Whatever happened to Alienware?
- Thread starter Drastik
- Start date
PohTayToez
Active Member
Alienware was always all about branding. The had commercials and advertisements that advertised them as the best machines on the market, but in reality they were poorly made and had horrible customer service. Then, in 2006 they were bought by Dell, so the whole quality and customer service problem pretty much stayed the same.
bomberboysk
Active Member
Plus anyone who knows anything about computers,knows that you can build systems much better than an alienware.
tlarkin
VIP Member
Alienware has always been a super rip off. I remember when they first came out in the late 90s and I would see their ads in computer magazines. I would always laugh my ass off at what they were selling. Then Dell bought them out and they went to crap.
Back in the day like 10 years ago, Alienware did make a decent system, but it was extremely over priced. Now, they make crappy systems that are still over priced.
Same thing with Sager. I don't find them near worth the money. Plus, people try to rely on benchmarks too much as to what a system is capable of. While a benchmark is a good stress test, it does not reflect real world use.
Back in the day like 10 years ago, Alienware did make a decent system, but it was extremely over priced. Now, they make crappy systems that are still over priced.
Same thing with Sager. I don't find them near worth the money. Plus, people try to rely on benchmarks too much as to what a system is capable of. While a benchmark is a good stress test, it does not reflect real world use.
Bodaggit23
Active Member
Except for their sick looking cases. I wish they sold just the case. 
ScOuT
VIP Member
Except for their sick looking cases. I wish they sold just the case.
That is true...I have worked on a few Alienware cases and they look like fun to mod. I could do hundreds of things to that case
Alienware launched this huge propaganda campaign back in the mid and late 90s and many people fell for it. They made computers with awesome hardware but they were priced very high. The average person did not know as much about computers as they do today. There is far more computers and computer companies to choose from now as there were then.
A Soldier of mine bought an Alienware laptop for the last trip to Afghanistan. I told him NOT to buy it but, he paid $3,200 for the top of the line everything! It had dual 9800m graphics cards, 2 x 320GB hard drives in RAID 0, 17" high res screen...very nice hardware.
When he opened the box he fired it up. Push the button and the CPU fan would scream, full throttle, for about 20 seconds and then just shut down. He asked me to look at it and I pulled off the bottom cover. I took off the CPU and graphics cards heatsink and guess what? NO TIM ON THE CPU! Zero...I am talking metal heatsink directly on processor! I was speechless. He actually contacted Alienware and they returned it for his money back. He had to pay shipping for the return and a 5% restocking fee. So...he had it for about 2 days and could not use it at all and he lost about $350 for NOTHING!
bomberboysk
Active Member
Id have to disagree there, sager has probably some of the best notebooks on the market. (Although they are clevo notebooks built by sager and with the sager name on it)
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ScOuT
VIP Member
I also disagree...I am typing on a Sager right now.
I bought it in Jan of 2007. Absolutely wonderful product! This thing has never given me a single issue. Smooth as silk for 2 1/2 years
It has a full aluminum case...there is no plastic anywhere on this thing. I have never once regretted buying it My next laptop will also be a Sager, No questions asked!About 2 weeks after I received it, I got a hand written letter in the mail asking me if everything was ok and I was happy
Now that is customer service.You pay for quality with these computers...and quality is what you get
Sager Custom case
17" High res 1680x1050
Intel T7600
Nvidia 7950GTX PCI-E
2x2GB PNY DDR2 Dual channel @ 800MHz
Western Digital Black 320GB
Vista Ultimate 64bit
tlarkin
VIP Member
Sorry notebooks or laptops or whatever you want to call them are all about mobility. Performance machines are all about power, and are usually desktops. Why would I ever want to drop 3 grand on a laptop that has like an hour of battery time?
They do configs like SLI and RAID 0 on laptops, which is just dumb. Laptops have a purpose and when I am in the field and working I need at the very least 2.5 hour if not closer to 3.5 hours of actual usage on the battery.
