pros: Looks Nice
Cons: Gets To Hot, Burn Hands, Power Adapter Clicks, Burns out quick!
Summary: 4/8/2005
Delivery Speed was poor (took a month to deliver), Customer Service Was Horrible (Everyone I Talked To Sounded like They Were From India using names like Carlos and Frank), Overall Satisfaction, Not Good! I bought an Alienware Area-51m 7700 with 2 Gigs of memory and the whole works, I packed this baby with everything I can put in to it, the entire system ran me over $4,000.00. Not less then a month, that's 30 days of owning this machine, things started acting weird. For one, the LCD display stopped working. I called tech support; the tech that barley spoke English made me open the system myself even though I have a 1 year on-site warrantee to find out that the 17Inch LCD blew! Yeah Blew! They told me that it's going to take 3 weeks to fix it, even though I use this for my business and there is a major project underway and that's why I bought this. but no comments were given, They said they were going to reformat my entire system which means all my work will be gone. I hit the roof at this point! All this for an LCD display! Ummm who hit you on the head and gave you a job? I told them I have a 1 year on-site warrantee that I paid for which means you have to come here to fix it! Of course he told me about the fine print which on-site in their language is not what we know it means. Good thing I didn't buy the 3 year on-site warrantee! What do they do on-site? I smell false advertising, what a waste! I then asked them about a refund on the system and they said I would have to pay them 15% of the entire order to restock it. That's $700! How are you going to charge a customer $700 to restock a defective laptop? This is an unfair practice; I should have gone with dell for all my web/video/media needs! I rather give my business to people who at least work for my business. They also gave my company and myself the run around and would not give us names of their supervisors. When we asked to speak to a supervisor the rep put us on hold and when he came back said his supervisor didn't want to talk to us. Umm, ok... but you took our money though right? We had to argue just to speak with a supervisor, and they transferred us to some other department to speak with a supervisor. They would not even compensate us for this huge inconvenience of taking our $4,000.00 for a piece of crap product that only lasted a month. Also note the other weird things we seen was clicking of the power adapter, "We were like what the hell is that noise, its loud!" I could fry an egg on it that's how hot it gets. The second thing is that the pc itself gets very hot where your hands start to ache from the heat! What's with that? I thought this system was suppose to be the best on the market? The system gets to hot for a laptop. Where the vent is on the left side, the plastic started to dis-color from the heat, turning a slight dark color. I though maybe it was form my hand but after wiping it off with a damp cloth we see it was the body itself turning.
To sum it up. We are stuck with this, and we sent it back on 4/8/05 to be fixed. I will update more here when I hear of anything. Man did we get ripped off!
4/15/05 NEW UPDATE...
I emailed Alienware's customer service yesterday to find the status of my repair, my company's media project is on hold due to this bull and my client is freaking and want his product. I got this email back from alienware saying they could not help me. So their customer service email address does not give customer service?
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
For this type of issue, you will need to contact our Customer Service Department directly. They will gladly provide you with all the information and help regarding this matter.
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So after this email, my day was to busy, I would not be able to call them that day, so I figured I'd call them the next day. Then at the end of that same day I got another email from the same support email address saying it has been sent to their shipping department! What's the deal? No one told me nothing, no notifications, multiple emails saying they can't help and now its done? Does the entire company have some sort of communication problem?
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
I am very pleased to inform you that your system has been diagnosed and returned to perfect working condition and been sent to our shipping department and is ready to be dispatched back to you.
Should you need additional information please go ahead and contact our very knowledgeable and supportive Customer Service Team. They will be more than glad to help you.
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Well I'm happy its fix! So I guess the customer service email address was correct! So is it a mood thing? Does the person who answers these emails have to be in the mood to answer a question? So yesterday I wrote them back asking what the issue actually was, and will this happen again in the future! I heard back from them today on the 15Th saying the following, and also I did notice a little attitude in this email, or maybe its just me? You decide...
