-
"Class Action Lawsuit" on by AntiAW
Pros: blinking eyes contraption
Cons: horrible tech supposrt horrible cust service and not well built
Summary: AW has been a big pain to the customers and David P. Meyer & Associates have a class action lawsuit against them, I already submited my information
-
"Poor Quality, Died In A Few Months" on by iain88
Pros: It looks Nice
Cons: Poor Quality Parts, Poor Service, Poor Support
Summary: I would never recommend this machine to anyone as Alienware uses the worst quality of everything and is glossed over with beautiful Sales and Marketing. Their Tech support is terrible, if you need to return a damaged part they return it with something equally damaged and although everything goes well when purchasing the thing be prepared to spend more that you bargained for with all part replacements and postage charges. I have had 2 faulty hard disks and one faulty motherboard, great for such a "amazing" company. They are by far the worst company to buy from. STAY AWAY!!!! As proof search for Alienware Sux in Google and read hundreds of other opinions.
-
"Trouble with Alienware" on by adonicane
Pros: 17" Monitor is decent quality
Cons: Frequently shuts down, games seize, Speakers are of poor quality
Summary: I want to take the opportunity to post my experiences with the Area 51m. I've had the system for 100 days and this is what I have gone through. The system I have has the 3.4GHz processor, 1GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra, x2 60GB 7200rpm hard drives, and built in Camera.
Initially when I received the laptop the system continually shut off while playing games so Alienware sent out a technician to determine if the videocard was overheating and causing the problem (only after I insisted with two dozen phone calls). The card was overheating so I sent the system in and they replaced the video card, which was about a 7 day process.
I had been reporting problems with the sound card, but they said it was working perfectly. I still can't hear sound from more than 2 feet away, even though the Laptop has 4 speakers and a built in subwoofer.
The monitor had several dead pixels on it when I received it and with a dozen more phone calls they agreed to replace it. Furthermore, the hard drive always hangs when loading files and more often than not the entire system restarts itself to fix the problem. For the second time I sent it back to Alienware, I asked them to look at the Monitor, Sound, and hard drives. This time it took 40 days for me to get the system back and they only replaced the monitor and said everything else was fine. And conveniently the system had now passed the 90 warranty deadline. I had wanted the three year warranty, but while trying to buy the system the sales people had troubles getting the warranty added and at $400 extra I decided to hold off and hope the product was as good as Alienware said it was.
In conclusion, the video card still runs so hot my left hand continually sweats while typing. It is impossible to hear a DVD from across the room and the hard drives always hangs and only about 50% of the time does it recover without resetting the OS. And finally, after 100 days the keyboard is now shutting down on me, on the right side. Several keys now don't work and I've tried everything to get them working (new drivers, cleaning, etc.) Alienware refuses to help and hangs up on me every time I call. They say the only thing I can do is pay about $60 to send my system FedEx back to Alienware and $20 for a new keyboard and $50 in labor.
Alienware took me for $4600 don't let it happen to you. -
"The worst computer company in the world" on by nbb007
Pros: Decent computer when it works, which isn't often
Cons: Frequent Failures, Extremely Hot, Terrible Customer Service
Summary: I bought and Alienware 7700 for over $4,000 at the end of April 2005. I had 4 months of worry -free use, and thought that I had finally hit the jackpot as far as great computer systems go.
Thats when the probems started. One day, the system refused to boot, and I spent several hours on the phone with tech support. After hours of useless help, the guy gave up and actually emailed me a link to a help page on the internet. I googled the problem myself, and the link he emailed me was the first hit of the results page! I ended up restoring the system to factory condition, loosing everything on the HDDs.
A month later, the exact same problem occured. After having an even worse experience with tech support without them helping me at all, I restored the laptop back to the factory configuration again. This was the second catasrophic failure I experienced.
Then in January 06, the system wouldn't power up at all one day. Tech support had me remove and replace the RAM, Processor Heat Sink, Keyboard, Wireless card, HDDs, and optical drives several times. This took about 6 hours overall, and was rather tedious work. I work with computers for a living so I was able to take everything apart and put it back together, but I couldn't imagine the average computer user having to do all of this. Even though I COULD do it, I paid a TON of money for the best warrenty that Alienware offered, but this is apparently the way they do things... Anyway, after a 6 hour stint with tech support, they finally asked me to send it in to there in house support center. Since my work relied on this computer, I worked out a deal where I would pay to send the computer overnight and they in turn would return it via overnight. They also quoted me a 10 day turn-around time.
Well, after a full day of talking to Alienware and sending my computer to them via overnight for over $150, the repair ended up taking 21 days, and then as icing on the cake, they shipped it back to me via FedEx ground. My system was gone for over a month, and I lost out on a bunch of consulting work.
The system came back to me with a different motherboard than the one it was manufactured with. I thought that they might of fixed a bug or something, so this might have been good, right? Not the case. Come March of 06, the computer refuses to boot with a motherboard PCI error. Once again, tech support has me disassemble and reassemble my laptop, and then says I have to send it back to thier in-house repair facility.
This being the 4th failure in less than a year, I am pretty angry. I ended up talking to 7 different people, and after an entire afternoon spent on the phone, they offer me A $50 DOLLAR GIFT CERTIFICATE! THATS IT!
Alienware REFUSES to stand behind the hardware they sell. Thier goal is to get your money, and once that happens, they could care less about what happens to their systems. I spent OVER $4,000 one year ago for the best system money could buy. I ended up getting an easy-bake oven than fails every 3 months on average. I am now exploring class-action lawsuit options and protection under Florida's lemon laws... -
"Bitter sweet machine" on by PatrickSFSU
Pros: super fast, makes you feel special, its no Dell, You can do anything and everything you want on this machine
Cons: Heavy as a TV, Runs really hot...could be a good thing, screen isnt that great, wireless card problems
Summary: I am a student living in the dorms at SFSU (san fran state) I some how convinced my parents to dish out the cash to get me this fine machine. I was aware of the problems that people have reported about the quality. I will admit that I did have a problem right out of the box with my wireless card, but with 30min of tech support it was solved. I have a feeling that the people that bad mouth Alienware dont actually own one, rather they think they want to own one but just dont. I happen to love my machine. I am a huge fan of Photoshop and running a dual display is also huge to me. Battlefield 2 and running other programs is no problem for this machine. To refer to what i said above about it running hot, well its a Pen 4 so its going to run hot, but if your in san fran like me it keeps your hands nice and warm in the cold. Over all i would say if your looking for a top notch desktop replacement...id look into alienware as a choice.
Write a Review
