Well, I finally gave up on my Sentia and sent it back for a refund. Alienware got my Sentia back on October 14th, but still have not credited my charge account despite numerous complaints. They’re simply holding on to over $2000 of my money without any excuse. I will vent my anger here.
First, let me say that I’ve bought over a dozen computers in my life, about ½ desktops and ½ laptops. I’ve bought retail, mail-order, wholesale, and eBay. I’ve bought new, used, and refurbished. After all those transactions, Sentia stands out for two reasons:
It was the most expensive purchase of all of them.
And it was the only one that didn’t work.
Those two things together are shocking and, in short, the reason for my return.
My problems, in more detail, were thus:
The first thing I noticed was problems with the wireless card. The computer always failed to connect on start-up, forcing me to “repair” the connection every time. And even then, the speed (mbps) and the signal strength would fluctuate constantly, even with the computer sitting right next to my wireless access points. Updating the drivers, adjusting the access points, and switching management software did not help.
Second problem was the backlight not coming back on whenever I would open the lid back up.
Third problem was Alienware’s “award-winning” tech support. When trying to address the wireless and backlight problems, they were clueless. Now, I don’t expect support to have an answer for everything. But the usual answer I got from the techs was literally silence. Typically, I would ask a question or provide a piece of information, and then get no response in return for minutes before saying, “Hello? Are you still there?” They would answer, “Yes, I’m here”, and then the silence would continue for a few more minutes. Finally, the call would end with them saying they’d call me back – calls which I never received. Hey, if you can’t fix my problem, that sucks, but I can deal with it. But if you can’t even speak to me, you are not providing “award-winning” phone support. The silence was damning.
Looking past these obvious problems, I’ve still come to the conclusion that Sentia is full of design flaws:
First, there’s a light that blinks on it constantly. If you want the light to stay solid, you have to downgrade your power settings. Can you imagine buying a new Lexus, having a light constantly blink on the dash, then being told by the dealership that it can’t be fixed and will keep blinking unless you stay below 60 mph? How quickly would you return that car?
Second, there’s the fan that’s constantly on. It’s not so bad while you’re surfing or typing, but opening any document or program kicks it up so high that it sounds like a lawnmower. For example, I like to listen to music in my office, but I can’t play it so loud that it can be heard in the next office – with the fan constantly speeding up, it completely drowned out my music. The worst thing about this is that it didn’t even translate into better performance – the computer would still get very hot.
Third, if you want to close the Sentia’s lid and still leave it on, it has to hibernate or risk heat damage to the screen. You’d think that Super-Active-Fan would deal with the heat, but again, no. I’ve gotten into a habit of closing my lid a lot to save power and to carry a laptop around the home or office. But with Sentia, my habit meant initiating hibernation and losing my connection to my server or disabling hibernation and risk screen damage. Suffice to say, having a design that makes closing the lid difficult is ridiculous for something that’s supposed to be ultra-portable.
In the end, what makes this unforgivable is the HP NC6000 that I bought for my boss off of eBay for $700 less than what I paid for the Sentia. Even though the Sentia is supposedly quicker than that HP (2 Ghz versus 1.8 Ghz with the same amount of RAM), both handled applications at about the same speed, while the HP runs quiet, runs cool, and allows me to close its lid.
Bottom-line, the Sentia looks cool, but it’s just a pretty face. When you pay this much money, when you buy brand new, when you buy straight from the source, and when you have to wait a month for it to ship, you expect it to be at least near-perfect – but my Sentia was far from that. It is poorly designed, buggy, and backed by near worthless support.
All of you out there shopping for a Sentia, take this review / complaint / warning to heart. And to those of you that already own one, I guess you’ll have to make the best out of a bad situation.
As for myself, I’ve got a Dell 700m now. It may not be as sexy, but it performs great – no wireless or backlight problems here. And, even fully customized, it only took a week to get here.
So now I’m into my fifth week waiting for a refund. If I ever do get it, it will be short the 15% restocking fee that I was penalized for returning the computer (even though it’s not my fault the thing never worked). In short, money is being stolen from me. All of you should treat Alienware like the crooks they are.