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
The problem was traced down to a faulty “inverter board” that has been already replaced. There is no reason to think that something like that could happen to your system again.
We hope the above information proves to be helpful.
If you have more questions or any technical issues regarding this or any other topic do not hesitate to contact us again. For fast answers and tips you can visit our “Knowledge Data Base” at http://support.alienware.com.
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Ummm, right! So you put in some magic alien beans or an alien anal probe so your faulty product will not break again? These people must be joking, come on! I've been in the computer business since I'm 15, I've built my own systems from all OEM products, nothing is guaranteed. not even a fancy laptop from a company that can't even sell descent products. That's like me saying the sun is actually green, or the moon is purple... Will you believe me cause I know about computers? Not! But anyway that's it, a faulty inverter board. I guess their quality control people are on vacation, and the quality control checklist they send out are computer generated. When I get the system back we will see how long it will last before there is something else wrong and requires me to send it back. I only purchased this for its horsepower but the system seems to be a mule after all.
After reading the past reviews, I hope I don't receive my laptop back with scratches on it or features missing as other's experienced. I will update more upon arrival of my $4,000 defective alienware product in a few days.
My company spends a lot of money on a lot of new high powered computers and servers that hit the market, and I think alienware is still to small and amateur to be ranked as a good company in any way, or placed in a category where real working companies like ourselves can use their products in a manner that would make us productive. Lets put it this way, this company also sponsors adult sites. I've seen a site listed on their sponsor list that does web design and media but has a message board that has major adult images where people post adult items, pictures, and videos, foul language, etc. Are they hurting that much where they have to give some guy a free pc to get advertised on an adult message board? Very unprofessional for a company that deals in custom computers. If you want the link just look on their sponsor list, you'll find the media company icon posted with a quote from the site owner on it! Alienware seems very proud of who they sponsor/advertise with! lol
Tom Allen / President / BrainScanMedia.com, Inc.Updated
4/21/2005 UPDATE
Well I received my Alienware Area-51m 7700 laptop today and well, quit frankly I'm disappointed once again! My laptop showed up without its original box, it was poorly stuffed in a thin brown box, the laptop bag itself was crammed in the box outside the laptop box, all my papers I sent were missing (Good thing I made photo copies), The battery was hanging off the system, so apparently they did not screw it on and just stuffed everything in a plain box to send back. So after screwing the screws tight myself (got to love the warrantee service you pay for) I then turned it on and the display worked. So hopefully this will last longer then a month. But in a month or so I'm going to buy some dells. I need some real computers, not some over heated piece of junk probably made in Mexico.
If it breaks again, I will update more here...
- 7 replies to this review
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All, Ok. I think that we all may have been in these shoes with one product or another at some stage. However, good points have been made, it IS true that Alienware is not rated well for support...but this is no secret, and if you are buying a machine like this at this cost, you would have looked into it. When you order by design - with components like these, then it should be assumed that you know what your doing and are able to debug any hardware or software issues that occur in future, this is why it is so upgradeable.
Another good point (positive side) is that it is a machine that is sold with warnings of delay, and also they make no bones about what these machines are used for. Now as it happens I work in software development and use over 2.5G RAM and also travel 3 times a week to Boston with it. Yup - it's heavy as hell, but I am not a small guy. Yup - it runs hot too, so I went and bought a $30 cooler that helps. One of the main points I would make is that this is not a laptop, it is a PC replacement.
We as consumers, and as someone with a business that has the responsibility to purchase on behalf of a client, NEED to be careful of what we consider for that client by matching what they NEED rather than what their eyes can see.
I have had many laptops over the past 15+ years and this I had put very careful consideration into, including reading all the bad reviews as well. I am more than happy with the performance of this computer and would recommend it to anyone working in my industry ? In summary - all thumbs up to a lappy that can open a 100+MB log in less than 5 seconds.
David Suich
Contractor 15+Years DEV/QA -
Reasons:
If you plan on using it for business, forget it. Alienware can care less and will tell you that. The Laptops are not business machines, their for gaming people and they make it very clear.
