Alienware - yay or nay

Always wanted an Alienware laptop. I can buy one now, unfortunately don't really want to spend £2000 on a laptop, so went with Dell Outlet UK. Here's my punishment:

- Ordered a 17R4 - arrives with tobii eye tracker not working and right side usb slot not working (no one checked??). Call for support. Engineer brought a list of things to do, ended up not replacing the motherboard (still not sure why). Ended up sending it back.

Specs: 6700HQ, GTX 1070

- Ordered a 15R3 - arrives seriously overheating, above 100 degrees Celsius , even without OC (no one checked??). Call for support. Engineer comes and swaps heat sink. Still overheating. Call support. Engineer swaps motherboard. Doesn't overheat anymore - so happy - but soon realize that right usb doesn't work, bottom left led light always on and behaving strangely on boot, with 3 flashes of light, screen with alienware logo which never showed up before, takes double the time to boot up. Call support, my only option is now refund since I had 2 onsite repairs already.

Specs: 7820HK, GTX 1070


I've written to unresolved issues, one of the customer representative officer also escalated this problem. I don't get answers. I got a really confusing scripted reply once, didn't even made sense or was just incoherent speech. It would be nice, I mean really nice, to have a proper answer about what is going on so I could decide if I try for a 3rd Alienware system or just give up.

 

3rd times a charm?

 

One can always hope. And looking at the competition, just makes me want an AW more.

Just got a reply from a Senior Customer care associate saying i will get a call from one of the supervisors in the Alienware team to discuss all these matters.

I'll keep updating as it might help others in the future.

 

Step one order your alienware laptop

Step two. Take said laptop out of box to simply verify everything works properly

Step three. Send said laptop to iunlock and have turn your alienware into the beast it was always ment to be. Sure it'll cost you some extra cash. But in return you'll get a beast that stays cool and it already built like a tank and doesn't void your warranty. Problem solved. Your welcome

 

I was literally on the same boat as you. Loved the AW and seeing what the competition offered only made me like it even more. After 3 17r4's ended up calling it. Hopefully they'll get their act together for the next revision. In my case i had a 980m Sager to fall back on but if I had no other unit i'd totally tinker with it to make it work.

 

Ravern87, would glady spent a bit more cash, after seeing what he can do, but we need iUnlock in Europe!!

Or, even better, Dell should just hire him.

 

iUnlock does need to be in Europe of have UK branch lol

 

I'm happy with my (new) AW13r3 purchase, but my original AW15R3 died after a week. My AW13R3 runs cool and plays my games flawlessly, so I'm happy despite the failure of an internal security chip (the TPM) that Windows uses to support the Windows Hello and facial recognition login.

Dell's tech support was friendly but worse than useless at diagnosing or offering an acceptable resolution to the TPM problem, and I gave up on it rather than uselessly re-install Windows when I know for a fact the chip itself is the problem. The features the chip provides are simply not worth the hassle of doing what Dell requires in order to escalate the support for the problem.

So, counting my original purchase/failure/refund of the AW15R3 and the problem with my AW13R3, I've made numerous tech support calls to Dell and to the dedicated Alienware support line. While friendly and responsive (which I've reciprocated, always), I've noticed one thing about all these support incidents that is completely predictable - every single time any Dell/Alienware support person has promised to call back/have someone else call back/email me with follow-up/have someone else email me with follow-up, it has never, ever happened - not even once. This promise has been reliably broken 100% of the time it was made to me (at least a half dozen times, over the course of all my support calls). So take that for what it's worth.

 

I'm hoping that 2018 will be a better year for Dell. I'm waiting til my birthday which is in April 2018 ti buy my laptop. I'm waitin to see what Dell's next revision will be or at the very least get qc under control and get rid of these thermal issues. I really wanna wait for Volta and Dell and every other laptop manufacturer will have to redesign the mono and internals at the very least to support the new line of nvidia cpus. So I'm waiting for that. But from what I've seen and read recently it seems that ASUS and MSI have both really upped the ante when it comes to cooling and overall quality of there gaming laptops. So if alienware doesn't get there **** together next year or the next revisions of the systems they will lose a customer for sure. I'm already starting to lean in a certain direction and it's not alienware. iunlock says that in his opinion alienware has the best overall build quality but build quality doesn't mean Jack if it thermal throttles while doing what it was designed to do...GAME

 

I'm returning my third laptop in 2 months. All three were throttling and had higher than normal temps. I am waiting this out till the next generation of CPU and GPU. If the redesign does not get them to straighten up, I'll be looking at the competition. Alienware can keep their thermal throttling BGA turdbooks.