Dell XPS M170 vs. AW Area 51M 7700 1st hand experience

[jwest]

<p>I am not much of one to post on forums, but since I found these forums so useful in making a decision to purchase my Dell, I thought I would post my experience with both of these notebooks. In September of this year, I went looking for a new notebook that would be my primary work computer and home computer, eliminating desktops at both locations. I wanted something reliable for work and that would handle all of the latest games. I ended up purchasing an AW 51M 7700 P4 3.6GHz, 1GB, 80GB, Nvidia 6800go Ultra. I made this decision primarily because I was able to configure two hard drives in the Alienware and listening to the marketing, I thought I was buying a high performance notebook with excellent customer support, I even paid for the 4 years extended, onsite service.
<p>The AW arrived about three weeks after the order was placed. Decent packaging, cheap generic laptop bag included for free. The notebook performed fine, looked decent, the display was of great quality, I liked the full size keyboard with numeric keypad. I immediately put the notebook into use at work and things were going along just fine. The first night home with the notebook, I installed a couple of games, FarCry and Doom and both games seemed to be working fine. Good graphics quality. I did notice on extended sessions in FarCry, the game would randomly lockup and I would have to restart.
<p>As I was looking through the test report alienware had included which I found on the desktop, I noticed the 3dmark05 score they came up with at just over 1,600. I started thinking to myself, P4 3.6GHz Nvidia 6800go Ultra, 1600 score? I sent AW and email asking them about this to try to find out what would cause such low scores. These emails were ignored. Putting the low scores aside, the notebook was working and doing what I needed it to do so I continued along with it. After about two weeks of use, I was at work, with the computer running on my desk while I was out side my office working on a spectrophotometer and I kept hearing windows restart. I went in to see windows reporting an error that the Microsoft site listed as an unknown driver error. The computer continued to jump to a blue screen, then restart and until I turned it off. After letting it sit for about 15 minutes I started it back up it seemed to run fine. I sent a message off to AW for help describing the problem. The next day, AW responded telling me to go read a Microsoft Knowledgebase article about a virus (the computer had no viruses). Since the tech support was of no real help, I started searching on the internet and found these forums and found alot of people with problems with this AW machine. That night I tried to Play FarCry and the machine locked up after about 1 hour and when I turned it off and tried to restart it, it kept coming up with blue screens and restarting, I watched it restart by it self 15 times. It would not even boot in safemode. Since it was still so new and I did not have a lot of work data on it, I decided to use the recovery disk and take it back to stock software configuration the way AW shipped it to me. After the hard drive was restored and on the first boot into Windows the machine locked up. That was enough for me, decision made I called AW telling them I was returning it. The rep on the phone tried to talk me into keeping it a little longer to try to work out the problems but I was not keeping it past the 21 days and getting stuck with it. We shipped it back 2nd day to make sure they got it withing the 5 days they give you to get it back in on an RMA even though it takes them 7 days to ship it to you. It took 2 weeks after receipt for them to kickback a refund less the restocking fee. Yes, they do charge a restocking fee, even if the product is defective.
<p>Dell...I called in to order the XPS M170 had the order configured in a few minutes and had the notebook delivered 7 days later. First impressions, why didn't I buy this in the first place....Perfect fit and finish, great display, although the AW display was a little better, but only marginally. I read alot about light seepage and sparkles on the XPS, but I only see this along the bottom of the screen when the notebook is booting up on a black screen, no sparkles. I loaded up my software and went to work. This notebook clearly outperforms the AW in the games I am playing and does it with the game settings maxed out and never gets hot like the AW. I ran 3DMark05 and it scored 6,691 with the stock Dell config with a CPU score of 3,695. Even after I loaded the latest drivers on the AW I could only get just over 2,600 with a CPU score of just of around 1,800. I guess a P4 desktop processor in a notebook does not equal better performance.
<p>Side by side comparison (I am going by memory on the 51M 7700)
<li>Fit and finish: Dell 5 stars, AW 3 stars (not really their fault, you can buy the same notebook from at least 6 different manufacturers with just cosmetic differences) As I now know, the AW 51M 7700 is a notebook made by Clevo and sold by several different manufacturers, all of them putting their own cosmetic touches to it, but at the heart, its a Clevo. Of the 5 people that saw both notebooks at work, all of them agreed that the Dell was way better looking.
<li>Wow factor: Dell 5 stars, AW 3 stars. Everyone that saw the AW was like, what is it? Everyone that saw the Dell was like, wow!
<li>Performance: Dell 5 stars, AW 2 stars. The Dell XPS M170 just walks all over the AW 7700 I had and does it without becoming a space heater.
<li>Reliability: Dell 5 stars, AW (it failed within 2 weeks)
<li>Display Quality: Dell 4 stars, AW 5 stars
<li>Battery life: Dell about 2 hours, AW less than one hour. I don't play games on battery power, I only work (database, internet research, photo editing).
<p>Portability: Both are big notebooks, but the Dell is slimmer and lighter and alot easier to move around.
<li>Customer support: Dell 5 stars, AW 2 stars (at least they did respond)
<p>I am not experienced in reviewing notebooks. This is just an accounting of my experience with both of these products and my personal views. At the price of both of these machines, I expect a notebook that will perform and be realible and I did not see that in the AW. I have had about 6 notebooks in my lifetime and the Dell XPS M170 is the best thing I have seen yet.

