My Aurora Arrived! A Follow-Up
Written: Oct 04 '00 (Updated Apr 05 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
|
|
|
Pros: Performance, service & support.
Cons: Custom systems take time.
The Bottom Line: I could've built my SECOND computer myself and saved a few hundred $$. The folks at Alienware have much more experience, and it shows!
|
|
|
| buddywally's Full Review: Alienware Area51:Aurora |
It's been a long time coming, but here is my final review of the Alienware Area51:Aurora...
First things first, I "customized" my computer a little off of what the Aurora specs were, and as a result my computer took 25 incredibly, painfully long days to get here. During that time nVidia came out with the 'Ultra' version of their GeForce Videocard (and that's ok, really) and Alienware started offering it in their computers for the same money, at just about the time I was first booting-up the new rig (no, honestly, I'm ok with that). This is not a gripe, but just a warning to those who want to customize much off the standard offering, IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME. Calling every other day to "check" on the process doesn't seem to help either.
THE BAD NEWS
My computer arrived and I immediately discovered that all was not as ordered.
1) My second, 30gb hard-drive had turned into a 15gb model, arrrgggh!
2) I didn't have the hardware MPEG-2 decoder card that I had ordered.
3) The system recovery disk that I ordered at the last second (& which is a terribly good idea, in theory) was NOT included.
4) There was no super-cool Alienware logo on the front of my black beauty.
I was quite unhappy at this point...
THE GOOD NEWS
1) It was FAST folks, and I do mean FAST.
2) It was uncluttered.
The only things down in the systray were
i) the clock
ii) the volume icon
iii) nVidia's powertweak icon
that's it.
The desktop background was a very handsome BLACK, and there were no "Sign-up for MSN" or "Online Services" folders. I know this is a minor deal to most of you, however, some of you know what I'm talking about. It was killer!
3) All the drivers were as up to date as could be, just
as advertised.
THE EVEN BETTER NEWS
In response to the four issues listed above under BAD NEWS, Alienware provided the following response(s);
1) I had an Alien logo and my recovery disk in my hands 21 hours after I called them, along with their sincerest apologies.
2) After a couple of weeks of phone tag with the ACTUAL GUY who put my machine together (just think about that one folks) I received another package. In the box were a wrapped Hollywood DVD/MPEG decoder card, and a brand new IBM Deskstar 46gb HDD. That's not a typo, they gave me an extra 31gb of storage for my troubles (I had to install it). Of course they shipped both via Next Day Air.
To sum it all up. After a fairly rocky start, Alienware proved that they are serious about making great computers and retaining customers. Would I buy from them again? The answer is a definitive YES!
EPILOGUE
Since I had to swap out the old 15gbHDD for the new 46gb model and install the decoder card I've had occasion to check out the inside of my system, WOW! It's obsessively neat (almost to a fault, the main bundle of wires are secured almost too tightly).
Also I'm upgrading memory (to 512mb) and while Alienware's system manual is complete it did not include the actual S/N of the Apacer (those are NEC chips in there, for those of you keeping score) SDRAM. As you may know, you can order PC-133 RAM in one of two latency flavors "CL2" or "CL3", with CL2 being about 10ns faster on average than CL3. I was just about to order CL3 from Crucial, when I thought it would be wiser to just check out what Alienware had installed, but I was sure I was going to find a CL3 on the side of that chip, since its about $10 cheaper than CL2.
Want to guess what kind of memory Alienware installed?
CL2.
Would I have noticed if they had used the cheaper and slightly slower CL2?
Definitely not.
They put it in, anyway.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3400
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: 801-900
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
buddywally
|
|
Member: Dave
Location: eugene, or, usa
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.