Alienware experience

hoftwi

hoftwi

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Hi all, me and husband both have a desktop (mainly internet and gaming, occasions for AutoCad work ) and laptop (mainly for work,LR,photoshop,editing softwares) each, but I want to thin out the hardware we have got. Been looking into the Alienware and it looks great, and it is built for gaming as well. However, I don't know much about it and how good it is. May anyone who have any experience using the Alienware share your thoughts/comments? Replies would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
I fully expect to get shot down here, and I'm sure this same line gets trotted out all the time, but have you considered a custom (self) built pc?

Other than a funky case, I'm not sure what extra you'd get over building your own pc to be honest?

I don't have any experience with Alienware, but if you like the look then I'm sure they'll do just fine as it's a reputable brand, but you could get more for your money by building it yourself. Or get someone like Scan to build it for you.

That probably doesn't really help but thought I'd throw it out there...:)
 
What Neil said. Basically they are portable computers rather than high-performance lightweight laptops for people on the road. That may be the solution you're after, in which case they are undoubtedly well built & spec'd machines.

Had a friend with a 12" alienware lappy - looked good & worked well, but it was thick & heavy.
 
Thanks all for the replies:)

ancient_mariner said:
What Neil said. Basically they are portable computers rather than high-performance lightweight laptops for people on the road. That may be the solution you're after, in which case they are undoubtedly well built & spec'd machines.

Had a friend with a 12" alienware lappy - looked good & worked well, but it was thick & heavy.
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Thanks Toni:) We prefer to have the option that it is portable. Understand they are not the lightest thing but we can live with the weight if it can perform well in both gaming and work as we don't always travel.
 
Agree with the above comments - most of them are basically portable desktop machines (I have the 17 inch model). I only purchased it because I was moving around a lot. If I were to purchase a new machine now I would get a desktop (custom built myself most likely).

Depending on what gaming you do you could probably get away with something a fair bit lighter. I'm a big fan of the Dell XPS15 (my wife has one). Plays a lot of games, very light, great battery life and has no trouble with LR/PS.

Or you could look at Razer (Alienware competitor), which make some very thin, beautiful and powerful laptops. But you definitely pay for it!
 
I've used an Alienware 14" for the past 4 years.
Sure it's larger than ultra thin notebooks, but I've never had it shutdown or slowdown due to overheating, whereas it's an issue I've often had with thinner *cough* gaming capable *cough* laptops.
 
LC2 said:
I've used an Alienware 14" for the past 4 years.
Sure it's larger than ultra thin notebooks, but I've never had it shutdown or slowdown due to overheating, whereas it's an issue I've often had with thinner *cough* gaming capable *cough* laptops.
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Thanks Tim:) That sounds promising! What other software do you use with your Alienware apart from gaming? I am looking at the Alienware 15 R3 with i7,16GB and 1060 GPU. Yes it is quite pricey, if it can perform well with gaming and my photo editing, and give me an option to travel it with me, that's ideal.
 
The R3 only has a 1080 display. Big compromise for editing and disappointing in something that expensive. But I guess that's what you get for better gaming fps.

Also that is heavy. About the same weight as my old 17" m6600. I can tell you now it's uncomfortable to lug about.

I'm not sure the 1060m is going to be that amazing for gaming either even the desktop version benches less fps in something like cs:go than my aging 780ti.
 
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neil_g said:
The R3 only has a 1080 display. Big compromise for editing and disappointing in something that expensive. But I guess that's what you get for better gaming fps.

Also that is heavy. About the same weight as my old 17" m6600. I can tell you now it's uncomfortable to lug about.

I'm not sure the 1060m is going to be that amazing for gaming either even the desktop version benches less fps in something like cs:go than my aging 780ti.
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Thanks Neil for your input again:) I will have to do a bit more research and shop around as it is not cheap and also I would like to stick with it for quite some time.
 
I personally like alienware laptops but they are overpriced, heavy and have a poor battery life as others have said. However they do what they say on the tin. I would be tempted if I was buying one now to go with a lower spec gpu and get the external graphics box to stick a pc gpu in when at home. I maybe wrong but I think clevo still do custom laptops which build and specs match alienware at a lower price, they are just missing the alien logo...
 
hoftwi said:
Thanks Tim:) That sounds promising! What other software do you use with your Alienware apart from gaming? I am looking at the Alienware 15 R3 with i7,16GB and 1060 GPU. Yes it is quite pricey, if it can perform well with gaming and my photo editing, and give me an option to travel it with me, that's ideal.
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From a photo perspective, just PSE12 and CS2, and neither seem to bother the CPU (you can tell if the cpu is working hard as the fans come on).
The disk always seem to be the bottleneck, next time I would be going for a large SSD.
 
not so sure about that. i could max the cpu out on cs3 for example. moving from the old core2 quad q9550 to the i7-2600k improved the old photoshop torture test time by 50%.

certainly the new versions of CC photoshop can light up all cores during some processing. photoshop wont use the disk unless it runs out of RAM and needs to scratch.
 
You might want to think about fan noise also. I had an older Alienware and although it was a beast of a machine it was noisy when it got even slightly warm. I'd rather have had a tower unit with slower moving fans and better ventilation
 
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