Off-Brand laptops. Anyone know them?

alienware buys laptops from companies like CLEVO and UNIWILL, then slaps a fancy cover on them. Alienware DOES NOT make its own laptops.

The lattops you are referring to are also made by companies like Clevo and Uniwill, but lack the fancy cover. They are the same thing, minus the fancy paint job, neato cover with flashing eyes, whatever.

As I understand it, the machines are good, but the service isn't so great. Check Reseller Ratings for more info.

alienware has laptops called TATUNG!!! WOOOOOOOO

And Alienware wants you to believe that...

You're right, check resellerratings...often times they have better ratings than Alienware. Places like Discountlaptops and PCTorque have ratings Alienware would kill for.

I'm not saying that Alienware is that great, either. Power Notebooks, Discount Laptops, and Pro Portable have some of the best ratings. Customer satisfaction is great from Voodoo, too. But then again, $2000 extra for each computer gives them a big budget to work with.

I think they'd more likely say "Take us to your leader!"

They are NOT off-brand.

They are very much name-brand.

Businesses like Alienware/Voodoo just rebrand them after a logo spray and some shiny paint. They make money on people who don't know better and by whatever is popular or looks/sounds popular.

It's like the fashion industry -- Gap will put a tag on a $2 shirt and sell it for $40 when you can go to a regular outlet mall and get the same shirt, imported from the same sweatshop, for $9.

I think he was talking about cyber power and i buy power as being off brand...

No, they don't build better laptops....well, let me qualify that.

All the laptop companies you've heard of buy the chassis from a ODM (clevo, compal, uniwill, etc), and then add memory, cpu, harddrive, sometimes the LCD and sometimes the GPU (the last being the more recent since they were all integrated until recently).

Now, what can they do to make them "better"?

Paint.

Custom shells, such as the nifty LCD backs.

Maybe software.

When they add the above, they may do some extra, value-added things like use arctic silver as a heat transfer compound rather than stock heat paste.

Special customer kits (nice packaging, nice CDs, Restore CDs, manuals, decals).

That's about it.

However, the companies you've heard of may do more on the customer service end. Tech support. Help with problems. Running interference with a the "brand" if it's a reseller.

These are not BAD things. One can consider it value-added service and it may be worth it to you to buy it. Nothing wrong with that.

Now, as for getting these chassis. There are places that sell "white box" laptop chassis as you've requested. That means you have to buy the cpu, memory, harddrive, etc.

A couple that have been mentioned on these forums are RJTech and coboc.com.

I have not dealt with them, so I cannot recommend for or against.

Each laptop manufacturer is hit or miss, regardless on whether they are large volume sellers or not. They are either generally reliable, or they are not. Reliable laptop vendors are IBM, Acer, Asus.

More importantly than reliability, is service. Quality of service will vary a lot more than reliability. Some vendors offer same-day / next-day onsite service with great warranties, others will tell you to go f*ck yourself if you want support. Again, this will vary on a company-by-company basis, and is not dependent on volume.

In general, stick with this rule:
If you see a laptop with good specs, cheap price, and bright, flashy colored case, stay away.

Is Asus a vendor? I would consider them a brand, but not a vendor. Really, ACER and IBM are more brands then vendors.

Just as a total aside, it is remarkable to me the turn around that ACER has made. ACER's rep was total crap coming from the desktop world (granted, this was a long time ago). I guess I am one of the few people old enough to remember those days.

Just hearing people say ACER makes good products still makes me do a doubletake today...it would be like someone saying that PackardBell makes good PCs.

Kudos to ACER for making the turnaround from bottom the barrel to quality manufacturer.

is packard bell even still alive?

They are overseas. Dead in the US.

Does Toshiba or Dell count ?? j/k

I just saw a Pack Bell lappy at a store in Bath, United Kingdom.... i too had to do a double take... im over here studying for a semester and they had about 4 pack bell lappys out on display.

ibuypower.com should change their name to "buyerbeware.com."

Seriously, don't order from them unless you feel like throwing away a couple grand.