Agreed, have had my M15x lid repaired TWICE under warranty so far. Second time they replaced my motherboard for no apparent reason, with one with a non-working wired ethernet jack, requiring it to be shipped back *again*.
Took almost a month to have some basic repairs completed, even having purchased the best possible 3 year on-site warranty (in actuality, Alienware products NEVER qualify for an on-site visit).
@Redyz I haven't used the M15X, but my M17X is awesome. I got a core i5 with a GTX260m for 1200$ in the Dell Outlet Store. It's been perfect. The games work great. I can run Crysis on slightly lower than full settings.
Plus, I can switch over to the integrated graphics card and get THREE HOURS OF VIDEO BATTERY LIFE.
Plus, this laptop is easily upgradeable. I have a second internal hard-drive (which I run Snow Leopard on). And in a couple years, if my graphics card or processor gets too outdated, I can easily upgrade that)
I too am typing this from an M15x, and its been nothing but great so far.(Excluding the freaking touch-pad)
Plus, if you check out the consumer reviews the laptop gets on Dell's website(I know it snot the most reliable source but still, and there seem to be a lot of pleased costumers on notebookreview's Alienware forum.
So, Id say Alienware is an awesome candidate for a desktop replacement laptop.
@Hirshologist to be honest, calling Alienware super expensive is so 2005, it's still a mark up but after the Dell takeover, the prices are much more reasonable
@tomservo291 I guess the Alienware M15X has a lot of issues, but the m17x is different (at least from my perspective).
But as far as customer service goes, I have also had a great experience. I have the standard 1 year warranty. I have had two problems. One was a fan issue (it made a wierd noise). They came to my house and replaced it...no problems. The other issue, I accidently spilled water on the keyboard, but I BS my way to having them come back and replace it for free.
Also, when I bought my secondary internal HD, they sent me the bracket, adapter, and screws for free.
@Hirshologist i am curious about the part of your comment where you said you had a different OS running on another HDD. I am fairly new to computers and such and i was wondering if i could buy another hard drive for my gateway desktop and run some sort of mac software like snow leopard on the same computer(i want to create apps for iphone/itouch). i have windows 7 on one and just was a mac software on it w/o buying a whole nother computer. i didnt think this was possible but any response would be appreciated! Thanks!
The Alienware M17x is about as good as anything on the market. It's solid, upgradeable, and looks good too. Sure, some people have problems, but it's usually a fairly well built machine.
The Eurocom x7200 is also a beast, and uses a desktop CPU. Price-wise it's about the same as the M17x, but doesn't have the aluminium shell.
The Asus G73JH range perform well, when they're not broken. There have been some quality issues reported on them.
Sager and Clevo also have plenty of 17" models with good processors and at least 8GB max memory. Any of those should do nicely.
Typing on my i7 M11X, it runs games and does everything I need, an external DVD drive, total cost: $1300 (including the DVD drive, 4 GB RAM, and core i7 1.2ghz processor (don't worry it overclocks and turbo boots pretty high in the 2.6ghz range) and a sweet 1GB VRAM NVIDIA card).
All I have to say is that, super-glossy kinda small screen aside, its a pretty awesome computer and it rarely gets hot to the touch.
@elthran You really like the M11x? I just ordered one with the same exact specs as a companion PC to my Unibody MacBook and have been a little wary of PC's in general since I havent owned one for a while. I've had a ton of luck with my Macbook (I've had it for 2 full years with no issues.) and I had a hard time buying the M11x, but since I really wanted a PC to play games with I figured it would be a decent choice. Anything else bother you other than the glossy screen?
@mcrproductions You don't *actually* play games on the 11" monitor. It's assumed if you have ~$1000 for a nice m11x, you also have $200 for a 1080p 24" monitor...or two.
Not sure why you aren't getting in home service... my M15x does qualify and HAS received in home repair service.... sorry bud but I would demand what you paid for. I did and I got it.
HP has had plenty of time to fine-tune its finger-friendly TouchSmart software, and now, its newest model, the TouchSmart 610, ushers in a fresh design, highlighted by a hinge that allows the display to slide down and lie nearly flat.
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Alienware M17X
@benbuch1368
I'm on an M15X right now, I'll have to down rank you.