[ForceCalibur]

Question is how much you paid for the Dell. You probably could have gotten the same thing for around $2000 from SaGER.

[ukbilleh]

yah but the guy didnt mention sager nor price and you have just completely disregarded the entire review to put accross a point that has no relevance to what this bloke is saying in his first post so shut it and give him a decent comment on his review. At least he takes the time to write up a decent read and it dont need people like u disregarding everything he says to put accross a point of no relevance to what he was on about.


So to jwest... decent read and nice to know your happy with ur lappy. I personally wouldnt have chosen the AW if it had a p4 in it anyway and would definitely have gone with the PM any day just for battery life/performance but you gotta make a couple of mistakes to get the best out of the things you buy/want.

ps did you get the 5400rpm hd or the 7200rpm in 80gb size?

[jwest]

Originally Posted by ForceCalibur

Question is how much you paid for the Dell. You probably could have gotten the same thing for around $2000 from SaGER.

Just for reference, the closest I saw on Sager was a 5720 and that came up to $3,104. That one looks alot like a Clevo M570 and after my last experience, I wasn't looking for another of their products. Also, Sager did not offer the accidental damage warranty which is nice assurance.

Originally Posted by ukbilleh

did you get the 5400rpm hd or the 7200rpm in 80gb size?

7200rpm

[silicon???]

there is actually another website that offers the closest thing to a dell xps as i have ever seen. it is centrino, has geforce 7800, comes with same nice screen but is missing all of the cosmetic bells and whistles. heres the linky http //www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=5722

yeah i think its cheaper even after coupons and might be worth it to people with the time to pull off an led mod.

[Mr. K6]

Nice review! Course it's nothing new to me . Dell really does a great job for an OEM, and if you can catch some of their coupons, you cant beat their prices. However, that company that silicon??? linked to looks pretty good to. If Dell didnt have coupons, I would definitely consider buying from them.

[Ryotaro]

The pro-star sure looks like the Sager. Nice looking lappy if it does what it is supposed to.

