My New Alienware.

[Kranar]

So I moved to Seattle 3 weeks ago and shipped my old 4 year old Dell desktop via FedEx. Initially FedEx told me it would take 2-3 business days to deliver it from Toronto to Seattle. After countless and questionable "delays" I receive my desktop 16 days after I gave it to them, and the monitor is cracked, and the desktop is pretty much all banged up and busted. I complain to FedEx, luckily the package was insured, and so I get 400 bucks, whatever... atleast the hard drives survived.

While slightly ticked off, it was the final nudge I needed to go all out and buy the system I had always wanted. I wanted something as powerful as a desktop, but that I could take with me to work or a friends place if I wanted to. The laptop system... well actually more of a mobile desktop, is as follows:

Alienware Area 51 m7700
Intel Pentium 4 670 Desktop Processor w/ HT Technology 3.8GHz 800MHz FSB 2MB
17" WideXGA+ 1440 x 900 LCD Display
3GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB / 2 x 1024MB
Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 320GB (160GB x 2) 5400 RPM ATA100
8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
256MB NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX
4 Speakers + Subwoofer built-in.
Remote Control


Now... now... I know many people here will be thinking "OMG YOU GOT A P4 INSTEAD OF AN AMD!" and actually, overall I do agree that AMDs are superior. I don't find them to be ultra faster as some hardcore AMD fans believe, but overall they are a better processor. Problem was that no AMD laptops supported Seagate's RAID-0 320GB configuration and they only had 2 RAM slots, so 2 GB was the max. The biggest AMD hard drives I could find in a RAID configuration were in the mid-high 100 GBs.

Anyhow, I ordered this about two weeks ago. I had read the Alienware horror stories about people getting their laptops and not working, or burning up real bad, or being so heavy it causes them pain (it does weigh 14 pounds so it's not your lightweight notepad). Those stories did make me nervous at first and actually quite a bit hesistant. However, after using this thing for serious gaming and programming for a week now, I can say none of those things have been a problem. It eats up games quite nicely with every setting maxed out, and finally I can program with 5-6 instances of Visual Studio 2005 running and not experience a single slow down.

Overall, I'm very happy so far with this system. I looked at Falcon Northwest, WidowPCs, the Dell XPS Gen 2, all of them had great systems as well in terms of the raw CPU/GPU, but apart from VoodooPC with laptops selling for 13000 bucks and being out of this world powerful, I couldn't find a system I'd have been happier with.

[Bobmuhthol]

You're in the US. Awesome.

[Numbers]

If you ever use their tech support, let me know how it turns out. I have an Alienware desktop, and I've never needed to call their tech support yet, but I'm curious how it is now that they're owned by Dell.

[Kranar]

From what I know, Dell won't be interfering one bit with Alienware's operations for atleast another 4-6 months.

The horror stories suggest that AW's tech support is terrible. Hopefully, like you, I won't need to phone them either. In the 4 years I've owned my Dell, I never had to phone tech support and never had a problem with it, but seems like enough people have a problem with Dell's support as well so I doubt it will be much better than them.

One area of improvement I noticed with AW, which I'm sure is new, is the availability of on-site support. You used to have to ship back your PC to AW, have them spend like 2 weeks fixing it, and then they ship it back to you, but seems like now they do repairs onsite which is a huge plus.

[Sean of the Thread]

P4 with HT = PWN. That looks like a great system as long as you didn't pay too much.

[Drew]

Nice setup.

[HarmNone]

Sounds great, Kranar! Congrats! :)

[Skirmisher]

Yeesh, nice new computer! I thought that Alienware liked to say that they were all about the customer service ergo their decision to keep their tech support in this hemisphere rather than outsource to asia, or so they said in some article.

For the price they charge i hope that the tech support is at least decent.

And yay for the US and Microsoft for the Kranar pickup!

[Celephais]

Let me know how the battery life is on that? I have a i9300 with the 90whr and I get about 4 hours at best. Obviously I didn't buy it for portability, (at best I sit out on my deck with an extension cord), but that one plane trip I went on was kind of frustrating.

[Gan]

Now that I'm going to be sending back my Dell Lattitude 620 to my ex-employer I'll be looking at a new laptop for personal and business use in my new endeavor.

Thats a sweet looking system. I went to the alienware site and pulled up your basic package before your mods. Definately resonable.
http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/area-51_m7700/area-51_m7700_features.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51-M-7700&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT

One question, where is the hard drive located physically on the unit? I know that my next laptop will NOT have the HD underneath where the hands rest while typing (quadrant 3 if looking at the laptop face as a grid). This placement created too much heat, for the unit, and for my hands. :(

[Stealth]

Not to be the Devil's Advocate but why did you make the following choices?


