Poopster22
03-15-2004, 11:22 AM
I have just recently purchase a brand new Alienware Area51-M laptop with the following:
512 Mb RAM
2.8 GHz P4
128 Mb ATI Radeon 9600
First I had to wait about 30 days for the shipment, which was fine knowing all of the good reviews from everyone. Finally I got it, and I installed Office 2003 and immediately start using it for work. I realize a bit of a slow down during driver installations and updates, but didn't think it was much because the system is a bit smaller than my Dell desktop. Once it is up and running and after I transfered all of my backup files from my old laptop over, it starts to act up. It crashes all the time, or runs super slow. It is not a virus problem because I have only installed Office, and haven't downloaded anything from the Web. So I called Tech Support, and after all of the initial MSCONFIG, DISKCHK stuff, the only thing they can tell me is that I have to reinstalled WINDOWS because they have no clue what is wrong with it. So I did, lost a bunch of important files because it crashes 90 secs into startup and there was no time for me to backup anything. Guess what, all of the drivers and programs that came with the system CD are either old, out of date or does not work. I had to download all drivers from the web. Now, remember my friends, this is a brand new laptop that I have had for about a week. After I spent about 5 hours on the phone with tech, it seems to be run fine until I start installing drivers, once again it is starting to act super slow during driver installation, on a brand new formatted hard drive and OS! I called tech again, and spent another 2-3 hours on the phone with all of the driver installations and configurations, despite the fact that it crashed about 10 times in the middle. I was simply sick of it! Then it got to the point that the techs over there didn't want to deal with my problems anymore and put me on hold for about 20 minutes and hung up on me. I got very angry and called Customer Services, and they got someone who knows what they are doing on the phone, but he wants me to open the laptop for troubleshooting the hardware. Normally I am fine with that, but again this is a brand new laptop in my hands for less than 2 weeks. Why do I have to spend these valuable time for all these troubleshooting and repairs? Especially for a system which I could have purchased from Dell for $300 cheaper? They should be taking this thing back and run through the entire inspection again, instead of wasting my time and money over the phone. Of course, I am not banging on Alienware's technology and system design, but I think there are some serious quality, inspection and customer service issues involved here. For those of you who got working systems out there from Alienware, lucky you! For those of you who are thinking of getting one, think twice, if you get a lemon like I did, you will be on the phone all day!:(
512 Mb RAM
2.8 GHz P4
128 Mb ATI Radeon 9600
First I had to wait about 30 days for the shipment, which was fine knowing all of the good reviews from everyone. Finally I got it, and I installed Office 2003 and immediately start using it for work. I realize a bit of a slow down during driver installations and updates, but didn't think it was much because the system is a bit smaller than my Dell desktop. Once it is up and running and after I transfered all of my backup files from my old laptop over, it starts to act up. It crashes all the time, or runs super slow. It is not a virus problem because I have only installed Office, and haven't downloaded anything from the Web. So I called Tech Support, and after all of the initial MSCONFIG, DISKCHK stuff, the only thing they can tell me is that I have to reinstalled WINDOWS because they have no clue what is wrong with it. So I did, lost a bunch of important files because it crashes 90 secs into startup and there was no time for me to backup anything. Guess what, all of the drivers and programs that came with the system CD are either old, out of date or does not work. I had to download all drivers from the web. Now, remember my friends, this is a brand new laptop that I have had for about a week. After I spent about 5 hours on the phone with tech, it seems to be run fine until I start installing drivers, once again it is starting to act super slow during driver installation, on a brand new formatted hard drive and OS! I called tech again, and spent another 2-3 hours on the phone with all of the driver installations and configurations, despite the fact that it crashed about 10 times in the middle. I was simply sick of it! Then it got to the point that the techs over there didn't want to deal with my problems anymore and put me on hold for about 20 minutes and hung up on me. I got very angry and called Customer Services, and they got someone who knows what they are doing on the phone, but he wants me to open the laptop for troubleshooting the hardware. Normally I am fine with that, but again this is a brand new laptop in my hands for less than 2 weeks. Why do I have to spend these valuable time for all these troubleshooting and repairs? Especially for a system which I could have purchased from Dell for $300 cheaper? They should be taking this thing back and run through the entire inspection again, instead of wasting my time and money over the phone. Of course, I am not banging on Alienware's technology and system design, but I think there are some serious quality, inspection and customer service issues involved here. For those of you who got working systems out there from Alienware, lucky you! For those of you who are thinking of getting one, think twice, if you get a lemon like I did, you will be on the phone all day!:(