[Cutters]

Excellent post, nice to hear from somone who has had experience with dell and alienware.
In all fairness on both sides of the coin however, you can find bad service from dell as well, Ive had two good experiences and a few bad ones. Good Customer Experience is a dying experience, Too bad its not one of the options when dialing in......."For Excellent Customer Service...PRESS ONE"

I looked at ALienware too but steered clear of it due to my nasty experiences with Intel's prescott pentium4 processors, certainly not a good choice of processor for a laptop due to its long pipeline and terrible heat/energy requirements.
When looking to buy a laptop I first looked at barbones kits since I build desktops regularly and quickly found that when looking at alienware lappies that they are using a CLEVO barbones chassis and giving it a trick paint job.
As far as that chassis is concerned, its very nice, well ventilated too and a numeric keypad, not a bad choice at all if you are using a Pentium M processor instead of a pentium4. The cheap case you mentioned is part of the CLEVO barebones system too and comes from them So I hope alienware isnt charging for them.

The problem with that alienware is the choice of pentium4 processor and its extremely high price compared to the clevo barebones or similar models that sager puts out, also using that CLEVO chassis.

When buying a laptop, one thing I learned was that you should never buy one over another in terms of "customer service", frankly, they all suck in that regard and not just in this particular industry.

Anyhow plus reps are on their way to you for your post and sharing your experiences with both these laptops as soon as I can give some out.

[Cutters]

Originally Posted by Ryotaro

The pro-star sure looks like the Sager. Nice looking lappy if it does what it is supposed to.

Not sure which sager you are talking about, but both Sager and Alienware are using CLEVO chassis, hence the similarity.
Alienware, Dell, im pretty sure Sager too, dont build their laptops, they simply assemble the parts that others have manufactured which is why im hoping that in the future the barebones, build your own kick will grow in the laptop segment like it has in the desktop segment where you can truly build a better system yourself.

[Fidget]

an interesting post, may not be indicative of all alienware experiences but it is still intersting to hear what someone who has had both the competing laptops can say about them...

[chemicalali]

we've had several people owning both on these forums. and the result has been heavily in favor of dell. they end up on the dell forum usually battered and bruised from their alienware experience.

wht i dont understand is, usually a huge corp. like dell is thought to be dis-jointed from its niche customer base and concentrating more on mainstream. yet ive seen several interviews by dell management over the past few weeks (bloomberg, cnn etc) where they specifically mention the xps line and just the way they talked seemed like they were listening to their customers.

but in reality its totally vice versa. AW caters to a niche market but their last 2 laptop lines have been pretty bad and their support even worse. seems like they r the ones not at all in touch with their customer base. more like damage control. their desktops seem pretty good though. all this imo from reading experiences from both parties.

[ForceCalibur]

Are you kidding. The same Alienware Desktop I could put together with BETTER COMPONENTS (of the same thing) for like 2 grand less than they charge.

[Groove75]

I still remember the horror story I had with ordering a 7700 and then cancelling the order and trying to get my money back. It took 3-4 calls to actually get the order to CANCEL, and then another 2 to get the "order" in for my refund. Another 2 months later, after multiple calls, I finally got my refund. AW couldn't pay me enough to do business with them after that experience.

[|-007-|]

Originally Posted by ForceCalibur

Are you kidding. The same Alienware Desktop I could put together with BETTER COMPONENTS (of the same thing) for like 2 grand less than they charge.

That's definitely true (and the obvious choice for me) but I think chemicalali was pointing out that AW desktops have less problems than their laptops. We all know that AW is less economical in every instance.

jwest- good post, rep for you. I hope you enjoy your XPS 2 as much as I do, it's really been a pleasure using this laptop. I fix computers during the summer (school during the rest of the year) and it's nice to have one machine that never fails.

[jwest]

Update on my M170. What an incredible machine. I have been using it at work daily and have Far Cry, Doom 3, Fear, and Half Life 2 installed. I just finished Fear with out ever having the laptop overheat or lock up and I had the game settings maxed out with antialiasing on. I can wholeheartedly recommend this notebook to anyone wanting a realiable notebook they can use for both gaming and as a work or school computer. Couldn't be happier with the purchase and using it even softens the blow of the $760 I lost when I returned that defective Alienware.