My recommendations are forget forget Alienware, by a Dell, HO or etc, who understand people use computers for living.
1. Very bad in house support.
2. On site support is a major lie
3. Alienware can care less about your needs.
I'm very sorry I purchase an alienware.
My laptop 7700 is 8 months and I had two major problem both times results of over heating smoke flames and etc.
I don't need to hide behide another name.
Alienware inhouse support SUCK BIG TIME. 30-45 days to repair a laptop.
Don't purchase an Alienware, if you have problem, you F???? big time.
David L. Wasle
dwasler@yahoo.com -
I purchased my Alienware Area 51m 7700 back in March of this year with the same expectations from anyone who drops this much on a laptop. After waiting a month to get it, I was giddy with anticipation. When I got home and saw that sleek black box, I could not wait to turn this baby on. Upon initial inpsection, I was extremly pleased.
2 months later, the CD-RW goes out. These things happen...not normally after such a short period, but I wrote this off as a defect and had them send me a new one after they put a hold on my card for the price of the item. I can say that I never had to do that with Dell.
After 3 months, I began noticing soem serious problems with heat. The left side palm rest would get so hot that I could not rest my hand on it, and had to power the machine down for a few hours. I even have a nice little imprint of my palm burned into this side, which just happens to be where the Graphics card is housed. I was sitting there playing Worl of Warcraft one day and the machine just blacks out. ***? I try to reboot the machine and had to remove the battery to get it to shut down.
I called support and explained my problem to them and was asked to run a few tests. I did what they asked, and the very next day, my machine wouldnt even bring the bios up. On top of this, the power light was on, but nothing was happening. I could not shut the machine down either. I had to pull the batter out ot get it to shut down. Immidiatley after connecting the battery again, It comes on, or tries to at least. Again, I am just stuck with a blank screen and a blinking cursor. I call support and they have me remove the memory, reseat it, try again, still nothing, then they have me try clearing the CMOS, still nothing, then they want me to remove the heat sink form the gpu, and informa me that they will have to send me some thermal paste before I can do this. So now, my laptop will be unuseable until this is done and they are nto even sure that this would correct the problem.
I was furious and demanded that they send me a packing slip and that THEY fix this thing. After about a 15 minute hold time, she comes back and tells me that I have an RMA number. I am now sending this back to hopefully get repaired. My last laptop was a Dell Inspiron 8200 and it lasted me about 3 years, and I only ever had 1 small problem with the modem. Dell sent me an overnight slip and had the laptop back to me in working order in only 4 days time. Alienware on the other hand, sends me a Fed Ex Ground slip, which if you have ever used Fed Ex ground, you will know it is the slowest of all of the ground mail services. I will post back once I get it back and let everyone know how this was resolved.
An end user should never be asked to take their laptop apart in my opinion. I happen to be pretty computer savy to say the least, so it is not that big of a deal to me, but I could only imagine the typical End User trying to take stuff apart and they have no clue what they are looking at. What sort of suypport are they running over there. Just in case this warranty doesnt pan out, I wanted to make everyone aware of the fact that you can Insure your laptop against theft, damage, loss, etc. at many insurance agencies. Lucky for me, I did this 3 days after getting it and it only ran me $72 a year. If all else fails, it looks like I will be making a claim on that. -
DELL IS MADE IN MEXICO ALIENWARE IS MADE IN MIAMI FLORDIA. DELL IS IN TEXAS RIGHT NEXT TO MEXICO THINK ABOUT IT THATS WHERE THEY GET THEIR COMPUTERS MADE IN MEXICO!!!!
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I purchased my Alienware Area 51 Extreme about a year ago thinking I was getting a high quality product built with attention to detail and all the little extras.
When it arrived, not all of the drivers had been installed. The mouse driver wasn't even installed. The built-in mouse/glide path device caused problems when I was typing and accidentally brushed against it, sending the cursor bouncing around the screen and interfering with the data input. It had to be disabled.
