Breath of Fresh Air

First off, hi all, yes I'm new!

Anyway, as the topic states these forums are a true breath of fresh air. I recently ordered an Alienware Area 51-5500 and in all honesty I was totally weary and pretty weary about it. Everywhere you look you see nothing but bad reports and horror stories. Even reseller ratings is about a 60-40 good vs bad ratio, but I expect that from there since they are designed more towards venting. It's just great to find a set of forums with countless members whom all have had a great experience with alienware and it's really renewed my faith. Because I wanted to give AW the benefit of the doubt and document my experience once I placed my order I started an on going review with resellerratings and to my surprise not even 24 hours later, a full day before the review would even be posted an Alienware rep contacted me, basically ordering her exclusive service in keeping me updated through the process. I have since bombared her email box with emails about my concerns to changing part of the order and she's been nothing but a doll to deal with, always pleasant and totally helpful, always responding to emails etc. Im currently back in phase three of my order after adding the respawn kit and my estimated ship date is february 6th, which is a sunday...so Im gonna say the 7th.

Can't wait to get my computer and become a full fledged member of the alienware section here at Notebook forums!

Sounds like on of those "Help my computer won't turn on?!"
"is it plugged in?"

As for specs I just added their basics to my siggy.
Alot of it as at the low to mid range of what alienware has to offer in some aspects, processor and amount of memory. Also gimped on the sound card. While it may sound silly but I was on a bit of a budget. See the payment option wasn't in my name so she was worried about me taking forever to pay off the system, etc. Considering it, at the very least is two times stronger then my current system I'll be happy. Right now im running a Sony Vaio at 1.6 ghz, 512 mg ddr ram and an 80 gig HD thats almost out of space and is dieing. as windows tells me daily, "Failure is iminent(sp)."

I swear to you I'm worse then a little kid waiting for christmas right now.

It's a Desktop, not a Notebook.

....well...that sorta sucks now doesn't it?
BenQ was ans is the only 17" lcd offered in the Alienware configurator. I didn't even think to look and see if the gear shop had any other monitors...
I donno though, I checked newegg first and all the reviews posted for the BenQ Fp731 are good. Will 9ms really make that much of a difference? I'd hate to cancel/change the order again, adding an additional three days to my ship date.

I wasn't even going to get a monitor at first. atm I'm useing a 17" Viewsonic CRT and while it still works it is getting up there in age, over 4 years old and approaching 5 quickly. The LG would have really pushed the budget I was on to its limit and probably over....
$80 may not seem like much after buying a new Alienware PC but $20 there, here, $30 there, another $80 and it all adds up. Not to mention benq is also offering a mail in rebate with this monitor if ordered from associated dealers, including alienware.

Thanks man!


this is a link to the Newegg reviews of the monitor.
They all give it pretty high marks and three specfically mention no ghosting. You know how people are when they review gear on the net, if something makes them unhappy they let people know about it.

http://secure.newegg.com/app/Custrat...tem=24-014-040

sigh. this has got me a little depressed...

I don't know what to do. Removing it from the order is going to create a lot of hassle. the credit that was used to order the system has since had it's account number changed. As I mentioned the CC wasn't mine and the holder of the card was overly worried about the number being across the internet. I mean I suppose it makes sense after making such a large purchase but I would assume it would cause problems since, if AW is like most retailers they will only refund the money to the same account that was used to make the purchase.

Ive been all over the net in the past hour and a half and I've found nothing but good reviews for this model and NO mention of ghosting.
whats intersting to note however is that alienware has a much higher price for this monitor then most other online shops.