Looking at Alienware

[Mike79]

Hey guys, I've been browsing Anandtech for a while just looking at some stuff on getting a new system. Figured I'd join...

I have an Alienware Area51 desktop now, but I really want to get something new as mine is getting a bit old. I was checking out Alienware's site and they have a promotion called 'Breed'. Looked pretty cool...

I was wondering if any of you had info or speculation as to what this is? I wanna buy soon, but if they'll be announcing something soon, I think I'll wait.

http://www.alienware.com/breed

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Don't buy alienware

1 post and you're advertising alienware!? what do the rest of you think?

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Was that really an advertisement?

 

[videogames101]

Dude, take some advice, save some money, and build one yourself.

(unless this is an advertisement, then you can just GTFO)

 

[Roguestar]

Alienware is great if you want to pay some guy $600 to put average-grade expensive components in a gaudy case.

 

[z1ggy]

Three words. Do it yourself. F#@% alien ware. Post back here if you want help picking out components. Building a simple computer is not that hard and I believe it is rather fun and enjoyable.

 

[MarcVenice]

If you're still looking at Alienware, stop looking

 

[Old Hippie]

Aw, come on you guys...tell him what you really think!

 

[z1ggy]

Give us your budget and some of us can suggest parts to you. Also tell us what the computer is going to be used for..Assuming you were looking at.. dare I say it.. A..Al..Alien Ware I would guess gaming.

 

[DaveSimmons]

You can find OK deals at Alienware if you're scared to use a screwdriver to build it yourself, but you have to be careful. They recommend worthless expensive upgrades like "gamer" RAM (1% faster for 4 times the price) and intel Extreeme!! CPUs that are slightly faster again for 4 times the price of an E8400.

With careful choices you might only pay $300-500 to save yourself a couple of hours of work and get the gaudy case.

 

[airhendrix13]

Alienware is the butthole of the gaming PC community. My friend has 2 alienwares, both broke within 6 months of purchase.

 

[Slugbait]

As you can tell, this is the wrong place to talk about OEM boxes...unless you're thinking about building a box for your folks, in which case we fully reverse course and advise to buy a Dell. Few OEM boxes are designed for enthusiasts, which is why everybody here pretty much picks thru the Hot Deals forum and puts together what they think will be an acceptable rig.

Plus, it should be obvious that nobody here considers their time to be worth 40-50 bucks an hour. Or they don't own their own home, and/or are not constantly busy with kids...think about it: they're up here arguing on the Interweb. For example, it takes quite a bit of time to do the same kind of cable management that Alienware does, and you usually end up wearing a band-aid on your finger. It takes hours to install the OS and download all the patches...then you spend hours more time tweaking the system to within an inch of its life. Didja get a bad stick of RAM, or under-purchase on a PSU? Now your machine is down until you get the <enter part name here> replaced.

If you'd rather not spend tons of your time on a box (or you simply don't have time), and you want a box that has been configured with just the right parts for the tasks you will employ, it's already been tested, it's already been tweaked, and you want decent performance that usually gets great reviews just about everywhere, then by all means...get another Alienware. Especially if you were happy with your previous one.

Personally, if I had the money, I'd probably go that route myself. Now that I have a kid, my last system build took over two weeks before I was ready to create my first image. I've got higher priorities now.

 

[DSF]

The funniest thing to me is that all the annoyed posts about how alienware sucks and advertisers can GTFO just kept bumping the thread to the top.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
You can find OK deals at Alienware if you're scared to use a screwdriver to build it yourself, but you have to be careful. They recommend worthless expensive upgrades like "gamer" RAM (1% faster for 4 times the price) and intel Extreeme!! CPUs that are slightly faster again for 4 times the price of an E8400.

So what you're saying is that, Alienware understands the enthusiast PC market very well, because that could be said pretty much of almost all 'extreme performance' product lines.

e.g. $300 for a premium ASUS enthusiast/gaming motherboard than scores 5% higher in synthetic benchmarks than $100 mainstream motherboards. Buy two graphics cards for 30% performance increase over one.

I see no reason why irrational purchasing decisions should be limited only to BIY/DIY.

 

[MarcVenice]

I've looked at the site, and some pieces of hardware came with a ridiculous price premium, almost 2-3 times what those items would cost at newegg.

Slugbait, it might take a bit of time, but it's a lot of fun too. I don't mind building a rig at all, especially not a high-end one. And if you build it right there's no real need to troubleshoot. If you're really new at building, then I'd say, start learning, hehe, I'd never buy alienware, not even if I had money to burn.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Slugbait, it might take a bit of time, but it's a lot of fun too. I don't mind building a rig at all, especially not a high-end one. And if you build it right there's no real need to troubleshoot. If you're really new at building, then I'd say, start learning, hehe, I'd never buy alienware, not even if I had money to burn.

Well there can be troubleshooting involved if you get a DOA part, even if you put everything together correctly.

 

[CKent]

1 post, black guy avatar... my money's on advertisement. No sense telling him what he already knows about their pricing, he's the one probably driving a Ferrari because of it.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: CKent
1 post, black guy avatar... my money's on advertisement. No sense telling him what he already knows about their pricing, he's the one probably driving a Ferrari because of it.

I don't understand what the avatar has to do with it.

Edit: Is that the default avatar?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
You can find OK deals at Alienware if you're scared to use a screwdriver to build it yourself, but you have to be careful. They recommend worthless expensive upgrades like "gamer" RAM (1% faster for 4 times the price) and intel Extreeme!! CPUs that are slightly faster again for 4 times the price of an E8400.

So what you're saying is that, Alienware understands the enthusiast PC market very well, because that could be said pretty much of almost all 'extreme performance' product lines.

e.g. $300 for a premium ASUS enthusiast/gaming motherboard than scores 5% higher in synthetic benchmarks than $100 mainstream motherboards. Buy two graphics cards for 30% performance increase over one.

I see no reason why irrational purchasing decisions should be limited only to BIY/DIY.

True, their high-end systems with $600 4GB RAM and $999 CPUs are perfect for the people who post here about building a $5,000 gaming PC

Meanwhile I'm enjoying my $700 upgrade from July: 3 GHz E8400, 4 GB RAM, Gigabyte P43 mb, ATI 4870 and a WD 640 GB HD. The other $4K went off to my brokerage account to help with my early retirement plans

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: DSF

Originally posted by: CKent
1 post, black guy avatar... my money's on advertisement. No sense telling him what he already knows about their pricing, he's the one probably driving a Ferrari because of it.

I don't understand what the avatar has to do with it.

Edit: Is that the default avatar?

Yep, (1 post + default black guy avatar) often means a lazy spammer or viral marketer.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: DSF

Originally posted by: CKent
1 post, black guy avatar... my money's on advertisement. No sense telling him what he already knows about their pricing, he's the one probably driving a Ferrari because of it.

I don't understand what the avatar has to do with it.

Edit: Is that the default avatar?

Yep, (1 post + default black guy avatar) often means a lazy spammer or viral marketer.

^ Yep, nothing racial intended, sorry.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: CKent
^ Yep, nothing racial intended, sorry.

No, I wasn't saying you meant it racially, I just wasn't sure what the point was.

 

[wwswimming]

alienware!? what do the rest of you think?

there's Alienware and there's

Alienware