I had a wireless network adapter that was causing 6 or more BSOD episodes a day. First they had me reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. The discs that came with the computer did not restore it to the way it was when I received it. I was able to download some things from the Alienware site but other things were just lost.
That didn't correct the problem so they had me open the notebook and swap memory modules around. I did discover that one of the modules had not been seated properly and was not clicked into the slot but that didn't correct the problem either. They had me ship the notebook back and they replaced the motherboard. That didn't correct the problem either. They finally sent me (at their expense) a new network card with a different chipset that was more compatible with the Alienware. The DVD drive was bad and generated a host of error messages an wouldn't play a movie. They had me jump through some more hoops before they finally replaced the drive.
I finally, after about 3 months of hell, had a great notebook computer which has worked wonderfully since then. I have since been told that Alienware does not build these computers but buys them from a supplier and just ships to the customer. I've also been told (visit http://notebookforums.com) that they will not provide post warranty repairs even if the customer is willing to pay for that service.
I love my Alienware notebook but If I knew then, what I know now about the company and their support, I would have bought something else. I doubt that I would ever buy from them again even if I had another $3500 to spend on another notebook. -
I purchased my Alienware Area 51 Extreme about a year ago thinking I was getting a high quality product built with attention to detail and all the little extras.
When it arrived, not all of the drivers had been installed. The mouse driver wasn't even installed. The built-in mouse/glide path device caused problems when I was typing and brushed against it, sending the cursor bouncing around the screen and interfering with the data input. It had to be disabled.
I had a wireless network adapter that was causing 6 or more BSOD episodes a day. First they had me reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. The discs that came with the computer did not restore it to the way it was when I received it. I was able to download some things from the Alienware site but other things were just lost.
That didn't correct the problem so they had me open the notebook and swap memory modules around. I did discover that one of the modules had not been seated properly and was not clicked into the slot but that didn't correct the problem either. They had me ship the notebook back and they replaced the motherboard. That didn't correct the problem either. They finally sent me (at their expense) a new network card with a different chipset that was more compatible with the Alienware. Then the DVD drive turned out the be bad. They had me jump through some more hoops before they finally replaced the drive.
I finally, after about 3 months, had a great notebook computer which has worked wonderfully since then. I have since been told that Alienware does not build these computers but buys them from a supplier and just ships to the customer. I've also been told (http://notebookforums.com) that they will not provide post warranty repairs even if the customer is willing to pay for that service.
I love my Alienware notebook but If I knew then, what I know now about the company and their support, I would have bought something else. I doubt that I would ever buy from them again. -
Well, I read your review in its entirity. I couldn't disagree more. I took everything you said with a grain of salt, though. And I've got to say that I haven't experienced ANY of the issues you mentioned. Not even with their customer serivce. My order DID take about a month, HOWEVER, there were three seperate components which, when selected, did say "May Delay Order". When I actually submitted the order, I was informed that the order would take longer because of those parts. I accepted it, and waited. Good things are worth waiting for, right?
I've had this machine for some time, and it does get warm (gee, 'cuz it's not like there's a heat warning on the power supply or anything, right?), but not THAT hot. There are four fans of considerable size on the bottom that, as long as they aren't blocked, keep the system nice and cool. I mean... are you keeping your system wrapped in a blanket or something?
All in all, I love this system. A beautiful display with phenomenal performance all around. I actually do run a business, which by the way, is NOT why you buy a machine like this. These are marketed first and formost as a GAMING MACHINE. If you want a ****** little word processor, don't drop 4 G's on a frag box, then complain because it holds up your business. You set yourself up for disappointment when you do something that you're warned will take time when you're on a schedule.
In conclusion, I would like to just reiterate my earlier sentiment: I have experienced NONE of the issues expressed by user MoroseNYC. None at all. This is an exceptional system, and the wait was well worth it.
