Airforce said:
Their hardware isn't crap. That's for sure. A little pricey, but it's top of the line stuff. The difference in price probably isn't as huge as you are thinking.
I use the phrase "overpriced crap" to be one word ("overpricedcrap") that simply means "overpriced" and not "expensive products of dubious quality." It's a quirk and you guys would not know that of me.
Abstract said:
The same people who complain about it costing slightly more than if you were to put it together yourself are the same people who can cook pasta at home for very low cost, and yet go out and order pasta at a restaurant. They're called hypocrites, or MacRumours members......whatever.
Look, I don't know much about Alienware, but I'm sorta tired of the sheep in here who can't think for themselves. People read an opinion posted here a few times, and now you all have the same opinion about everything. So sad.
I am not being a sheep about this and held this opinion before I was a Mac user. No self-respecting gamer I have ever played with or know has bought an Alienware PC. The only people I know with them are people who have unlimited access to daddy's money.
Example -
I haven't priced them out lately, but when and took a look at the Aurora 7500 which starts at $1829 with the Athlon 3800x2/1GB/250GB/7900GT. Not a bad SLI system.
I went to New Egg and did this -
$109.00 - Lian Li Case
$139.99 - 650w Coolmax power supply
$295.00 - Athlon 64 3800 x2
$194.99 - MSI K8N nForce 4 SLI motherboard
$105.00 - 1GB (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix RAM (CAS 2)
$329.00 - BFG GeForce 7900GT
$89.95 - Windows XP Home SP2
$96.00 - 250GB/7200/8MB cache Seagate hard drive
$51.00 - Lite-On DVDRW with LightScribe
$19.99 - Microsoft Basic keyboard
$14.99 - Microsoft Basic optical mouse
Total - $1444.91 - $384 dollars cheaper. The Aurora 7500 also does not have a DVD burner, only a DVD ROM and probably does not use Crucial Ballistix RAM, but I threw those in for a comparison of what you could do so you could knock about $50 off for using Corsair XMS RAM instead for $78 and getting a cheap OEM DVD drive which would make the difference over $400. That $400 can almost get you a sweet Dell 2005FPW monitor when it is on sale.
What do you lose by builing it yourself? A whopping 90 day warrantee.
For those who will ask, "What about the software?" well, the Alienware comes with Windows - that's all. No Works, no Office, no AV software. Nothing else. So I spec'd mine that way.
As you can see, I did not go cheap to undercut them. I used high quality components from brands that are typically used by high-end gamers.
I am no Windows hater. I have built and use my home-built nice Shuttle XPC every day for gaming. Alienware is too expensive for what you get. Building a PC is a piece of cake and very rewarding.
As for the pasta analogy, some people like to do things for the satisfaction of doing it. No one makes their own pasta to save a buck. People do build gaming PS for both. It is always cheaper and always more satisfying to build a PC yourself.
Anyone who knows enought to want a system like this generally knows how to plug a few things together to assemble the thing. It is not hard and not for only those who know a lot about PCs.