Alienware is now an utter piece of shit.
That is all.
@Redyz
Agreed, have had my M15x lid repaired TWICE under warranty so far. Second time they replaced my motherboard for no apparent reason, with one with a non-working wired ethernet jack, requiring it to be shipped back *again*.
Took almost a month to have some basic repairs completed, even having purchased the best possible 3 year on-site warranty (in actuality, Alienware products NEVER qualify for an on-site visit).
@Redyz I haven't used the M15X, but my M17X is awesome. I got a core i5 with a GTX260m for 1200$ in the Dell Outlet Store. It's been perfect. The games work great. I can run Crysis on slightly lower than full settings.
Plus, I can switch over to the integrated graphics card and get THREE HOURS OF VIDEO BATTERY LIFE.
Plus, this laptop is easily upgradeable. I have a second internal hard-drive (which I run Snow Leopard on). And in a couple years, if my graphics card or processor gets too outdated, I can easily upgrade that)
@Redyz
Have you ever considered you got a lemon?
I too am typing this from an M15x, and its been nothing but great so far.(Excluding the freaking touch-pad)
Plus, if you check out the consumer reviews the laptop gets on Dell's website(I know it snot the most reliable source but still, and there seem to be a lot of pleased costumers on notebookreview's Alienware forum.
So, Id say Alienware is an awesome candidate for a desktop replacement laptop.
@Hirshologist
to be honest, calling Alienware super expensive is so 2005, it's still a mark up but after the Dell takeover, the prices are much more reasonable
@tomservo291 I guess the Alienware M15X has a lot of issues, but the m17x is different (at least from my perspective).
But as far as customer service goes, I have also had a great experience. I have the standard 1 year warranty. I have had two problems. One was a fan issue (it made a wierd noise). They came to my house and replaced it...no problems. The other issue, I accidently spilled water on the keyboard, but I BS my way to having them come back and replace it for free.
Also, when I bought my secondary internal HD, they sent me the bracket, adapter, and screws for free.
@Hirshologist i am curious about the part of your comment where you said you had a different OS running on another HDD. I am fairly new to computers and such and i was wondering if i could buy another hard drive for my gateway desktop and run some sort of mac software like snow leopard on the same computer(i want to create apps for iphone/itouch). i have windows 7 on one and just was a mac software on it w/o buying a whole nother computer. i didnt think this was possible but any response would be appreciated! Thanks!
The Alienware M17x is about as good as anything on the market. It's solid, upgradeable, and looks good too. Sure, some people have problems, but it's usually a fairly well built machine.
The Eurocom x7200 is also a beast, and uses a desktop CPU. Price-wise it's about the same as the M17x, but doesn't have the aluminium shell.
The Asus G73JH range perform well, when they're not broken. There have been some quality issues reported on them.
Sager and Clevo also have plenty of 17" models with good processors and at least 8GB max memory. Any of those should do nicely.
@benbuch1368
Typing on my i7 M11X, it runs games and does everything I need, an external DVD drive, total cost: $1300 (including the DVD drive, 4 GB RAM, and core i7 1.2ghz processor (don't worry it overclocks and turbo boots pretty high in the 2.6ghz range) and a sweet 1GB VRAM NVIDIA card).
All I have to say is that, super-glossy kinda small screen aside, its a pretty awesome computer and it rarely gets hot to the touch.
@elthran You really like the M11x? I just ordered one with the same exact specs as a companion PC to my Unibody MacBook and have been a little wary of PC's in general since I havent owned one for a while. I've had a ton of luck with my Macbook (I've had it for 2 full years with no issues.) and I had a hard time buying the M11x, but since I really wanted a PC to play games with I figured it would be a decent choice. Anything else bother you other than the glossy screen?
@mcrproductions You don't *actually* play games on the 11" monitor. It's assumed if you have ~$1000 for a nice m11x, you also have $200 for a 1080p 24" monitor...or two.
@jamesh4
good luck creating apps not knowing these things. Try search engines for how-to's
@tomservo291
Not sure why you aren't getting in home service... my M15x does qualify and HAS received in home repair service.... sorry bud but I would demand what you paid for. I did and I got it.