Greetings;
I ordered my AW desktop on 7/5 and it's been at "phase 9" now since early last week. I called and increased the warrenty to the 4-year last Thursday and the CS guy told me it was "really" in phase 12 and might ship the next morning. No joy. Perhaps changing the order caused some sort of delay. I sent AW an email yesterday just to check and a Mr. Milton replied that my box was in "the integration phase" and might ship within the next 2-3 business days. Hope so.....
I've built my own pooters since 1998 when I gave up on a Presario that just couldn't handle the load. Since then though I've found I update my MB and graphics cards almost every year. My last build was a 3.06 P4 on an ASUS P4C800-E with two Gb of PC2100/266. ABIT boards prior to that. I figure the "upgrade-ability" with Alienware will be less hassle, maybe even save a little cash. Then again.....
I already have a Sony SDM-P232W monitor, some Logitech Z-680s so didn't order monitor and speakers with the new box. And I have an Audigy 2ZS and an IDE HD I'll need to install.
I can hardly wait to see what AW poops out. Hope I don't get a lemon. Contrary to what I found on a Google search for "Alienware Support" and "Alienware Complaint" this forum has got generally positive stuff about the company and the computers. Sure is/was reassuring......

Area-51® 7500
Warranty: 3-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service Bundle with AlienAutopsy and Respawn
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case - Space Black
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 510 Deluxe Upgrade
ALX Heavy Duty Power Cable: Alienware® ALX System Power Cable
Processor: Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition 840 w/ HT and Dual Core Technology 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB
Motherboard: Alienware® nForce™4 SLI™ Intel Edition Chipset Motherboard PCI Express SLI
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Graphics Processor: Dual NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 GTX PCI Express 256MB DDR3 with NVIDIA SLI Technology
Video Optimizer: AlienAdrenaline: Video Performance Optimizer
Chassis Upgrades: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System with Acoustic Dampening - Astral Blue
System Drive: Extreme Performance - Serial ATA RAID 0 - 148GB (74GB x 2) Serial ATA 10,000 RPM w/16MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: Lite-On® 16x DVD / 52x36x52x CD-RW Drive
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Integrated High-Performance 7.1 Surround Sound with S/PDIF and Coaxial Digital Outputs
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
ALX High Performance Network Cable: Alienware® ALX Network Cable
Power Protection: Belkin® Enterprise Series 900VA UPS (540W Capacity)
Display One: No Monitor
Display Two: No Monitor
Keyboard: Microsoft® Basic Keyboard Black
Mouse: Logitech® MX™1000 Laser Cordless Mouse