First, let me say that I’ve bought over a dozen computers in my life, about ½ desktops and ½ laptops. I’ve bought retail, mail-order, wholesale, and eBay. I’ve bought new, used, and refurbished. After all those transactions, Sentia stands out for two reasons:
It was the most expensive purchase of all of them.
And it was the only one that didn’t work.
Those two things together are shocking and, in short, the reason for my return.
My problems, in more detail, were thus:
The first thing I noticed was problems with the wireless card. The computer always failed to connect on start-up, forcing me to “repair” the connection every time. And even then, the speed (mbps) and the signal strength would fluctuate constantly, even with the computer sitting right next to my wireless access points. Updating the drivers, adjusting the access points, and switching management software did not help.
Second problem was the backlight not coming back on whenever I would open the lid back up.
Third problem was Alienware’s “award-winning” tech support. When trying to address the wireless and backlight problems, they were clueless. Now, I don’t expect support to have an answer for everything. But the usual answer I got from the techs was literally silence. Typically, I would ask a question or provide a piece of information, and then get no response in return for minutes before saying, “Hello? Are you still there?” They would answer, “Yes, I’m here”, and then the silence would continue for a few more minutes. Finally, the call would end with them saying they’d call me back – calls which I never received. Hey, if you can’t fix my problem, that sucks, but I can deal with it. But if you can’t even speak to me, you are not providing “award-winning” phone support. The silence was damning.
Looking past these obvious problems, I’ve still come to the conclusion that Sentia is full of design flaws:
First, there’s a light that blinks on it constantly. If you want the light to stay solid, you have to downgrade your power settings. Can you imagine buying a new Lexus, having a light constantly blink on the dash, then being told by the dealership that it can’t be fixed and will keep blinking unless you stay below 60 mph? How quickly would you return that car?
Second, there’s the fan that’s constantly on. It’s not so bad while you’re surfing or typing, but opening any document or program kicks it up so high that it sounds like a lawnmower. For example, I like to listen to music in my office, but I can’t play it so loud that it can be heard in the next office – with the fan constantly speeding up, it completely drowned out my music. The worst thing about this is that it didn’t even translate into better performance – the computer would still get very hot.
Third, if you want to close the Sentia’s lid and still leave it on, it has to hibernate or risk heat damage to the screen. You’d think that Super-Active-Fan would deal with the heat, but again, no. I’ve gotten into a habit of closing my lid a lot to save power and to carry a laptop around the home or office. But with Sentia, my habit meant initiating hibernation and losing my connection to my server or disabling hibernation and risk screen damage. Suffice to say, having a design that makes closing the lid difficult is ridiculous for something that’s supposed to be ultra-portable.
In the end, what makes this unforgivable is the HP NC6000 that I bought for my boss off of eBay for $700 less than what I paid for the Sentia. Even though the Sentia is supposedly quicker than that HP (2 Ghz versus 1.8 Ghz with the same amount of RAM), both handled applications at about the same speed, while the HP runs quiet, runs cool, and allows me to close its lid.
Bottom-line, the Sentia looks cool, but it’s just a pretty face. When you pay this much money, when you buy brand new, when you buy straight from the source, and when you have to wait a month for it to ship, you expect it to be at least near-perfect – but my Sentia was far from that. It is poorly designed, buggy, and backed by near worthless support.
All of you out there shopping for a Sentia, take this review / complaint / warning to heart. And to those of you that already own one, I guess you’ll have to make the best out of a bad situation.
As for myself, I’ve got a Dell 700m now. It may not be as sexy, but it performs great – no wireless or backlight problems here. And, even fully customized, it only took a week to get here.
So now I’m into my fifth week waiting for a refund. If I ever do get it, it will be short the 15% restocking fee that I was penalized for returning the computer (even though it’s not my fault the thing never worked). In short, money is being stolen from me. All of you should treat Alienware like the crooks they are.
