Alienware?

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So I was thinking about buying an Alienware laptop. Aside from the cool desgin, beastly tech specs that balance out with the cost, what other factors should I keep in mind? I'm wondering about its battery life in particular; I'm under the impression that the battery won't last very long due to all the power-hogging components. What do you guys think?

 

You mean the area 51 series?

How are you going to use it? is it going to take abuse? Is it the main pc? Alienware is a brand that makes good looking notebooks that for sure. The specs are good also, but we like to know which laptop you want. That way we can look up laptops whit the same specs from Asus Toshiba, or MSI to name three good manufacturers.

 

It's going to be my primary computer. Since I'm in a dorm, desktops are inconvenient but the computer I have now is a bit weak to run some programs. I'll proabably moving around a lot so a long battery life would be nice.

 

Don't get an Alienware - They're so expensive for what you get. Leave designer brands to clothes, and shop around.

 

I hate to say this...

About 6 or 7 years ago, I went for a top of the line Alienware(tm). It was a huge purchase, well above my budget, and incorporated the absolute bleeding edge of tech available. It was fun for a bit, but it soon paled, when I found out that "bleeding edge" meant "bleed green up front, then bleed blue tears when you realize everyone else is faster than you are 1 year later, and they are spending 45% of what you spent..."

If I had to do it all over again (I wish I could) I would have spent 30% of the cost, gotten a solid system, and then given it away and bought a replacement every two years. Instead of being 7 years behind the curve, I would have been sitting pretty, always on 2nd tech cycle tech, with stable drivers and the cash to upgrade a little bit at a time.

My advice is to shop around, and get a slightly less expensive but solid notebook, and take the extra cash you *would* have spent for the name and the bleeding edge components, and put it in the bank to earn interest for your next machine. If I had done that, I would have been a much happier man. And frankly, since I don't do LAN parties, no one is impressed by the wicked cool looking rig hiding under my desk at home. So no uuber-cool factor to be gained = no reason to pay for the moniker.

It is even worse with laptops, as they are infinitely harder to upgrade. So unless you are swimming in cash and want to do the equivalent of "Yo - look at my cool sportscar of a rig" flashiness, it might be better to go with the education discount through your university and trick out a more standard vendor, maxing their available tech, and still pay less for what you get.

 

your better off getting anything other than alienware really. They are way too expensive for what you get

 

Two reasons *not* to get an Alienware PC:
The company is owned by Dell, so all that extra cash goes towards getting you tech support based in a country where the primary language is English. You're also paying extra for the "boutique" brand name.

If I were you, I'd go with a HP laptop.

 

For the price of a top of the line top brand laptop, you'll probably be able to buy a decent enough desktop and a decent enough laptop together. When we were buying a laptop for my mother, stuff that cost twice the price was only marginally better - and we still got an IBM, not a noname. I saw laptops which weren't all that much better and which cost such an amount on top of mum's one that a competent desktop would have fit in the price.

For games, I'd really suggest a desktop. A laptop for "stuff", i.e. work, study, websurfing, light-weight games when travelling.

One other thing: think about repair costs. Or the risk of having it stolen or damaged.

 

I would prefer a desktop for so many different reasons, but they're not really practical in college. I don't have enough desk space in my dorm room to handle one. I guess I'll just go for a decent laptop...(HP? I don't like the IBM design, so)

 

HP makes awesome laptops. I just about bought one a little while ago, but decided to build my own desktop. I was going to get a Pavilion dv9700t...which I would recomend to anyone who wants a 17" laptop. However, for a 15" screen, I'd recomend the Pavilion dv6700t.

 

I have a HP dv6100 for more than a year now and I'm quite happy with it. It doesn't have a video card, but I bought it for 900 euros (the dollar was almost equal to the euro *then*,) that's really cheap for a good laptop.

 

By the way, just so you know. Generally, all graphics cards on laptops are integrated. However, there is integrated and integrated. Intel chips and similar generally have no own RAM and pretty much no own processor (to talk about) - generally the counterpart of an AC97 sound codec on desktop computers. ATI or nVidia chips are also integrated, except they generally come with (some) own RAM and processor. For games you want at least any ATI or nVidia chip (my preference is with nVidia), while from GeForce 7600GT or 8600GT start thoughts of more serious gaming.