I don't think they are anywhere near worth the price at all.
You put a quad core on a laptop, you are asking for low battery times, and if you are just going to keep your laptop plugged in on your desk the whole time, then build a freaking desktop.
They do configs like SLI and RAID 0 on laptops, which is just dumb. Laptops have a purpose and when I am in the field and working I need at the very least 2.5 hour if not closer to 3.5 hours of actual usage on the battery.
I don't think they are anywhere near worth the price at all.
You put a quad core on a laptop, you are asking for low battery times, and if you are just going to keep your laptop plugged in on your desk the whole time, then build a freaking desktop.
bomberboysk
Active Member
Some people need the power, while also needing mobility(eg- can you carry a tower, lcd, keyboard and mouse onto a plane as well as all your other stuff, and risk getting it stolen or paying overage for carryon). Anyone who would be utilizing the power would more than likely have it plugged in most of the time anyhow.
tlarkin
VIP Member
I don't buy that. If you need power you are going to use desktop technology, and distributed processing over multiple machines.
The first Transformers movie was post edited on 3 Macbook Pros, with no RAID and no SLI, and they did it on the fly while being mobile.
If you need technologies like RAID and SLI you realistically use it on a desktop. Trying to make it mobile is dumb.
Your argument on power and mobility is a straw man's argument to be honest. Laptops are made for mobility. What you are saying is such a niche market it isn't even considered an actual market.
Sager laptops are geared towards gamers, that is pretty much their market.
bomberboysk
Active Member
Well, i was referring to the model with the core i7 cpu's and the nvidia quadro graphics card, not the SLI ones. I do agree that for the gaming market laptops are pretty dumb though. And sager has a few lower end units that have integrated graphics and whatnot, i would purchase one of those if i needed mobility due to the build quality of the sager units(although it would be a tough choice with the macbook pro's in their all aluminum greatness).
tlarkin
VIP Member
I wouldn't because I could buy a Lenovo or an Asus with those features for cheaper, and they would be as equal as quality.
ScOuT
VIP Member
There is a market for powerful laptops.
Sager laptops are very popular in the military. We want the power to game but also be mobile. I took mine to Afghanistan for 14 months and was able to game the entire time. We had a LAN wired in the barracks and would run CoD 4 with as many as 40 people on at a time. We can not take desktops downrange...you only take what you can carry! Not to mention all the schools we go to all over the world and the training deployments. We NEED powerful fast laptops that are mobile. They actually use them as desktops when not deployed.
I have two guys in my office who are ordering Sager laptops on Tuesday...they are waiting for me to help them.
Total price is $2,200 for each one.
Intel Q9000 Quad core
GTX 280M
2 x 2GB DDR3 in Dual Channel.
That really is not really bad for a nice laptop that will be used for years and can game well.
Sager laptops are very popular in the military. We want the power to game but also be mobile. I took mine to Afghanistan for 14 months and was able to game the entire time. We had a LAN wired in the barracks and would run CoD 4 with as many as 40 people on at a time. We can not take desktops downrange...you only take what you can carry! Not to mention all the schools we go to all over the world and the training deployments. We NEED powerful fast laptops that are mobile. They actually use them as desktops when not deployed.
I have two guys in my office who are ordering Sager laptops on Tuesday...they are waiting for me to help them.
Total price is $2,200 for each one.
Intel Q9000 Quad core
GTX 280M
2 x 2GB DDR3 in Dual Channel.
That really is not really bad for a nice laptop that will be used for years and can game well.
PohTayToez
Active Member
Obviously not, or there would be no market for gaming laptops. There are plenty of people that buy performance laptops because they want to be able game or do graphics/CPU intensive tasks anywhere... so long as a power outlet is available. A lot of people use them as just portable desktops, and there isn't anything wrong with that.
tlarkin
VIP Member
It is a niche market, otherwise everyone would be buying them. How many laptops get sold every day? How many are Sager? Less than 1% I would guess with out looking into it.
It is very niche.