Talk about how good or bad the battery life is

Try talking about a machine's price vs features ratio.

Talk about the quality of the screen.

90% of hardware failures occur in the 2-4 year range of a system, and that's the range most manufacturers offer extended warranties for.

What happens to a machine outside of its warranty is irrelevant

let's not turn this thread into a bashing of one particular computer maker or another.

Server_crash, you mentioned you like Alienware laptops. What are your reasons?

Is it normal for a computer to go bad in a couple of months???? We've had all kinds of computers and Dell simply is the worst and their their tech support is terrible. I shouldn't have to buy an extended warranty for my computer to last 1.5 years, but if you get a Dell you better be ready to spend an extra 5000 on warranties. All it is is paying for the crap before it happens, because IT WILL. So, I chose not to buy a warrranty because I shouldn't have to. They put junky parts in their computer with obvious intentions. After my laptop had a billion SERIOUS problems in less than a year, I just threw it on the shelf. Yeah, I could have bought the parts to fix it, but I'm not giving Dell another dime. Instead, I decided to build my own computer.... and you know what? For the same prices that Dell charges for their CRAP parts, you can buy the best quality out there and get 10 year to lifetime warranties. Oh, and that was without any extra cost.

Ok, you wanted to talk about a few things:


Terrible. It was excellent for the first few months and LITERALLY died down to where it only lasted 20 minutes. There's your good battery life.

It sucks. My desktop costed barely more and it STOMPS the dell.

Around the third month I had the screen it went bad. The poorly designed laptop has some SERIOUS overheating problems. It caused a large burn on my screen.

Well crap, my failures happend from the time I got it to the time it went out of warranty. Not even a year old

Yep, I can tell you work at Dell...To me what happens outside the warranty is the most relevant. Seems like they design them to go out after a certain amount of time.

I love bashing Dell. They deserve it for ripping people off with their garbage. My goal is to steer everyone I can away from the horrors of Dell.

Well, first of all, I don't even have to mention warranty coverage because they actually put quality parts in the machines. My oldest brother has had the same alienware laptop for around 5 years and NOT one problem. Not one call to tech support.... I would be interested if they outsource their tech support to india so no one can understand them ( I think this purposely done).

The parts they put into the computer are way above that of Dell. He also spent around the same amount as I did and his computer still outperformed mine (the time I had it) by a mile. My second oldest brother has a gateway laptop. It's lasted for at least 4 to 4.5 years without a problem and also outperforms mine with lower tech specs. It's sad stuff. Both of those laptops stay pretty cool. My dead dell overheated very quickly and I had to buy a laptop cooler for the poorly designed piece of crap. There was actually a lawyer online taking cases against all the design flaws of the 600m, but there was such a huge waiting list he wasn't accepting anymore.

'DUDE, DON'T GET A DELL'

What companies offer lifetime warranties? Certainly not any major computer manufacturer. That would add so much to the cost of a PC, no one would be willing to buy one.

Was this within warranty? If so, did you contact Dell, and have the unit serviced? If the device was indeed bad, it would have gotten taken care of.

I don't make it private who I work for. But, on this forum, I speak for myself, and no one else. And, as someone who simply works "in the industry", I can tell you that there is NO major computer manufacturer that designs computers to fail at any given time. There are, however, such concepts as Mean Time Between Failures, which do give reasonable expectations of how often things may fail. Warranty offerings are based on those types of metrics.

What happens after warranty is entirely irrelevant, because it's unreasonable to expect any company to support a product after that warranty has elapsed. The company gives you the opportunity to buy more warranty coverage. You chose not to. That's not the company's fault.

If a company was so bad, it would be out of business. Statistics show that the dissatisfied customers are ALWAYS the loudest complainers. Why? Because the satisfied people are busy enjoying their products.

But, of course, the unsatisfied people are going to be loud. They're going to congregate, and make themselves heard. So, you're going to get in with those people, and then you're just going to be further convinced that the notion that your situation is the norm, because everyone else that you seek out is going to be in the same boat as you.

Newsflash: ALL COMPUTER COMPANIES USE THE SAME PARTS. Go buy an Apple, a Dell, and an Alienware. Guarantee you that they will have the same integrated audio chipsets, the same network chipsets, hard drives, optical drives, etc. Even in the case of portable systems, the LCD panels are the same, the batteries are made by the same companies, etc. Did you not hear about the exploding motherboard capacitor issue a while back? It affected nearly every major computer manufacturer because they ALL bought capacitors from the same manufacturer. Heck, in most circumstances, the same plant in China or Taiwan often times makes systems from different companies, all under the same roof, with the same parts manifests.

Either that, or your experience is outside of the norm

But, like I said, let's discuss why we like a particular system, not why we think another sucks. Let's also not say system A sucks compared to another. Let's be objective when providing advice to folks.