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So I'm Thinking of going Alienware
Hi, I'm thinking of selling my current PC
Desktop Specs ~
http://www.preloved.co.uk/adverts/showadvert?index=1033868072
And I'm thinking of Converting to ~ Alienware M14x @ £1310.99
Intel® CoreTM i7 2820QM (2.3GHz/6MB cache)
Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
6144MB (1x2GB + 1x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
1536MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT555M
14.1 inch display (1600x900)
500GB8 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
High Capacity 8-cell Lithium Ion (63whr)
I'm Fed up of having to sit in my room all the time on my computer when i have to do some things, so I've Decided im going portable.
My cousin has a M15x i had a little go on, and it was awesome, very smooth and quite.
I'm posting here because i need to know am i wasting my money here? should i wait for a new m15x r3? or have they completely killed it off, or should i be looking at a totally differant laptop brand / model?
Anything with a Nvidea 460 in it is no good to me.
Comments
Alienware customer myself, using m17x, its overkill, theres nothing to really tests its true capability, Great laptop tho.
Hopefully if i sell my Desktop i could knock around £400 of the laptop,
I'm currently stuck to a budget at the moment since i also have a motorbike to maintain
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4093/userbar759160.gif
I'm a little confused here; the 460M is more powerful than the 555M, considerably more (20-30%?), in fact, and yet you want the latter instead of the former?
Granted, AMD's mobile chips beat out any of Nvidia's at the moment, so you'd be better off still with a Radeon HD 5000 or 6000 series GPU, but if you're going to put up with the vastly inferior performance per watt of a Geforce GPU, the 460 is definitely superior to the 555.
Sure, I'd be willing to bet it puts out a fair bit more heat (though I don't have the TDPs off hand), but hey, you're condemning yourself to that anyways with a mobile Nvidia GPU one way or the other, so why worry?
Dude that is like going into a Ferrari show room and asking for the miles per gallon quotes?
Or asking them do they do a diesel engine..FFS
Live within your means and life will be soo much simpler!
Alienware's quality has taken a dive since Dell took it over. You should take a look at Origin PC's(http://www.originpc.com/). Origin was started by the original Alienware makers. They make some sick machines. Dunno, just another option.
Do whatever you want though!
Do you know for certain?
I had tons of problems with Alienware. Bad build, bad customer service. Went with ASUS later, much better experience. Alienware=Dell.
You should be warned that the product you are looking at really isn't a gaming laptop. Apparently there are two very different cards both branded as GeForce GT 555M. One is based on the GF108 GPU chip that was Nvidia's lowest end chip of that generation. The other is a severely cut down GF106, with DDR3 memory rather than the proper GDDR5, to cripple the card for lack of memory bandwidth. Alienware's site seems to be down at the moment, so I can't check which card it is, but neither is appropriate for gaming.
Well, games will run on either card, I guess. But you'd better get used to having to turn graphical settings way down. The desktop Radeon HD 4890 that you're getting rid of would offer easily several times the performance of either GeForce GT 555M. While you can get a laptop video card with performance in the same ballpark as your current Radeon HD 4890, you'd need to look at a Radeon HD 6970M or GeForce GTX 485M.
There's no real reason to go with an Nvidia video card in a gaming laptop right now. Nvidia's architecture trails way behind AMD's in performance per watt, so to offer a given level of performance from an Nvidia card means far more heat and power consumption, both of which are very bad things in a laptop, as the form factor doesn't allow much heat dissipation.
There are some problems intrinsic to gaming laptops that you should be aware of if you want to move to one.
1) Gaming laptops can get very hot. As in, don't actually set one on your lap while playing games if you don't wish to sterilize yourself.
2) The keyboard can get very hot, too, so you may wish not to use the built in keyboard for gaming.
3) Gaming laptops typically cannot run games at all except for when they are plugged in.
4) Laptops are an ergonomically terrible form factor. Virtually no one with a desktop who can position the keyboard and monitor independently puts them right up against each other.
5) Gaming laptops are fragile, partially because it's too much heat in too little space, and partially because they get shaken up a lot more than desktop cases that tend to hold still.
6) Gaming laptops are often impractical to fix. Rather than being able to fix it yourself, you may need to send it in for service or replace it outright.
7) Gaming laptops are typically impractical to upgrade. In a desktop, if you discover that you need a faster processor or video card, you can likely upgrade what you have. In a laptop, you're probably looking at replacing it outright as your only option.
8) Gaming laptops are far more expensive for a given level of performance than gaming desktops.
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If you're going to get a laptop that will require you to greatly reduce graphical settings anyway, then I'd strongly encourage you to wait for AMD's upcoming Llano APU chip to launch. AMD says it is coming in Q2 2011, which means, by the end of June. It could launch any day now. That will get you graphical performance not that much worse than the laptop you're looking at, with much lower power consumption, and perhaps half of the price tag. Processor performance will trail well behind Sandy Bridge, though.
