They are still awfully overpriced for what you get. I know that a few months ago (this has changed a little since then) I was priciung small portable laptops for school (12-14") Surprisingly the macbook I ended up getting was the best price I could find, much better than the alienware, in fact they werent even int eh same class, since the mac had a CoreDuo and the alienware had a Pentium M. I ended up getting on from a friend (traded my desktop for it) and i have had nothing but problems with it... now admittedly he took it to hell and back it seems. (decided it would be a good idea to spill soda on the trackpad.... at the beach)
Then there is my friend from class that got m9700... first they didnt send him the tv tuner he bought along with it.. and still havent 5 months later. and after having it for a month or so, one of the vid cards went out. And here is how there service works (after he spent $3K on it) they sent him the card, and then put him on the phone and talked him through the replacement process. How weak is that?
If you are looking for a large dtr notebook.... voodoo, alienware, dell xps, and a couple others... you may want to check out ibuypower, they make decent enough systems from what ive heard.
Anyway, to each their own, but alienware is a little overpriced and overrated in my opinion. Though the same can be said for apple (going to try to quash those taht would mock me for calling another brand overpriced) but I have had zero problems with the build of my apple, the only issues i have run into so far would be OS X issues when I installed conflicting apps (freeware does have a cost) and had to reinstall OS X.