Dell, Secondlife and I have a problem. I’m sure that the 2 of them don’t care, but I do. So my gorgeous gaming laptop, the famed and fabled Alienware M17x came back today – “repaired”, or so Dell claims. I headed into SL, turned the graphics up to high, and set out. Only took about 10 minutes before the video failed. The screen goes black, then it turns white, then I get a box (that fades fairly quickly) telling me that the drivers failed, but they have “successfully recovered”. Really? I don’t think so.
Why is it Dell’s problem? Because from now on I intend to tell everyone all over how Dell is incapable of offering proper support for configuring their gaming computers. And because I believe that they are not telling me truth about this repair. I have PAID for in-home support. That means they are supposed to come to my home and replace parts while I am watching. They refused to do this and demanded that I send the laptop to them for “analysis”. I did. I shipped it out Thursday afternoon and saw that they received it Friday. It was back in my house on Tuesday. That means they shipped it Monday. Really? You performed analysis over the weekend? Why do I find that hard to believe? The piece of paper claims they replaced/repaired my video card. I find that incredibly difficult to believe. It’s hard to believe because they didn’t have it long enough. Because when I turn on the computer and head into SL, the fans immediately make more noise than a helicopter coming in for a landing. Because it only took 10 minutes to crash out the M17x.
Why do I think this is Dell’s problem, not SL’s? I bought a new laptop 3 weeks ago. Nothing fancy – an Ideapad Y580. Guess what. It runs SL at Ultra graphics, quietly, smoothly and without crashing. That’s right, Dell. A mere Ideapad laptop whips your famed fabled premiere gaming laptop.
Yeah, when I have the time and energy I’ll call Dell’s Customer Service. I’ll undoubtedly have to beg and fight my way to talk to someone who actually knows something about their Alienware brand. That’s another big runaround that I get from their Customer Support. The techs say “oh yes, I know that”. Only after something happens, like last year, when the machine caught fire, do I find out that I’m dealing with people who have no special knowledge of Alienware.
I’m so disgusted with Dell. I have been a loyal customer for over 6 years. All of our computers were Dells or the Alienware until I bought the Ideapad. I have a year left on my contract with them. I’ll send them the AW every single week for the next year until they make it work properly for my needs. Don’t tell me it’s SL. You should be so ashamed, Dell. Expect to hear from me. Every single week, if not every day.
It’s going to be one heck of a year.
Ahuva's Blog 
I feel your pain. My first PC in 1995 was a Dell. The system crashed all of a sudden 3 years later. we called tech support, they didn’t say anything I can recall. we switched to Sony. My dad knows how to replace PC and laptop hardware, so he replaced the hard drives and graphics cards. and tomorrow I get a new hard drive. The problem today is that manufacturers want you to keep buying new computers from them. But if customer service sucks, who wants to buy from them? So we the consumers have to find help from a company like geek squad, help from a friend, or we’re stuck and drag our feet to buy a new system.
@Victoria I endured 3 video card burnouts on my Dell XPS. The 3rd time they couldn’t replace the cards. I “upgraded” to the Alienware M17x. It arrived and it was broken. Yep. Spent 2 weeks with tech support debugging it – finally they said it’s broken and shipped a whole new machine. That was the first February. A year later – video cards burned out – they were replaced. The 2nd February – video cards failed. Tech came to replace them. Didn’t know what he was doing and put them in incorrectly. 2nd tech had to come and fix them. Of course, when HE put them in correctly, the machine sparked and emitted smoke. The machine had to be sent back for major overhaul. Here we are – a year later. This February. Video cards failing. I didn’t even try to argue this time about getting in home repair. But to have the machine less than 24 hours of business work day? Don’t try to get me to believe they did ANYTHING with this machine other than repackage it and send it back. ALL THE SAME ERRORS/SYMPTOMS. Major Fail, Dell.
I did buy a new machine. But not a Dell. Never again.
Another one that stands pretty close is Asus N82JV-X1 which closely resembles a gaming laptop. You can get a hardcore-sized gaming laptop for a casual price from New – Egg.