Alternatively, you could get a bigger budget and a nicer gaming laptop. If you need something right now, the only sensible hardware choices for a gaming laptop on your budget are a Core i7 2630QM or 2720QM processor and a Radeon HD 6800M or 6900M series video card. The Core i7 2820QM is too much more expensive than a 2720QM for only an extra 100 MHz in clock speed. In contrast, the 2720QM has an extra 200 MHz base clock speed over the 2630QM, and as much as an extra 500 MHz under turbo boost.
Also, you should be warned that the GeForce GTX 460M laptop card has nothing to do with a GeForce GTX 460 desktop video card, in spite of the similar names. The former is a GF106 chip, and the latter a GF104 chip. A GF106 chip is roughly a GF104 chip cut in half.
Asus and MSI seem to be taking their sweet time getting a new generation of gaming laptops to market. Alienware, Sager, and Eurocom have appropriate $2000 or so gaming laptops on the market that pair a Core i7 2720QM with a Radeon HD 6970M if that's what you're after.
My 2cp on this one:
Ultimately, it's your money. If the convenience of having the machine pre-made and with the Dell warranty are worth the money, then it's worth the money to you. Obviously a lot of people think that way, or Dell wouldn't still be in business today.
Personally, I wouldn't throw my money down that rathole. Gaming laptops are not a good investment at all, especially for gaming. And the quality and performance of anything built by Dell is... not nearly as good as some other manufacturers, especially for the premium price they charge for the Alienware name.
If your fed up of being stuck in your room to "do stuff" on the computer, get a cheap notebook and unteather yourself: you can surf the web, play casual games, do school work and office tasks on it, and it will be considerably cheaper, run cooler, get better battery life, and be significantly more portable than any "Gaming" laptop. Then keep (or rebuild/upgrade) your desktop for a gaming rig, and just do that with it - gaming.
I would echo the sentiments by others to be extremely wary of the notion of a "gaming laptop". They're not particularly great at gaming, they're absolutely horrible at everything else, and they're very expensive.
That said, if you're going to go that route, Dell/Alienware is not who I would recommend, necessarily. As is commonly known, Dell does not manufacture their own machines. AFAIK, they get them primarily from Quanta, and some of their nicer machines might come from Clevo (I believe I heard that somewhere, but don't quote me on it) but since they'll never disclose that, it's not worth the risk, and it probably means you're not getting a great machine, regardless (because it's going to the lowest bidder, one way or the other).
MSI and Asus, on the other hand, actually design and build their own gaming laptops. Asus is also often pretty much on top for reliability (can't speak for MSI; I never see them reviewed in that respect). Asus and MSI also display the confidence to give long warranties, often 3 years standard against manufacturer defects, and mine actually came with a 1-year accidental damage warranty. That, alone, shows that their machines are probably pretty well built, because they have a low enough 3-year failure rate for the companies to cover you for hardware failure in that time.
That tends to make them very good choices for gaming laptops. Sager also isn't bad; at least they TELL YOU what the basic machine is, including the ODM who build it.
Overpriced and underperformer.
Better buy two extra batteries too
I disagree about the Asus. I have one and it's probably the worst computer I've ever used. The USB ports give out, disk checks don't work, the computer shuts down for no reason at all and just a bunch of other little annoyances. I also didn't get a 3 year warrenty on anything. Unless all of this has changed in the last year, I wouldn't recommend an Asus computer.
a previous poster said it all "alienware_dell" and hes right, they are just XPS laptops/desktops under the alienware badge. Alienware stopped being a true enthusiast machine YEARS ago...personaly I always custom build mine, only way to get something truley superior...oh and laptop gaming is a joke.
if got the money you can build much better pc these days even on a budget just got to shop around to find the best sites and deals alienware just paying for fancy name .
Build your own PC and it will be superior to alienware and cheaper also hehe.
Go with an Asus.
My brother has had 2 (one got ran over by a car - long story) but they are both freak'n beastly powerhouse gaming laptops and are a LOT cheaper then crappy alienware stuff.
Go Asus, you won't be disapointed.
here is something worth looking at i just brought it myself 3 weeks ago for a slightly smaller build from alienware £1300 and have no problems playing anything as yet.
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/technology/computing_and_gaming/laptops_and_netbooks/121672647_medion_erazer_md97786_intel_core_i7740qm_6gb1tb_156_black_and_silver_performancegaming_laptop.html?hnav=4294935766
I vowed never to get an Alienware; however last year my PC died a rather horrible and annoying death and I have very VERY little time to act on it because I work from home and we were very much in our "prime time" of the season. So, my boss paid for half of the Alienware and I paid the other half. I have never for an instant regretted it. I love my machine.
While it is by far overkill, I love that it won't be super out of date for at least the next year. So I am pleased with my decision and wish you luck with yours!
Every company is, out of the countless machines they make, occasionally going to make a lemon. That's just a classic case of the law of large numbers. This is why you can't judge a company by one bad machine.
What matters is the probability that, for a given purchase, you, personally, will get a machine that fails withing a given period.