3gb of RAM. From most of the info I have ever read, WinXP (which I assume is your OS) is not very compatibile with more than 2gb of RAM due to memory addressing issues. So the extra RAM is usually wasted.

Why not go with the 1900X1200 screen? (if that was an option in your case)

and finally..

Why go with 5400 RPM drives...ugh. Definitely get the 7200 unless they don't make them in the 160 size and you had to have the 320GB of space.

Overally a most excellent choice. Keep us updated, I was planning to get something like this until DELL bought them.


Stealth

[Daniel]

I actually miss seattle a little.

[Kranar]

Let me know how the battery life is on that? I have a i9300 with the 90whr and I get about 4 hours at best.


Depends what mode you run it on... on full blown the battery life is an hour. You can, however, underclock the system, and dim the monitor to get at a maximum 2 and a half hours. This really isn't much of a laptop, it's marketed as a mobile desktop/desktop replacement system.



One question, where is the hard drive located physically on the unit?


It's right underneath the mouse/touch pad.



3gb of RAM. From most of the info I have ever read, WinXP (which I assume is your OS) is not very compatibile with more than 2gb of RAM due to memory addressing issues. So the extra RAM is usually wasted.


On WinXP 32bit there's some addressing issues with going above 2GB. I'm running Windows 64bit, since my processor is 64bit enabled, so it's not an issue for me... Win64 can handle up to 256TB of RAM, heh. But anyhow, the real reason for the 3GB was that it only cost 50 dollars more to go from the 2GB to the 3GB.



Why not go with the 1900X1200 screen? (if that was an option in your case)


It was a choice between the 1900x1200, or the NVidia 7800 GTX.



Why go with 5400 RPM drives...ugh. Definitely get the 7200 unless they don't make them in the 160 size and you had to have the 320GB of space.


No 320 GB available, there were some 200 GB 7200s though. 5400 in a RAID-0 config is much faster than 7200 ATA. If it were 5400 ATA, I definitely would have passed.



Overally a most excellent choice. Keep us updated, I was planning to get something like this until DELL bought them.


There are definitely better systems out there, but as I said I really wanted both the 3GB (and opportunity to upgrade to 4) as well as the large hard drive, and the faster gaming computers only came with 2GB tops and small hard drives.

If it's high speed gaming you seek, then let me know what you think of the mALX system:

http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Aurora_mALX/aurora-m_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AURORA-M-ALX&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT


Just out of curiosity, what laptop do you intend to get? What features/specs?

[Kuyuk]

I've been very happy with my Alienware since I got it last year. It stills pwns.

Glad you joined the club :)


K.

[Buckwheet]

With my wife starting to travel so much the configuration she looked at is as follows:

Falcon Northwest

FragBook DR 6800A Chassis
DR - Metallic Red
AMD Athlon64 4800+ Dual Core
SD3200 2048LL 400mHz (2X1024)
GeForce 7900Go 256MB
DR 6800 17 inch WUXGA LCD
Perfect Pixel Guarantee-No Extra Charge
No Raid
Hitachi Travelstar 80GB 7200RPM
8x DVD+-RW Drive
8x DVD+-RW Drive
DR 6800 TV Tuner
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Turbo-G 80211G Wireless

I found this other place through Tomshardware.com I might give them a shot.

Here's the specs:
- AMD Turion 64 MT-44 2.4 Ghz
- 1 MB On-die L2 Cache
- nVidia nForce4 SLI (CK804)
- 19" (16:10) WSXGA+ (1680x1050) Super Clear Glare LCD
- Dual nVidia GeForce GO 7800 GTX with 256MB DDR3
- 2 Gigs CAS 2.0 Ultra Low Latency 2-2-2-5 timings RAM
- 100 Gig 7,200 rpm SATA I/II Interface
- PCI-Express 16X Dual-View Display Capability
- 8x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Multi Drive
- 802.11 a/b/g/G+ 108 Mbps Internal Wireless
- Built-in AC'97 Sound System
- SRS WOW support
- 1 Built-in Microphone
- 5 Built-in Speakers (4 + 1 Sub Woofer)
- S/PDIF Digital output
- 1 Type II PCMCIA slot
- Full Sized Keyboard with Numeric Key Pad
- 1 DVI Port
- 5 USB 2.0 Ports
- 4 Audio Jacks
- 1 16c550 Compatible Serial Port
- 1 RJ-45 LAN (10/100/1000Mbps)
- 1 RJ-11 Modem
- 1 IEEE-1394a Fire Wire
- 1 S-Video TV-Out
- 1 TV-in Port (w/ TV-Tuner Module)
- 1 Lithium-Ion Battery (12 Cell)
- Auto-Switching 100V/240V AC Adapter
- Built-in Digital Video Camera 1.3M