Computers: Alienware vs Dell notebooks...

Anyone have any opinions/preferences?

*Edited to say: The idea here is to get a notebook to pretty much replace a PC. (Don't ask me how it got down to Alienware and Dell.) Are there any other recommendations?

[Edited on Aug 18, 2005 by reversehalo]

*waits for all the mac dorks to come in and say "don't get that.. get a mac" *

Isn't that kind of like

Cars: Ferrari vs Ford Taurus?

Best option: build your own. Barring that, if money is no option, and those are your only two choices (why?) -- Alienware.

er, yeah. alienware makes really good, expensive computers, and dell makes really cheap, crappy computers. there's not much middle ground between the two.

If you want an unholy monster to plug in at Starbucks and play Doom 3, buy an alienware.

If you want a laptop, buy from Dell - or almost anyone else.

Also, their more portable options benchmark very low for the price and are a very poor performance value compared to the options offered by other manufacturers.

don't get that...get a mac!

okay...not really...If you want to get a dell for an alienware price, get a Powerbook.

I'd be inclined to tell you to build your own, but that's not really possible with laptops...which is just plain irritating. Unless I'm missing something...am I?

Well, I found that on both sites, you can (sort of) build your own...Just you can't get everything exactly the same. And I don't know much about either as far as notebooks. I have a Dell PC that I've had for about 3 years now, and I have no problems...

don't buy an alienware laptop

i'd say alienware.. since they're more powerful. i have a dell laptop. i like it, but it's not exactly portable because dell laptops are basically bricks.

i guess it really depends on what you plan on doing with it. if you plan on pushing your system to the max, definitely spend the extra money on an alienware.

It really seems like you pay a lot for the alienware name - you can get better bang/$ elsewhere.

And if you can, wait for an amd dual core laptop - november maybe.

Well you need to take into consideration multiple things before you can take any reccomendations. First, what tasks do you use your computer for?

If you're goal is to use your pc as a multimedia machine such as using it for encoding media then either will do as long as you get a pentium 4 with a ton of ram, at least 1 gigabyte.

If you plan on gaming then hands down get the alienware simply because you can get a pentium m in a gaming lap top which will be nice if you plan on using a wireless network. The Pentium M also wipes the floor with the pentium 4 in gaming and holds it's own against AMD's offerings.

The other advantage with the alienware is that the Graphics Processing units tend to be better in the alienware offerings and are mostly upgradable.

If you list your needs as a pc I can help you select the specifics of a new system if you need help. I build computers part time, work for the tech department of the college I attend and am a computer engineering major so I do know a bit about computers.

Alienware touts higher performance for their high-end laptops, but they're putting Pentium 4 desktop chips in them.

That's nuts. Putting a P4 desktop chip in a laptop computer basicaly eliminates the portability aspect of the computer. P4 runs too hot for a laptop and sucks too much power - hence the introduction of processors designed for portable systems. It's the same reason that Apple hasn't put out a G5 laptop.

Laptops are designed for convenience, not for superior computing power. In general, the smaller and more portable the computer, the less computing power that you'll have. One of the big things that is done to make the more portable laptops is to use processors that don't consume as much power and don't require fans to dissipate their thermal energy. This, of course, comes at the cost of performance as compared to a desktop, or laptops that use processors which require cooling.

You can replace parts in your laptop. In particular, it's more cost effective to buy RAM elsewhere and install it yourself rather than letting Dell or Alienware do it unless you're wholly uncomfortable with doing it yourself.

[Edited on Aug 18, 2005 by emperorreagan]

Actually, apple is putting a G5 in laptops soon a 1.8 ghz cpu. The whole reason the pentium 4 and g5 were too hot is because the engineers who designed them are dumb they have 20+ stage pipelines which is why there is excess heat as opposed to an athlon 64 or pentium m which feature much shorter pipelines and lower clock speeds.

Also I believe he is looking for a laptop to replace his DESKTOP so I don't know how important mobility is to him. Also you're general rule regarding size versus performance is not entirely accurate because the pentium and turion wipe the floor with any pentium 4 and dissipate much less heat because of shorter integer pipelines and superior branch prediction and low latency memory access thanks to fast l2 caches and on-die memory controllers, respectively.

I'm not a HE and it's for my ex-gf, not me. She wants to replace her desktop, and if she has to purchase one of those cooling thingies, so be it.

My apologies I didn't mean to offend you, if I did. I'm pretty tired right now, and I personally don't think SHE would have to purchase anything to keep the laptop cool. I think that she should look for a laptop with a pentium m cpu. They run much cooler than any other processor and are pretty fast and provide great battery life in case she would want to take it on the road. As fas as brands go, it makes no real difference despite what people will say, as long as the specifications meet your requirements and it is a name that you trust.

Honestly, it just depends on what you are trying to do. If specifically you are trying to do video editing / audio recording - then neither. If you are trying to play lots of video games and have a lot of money, then Alienware. If you are trying to download porn - then Dell. I personally don't like Alienware computers at all, and think you should just find a dedicated company to put together a workstation for your intended purposes, paying nothing more than you need to.

[Edited on Aug 18, 2005 by cthav]

I'm not offended. I get it all the time. I'm usually a good sport, except when bitches get satanic on me in the public restroom. All like "THIS IS THE LADIES ROOM!!!"...And then I just wanna flash my tits at them.

Anyhoo...That's what I figured as far as brand. But like I said, I'm partial to Dell. And I did see that they have notebooks with the Pentium 4 and the Pentium M. All I know is she wants it to basically be a PC in a notebook and she wants a 17" monitor. So, I guess she's not too worried about portability.

Haha I don't understand how no one seems to get that she wants a desktop replacement in the form of a laptop not a custom built desktop....sheesh.

Yeah brands make no difference and Dell is pretty good about customer support unless you're anything like me an pull the computer apart 10 minutes after you take them out of the box.

Even though she is not looking for portability the pentium M is generally faster than the pentium 4 but having plenty of RAM is more important than the slight difference in speed of processors. The one poster emperorreagan is right about ram being cheaper to purchase separately from another retailer, but check with Dell or whoever you buy it from about their warranty and adding ram. Some companies will try to screw you over for going anywhere near that "do not open" sticker.

In that case, save her a few bucks. Buy a dell, and use one of the coupon codes you can find here: http://www.techbargains.com/dellcoupons.cfm

*psssst* Alienware is garbage. If you want some custom hardware, get a Falcon Northwest system.

psssst alienware isn't garbage and falcon northwest isn't any better and if you really wanted to of the line voodoo is better than both! I think alienware gets a bad reputation because they are run more like a big corporation like Dell than an enthusiast company like falcon northwest or voodoo but their products are still top notch, you just pay more for them.

Because it doesn't make much sense. You can build a system with an extremely small desktop footprint and still enjoy the benifits that come from using components with greater power consumption, as well as a full-size keyboard and mouse or trackball.

It makes more sense with later comments.

Right. Pentium 3 was a better design than Pentium 4, and Pentium M is sort of a throwback to Pentium 3. The benchmark results for Pentium M weren't surprising, as P4 scaled by 0.6 to be compared to the Pentium 3.

Anyway, the benchmarks I've seen indicate they wipe the floor in video games, but not necessarily in other applications. But pushing forward with that architecture would probably yield better results in the long term than anything based on Pentium 4.



[Edited on Aug 19, 2005 by emperorreagan]