Square Trade, a well-known third party warranty company actually did a study on the two-year failure rate of laptops in 2009 (with 3-year projections), along the same lines of what you'd typically find from, say, Consumer Reports (only CR's reports aren't free to the non-subscribing public). As detailed here, you can see that they absolutely found Asus to be at the top for reliability. Oddly enough, Toshiba was also right up there, but it's unlikely that their results are outliers, because they have a sample size of 30,000. That's an absurdly large sample (even at the 99.9% confidence level, assuming one laptop per US citizen, or 320 million total machines, that would only be a 0.9% sample error). Note that netbooks have a much higher failure rate than larger laptops, and so, are not representative of typical laptops (in short, "my netbook failed" is not much of an argument against a laptop brand).
It is also fact that Asus is one of the few machines that does not outsource their laptops. They are their own ODM.
On warranties, I went to Newegg, and selecting Asus as the manufacturer, I looked up the first 12 laptops that appeared. Out of 12, 7 had 2-year warranties and 1 had a 3-year warranty. Of the remaining four which had only 1-year warranties, ALL had accidental damage protection included. In total, 11 out of 12 included accidental damage protection. Typically the 1-year warranties seemed to be on their lower tier machines, with only one being over $900. Two of them were sub-$600 notebooks.
In short, most of their machines come with at least 2-year warranties and accidental damage protection included (which quite literally means if you drop it in a pool, they'll send you another). Higher end machines will almost certainly come with higher-end warranties. I purchase an N61JQ-X1 myself, which was $1100 at the time, which is somewhere on the higher end of mid-range for pricing. That's probably why I got a good warranty with mine. Even if a lower-end Asus machine is purchased, however, it is easy to find one with a good warranty and, in general, they have low failure rates.
Ya Alienware and Asus arent always great laptops
A little less known but awesome top quality is Sager for laptops.
But like many said, laptops and gaming arnt all thaty great since you need to be pluged in
Yeah, I agree on Sager. They're not a brand that should be overlooked.
That said, this generation they don't seem to be a great brand to buy from, because their laptops seem to only have Nvidia GPUs (which are really not very good on the mobile market).
Sager does have some laptops with a Radeon HD 6970M. That's AMD's top end laptop GPU, though, so you're looking at around $2000 for a laptop with that.
They don't offer a Radeon HD 6800M series card, though, which is weird. I still think that laptop manufacturers may be holding off on mid-range laptop graphics from AMD, planning to use Llano for that. Maybe they figure they'll get Juniper range performance from a Llano+Redwood hybrid CrossFire setup or something.
That would certainly be cheaper than Sandy Bridge+Juniper, but also wouldn't be as good at gaming performance. Dropping the discrete card from the CrossFire array at idle would surely be a cleaner setup than trying to switch between a discrete card and Intel integrated graphics, though.
Well the retailer in Canada was willing to do some modifications for me at www.fortnax.com but mine game with the 485M card and i cant complain, its running very cool, and for the games i play I am getting great performance out of my SB and 485M.
I was hoping to get the 6970M but wasnt available at the time, but i dont regret my decison now for the 485M, have to see how it runs skyrim in november.
First, listen to Quizzical, the dude knows his stuff.
That being said, I do think Alienwares and Dells in general get a bad rap. I know a few people who have Alienwares and they rip. I myself have had a couple Dells, one being an XPS. I've also had HPs, and I can tell you from experience that Dells support is not that bad comparably. If you get an XPS or Alienware you will get a special code you can put in when you call tech support (if you ever need to, you probably won't) that will take you directly to XPS or Alienware special support and it will be a guy from Canada or the USA, not the poeple in India or the Phillipines who couldn't give a rats ass about you. Nothing against them, they are just working for shit wages...I wouldn't care either.
I've worked in the customer service world for 4 years now, and the majority of our job is to clean up the messes the people from India and the Phillipes make. We're not allowed to openly mock them, but in our inner circle we call them the "terrible twos", because their agent IDs always start with a 2. In dealing with them I litterally /facepalm about 10 times a day, often /facedesk at least a few times a week. I'm not sure how a company can save money by outsourcing when they have to hire people like myself to come in and clean up after them (we get paid pretty decently compared to an average US-based agent), and the sheer volume of customers they lose is staggering.
Yes, Alienwares are ridiculously overpriced, but if you have the money and that's what you want go for it.
i wish i wouldn't of bought an HP
Well, I wouldnt know much about customer service for AW because after 3 years I have never had any problems. Maybe I'm one of the few, I dunno. But I will say that most of the hate comes from the same people who think its stupid to buy a porche. They cant afford either. Yea, yea, go ahead and flame me ya broke azz bitchez.
Besides, I got a really nifty hat with the logo, and a card that says I'm an official Alienware owner.. All for under 3,800! Now that's a effing steal! I just walk into the bar "with my nifty hat on", flash my "card", and its free booze and boobs galore!! Chew on that HP owners.