Configuring and Ordering
I configured the system on the Alienware website. I’ve done this about a million times before so I could have done it with my eyes closed. The website is easy to use and allows you to configure the system that you want. I was not ready to place the order right away so I saved the configured PC in my shopping cart.
When I was ready to place the order I went to my shopping cart and the saved configuration was there. I rechecked the configuration and then went to the checkout page.
I have a credit card that gives me frequent flier miles and I wanted to use it but I was about 500.00 short, well Alienware allows you to split the purchase between 2 credit cards which is pretty cool because now I’ll still get my miles for most of the purchase price.
After ordering I received an e-mail with my configuration. I checked it and it was correct. Now the wait begins. Oh, when I ordered they gave me an estimated ship date of 7/5. I seriously doubt that is accurate so I am not getting my hopes up.
My configuration
[1] Aurora™ 7500
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case - Space Black
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 510 Express 650 Watt peak power
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology
Motherboard: Alienware® nForce™4 SLI™ Chipset Motherboard PCI Express
Memory: 1GB Ultra Low Latency DDR PC-3200 SDRAM at 400MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 GTX PCI Express 256MB DDR3 w/Dual Digital and TV Out
Chassis Upgrades: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System with Acoustic Dampening - Astral Blue
System Drive: High Performance - Serial ATA - 74GB Serial ATA 10,000 RPM w/8MB Cache
Storage Drive: Additional Storage Drive - 250GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: NEC® ND-3520 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround Firewire (IEEE® 1394)
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Display One: No Monitor
Display Two: No Monitor
Mouse: Razer Diamondback Mouse
Alienware Exclusive Offers: Gamespot Complete - Free 90-day Trial (a $20.85 value)
Alienware Exclusive Offers: 10% off your next EB Games online purchase
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
AlienInspection: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $99.99 Value - FREE!
AlienWiring: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $99.99 Value - FREE!
[1] Free Shipping Mail-In Rebate; on Alienware systems excluding peripherals - Continental U.S. Only
[1] $400 Mail-in Rebate; on select desktop systems
[1] Special Financing Offer; 6 Months Same As Cash Financing with the Alienware Credit Card
SubTotal: $3,313.00
Shipping: $99.00
Discount: $0.00
Tax: $0.00
Order Total: $3,412.00
Final price after rebates: 2913.00
Phase Game
6/30/05 - Phase 1
Note: I waited for about 2 hours and Alienware did not call to confirm my order so I called them and was put through to the billing department. The rep verified my order with me and told me that he was going to process my credit cards. He did that and told me they were both approved and that he would import the order so that it could be built.
6/30/05 – Phase 2
7/1/05 – Phase 3 – Phase 9
On 7/1 I went into Phase 8! A few hours later I checked and it was in Phase 1 again! I called Alienware customer service and spoke with Bernal Jimenez who took my information and put me on hold. He came back a few minutes later and said that my system was in fact in Phase 8 and if I would like he could put me on hold while he checks if there are any parts that are backordered that would prevent my system from being built. I told him to go ahead and check which he did and he informed me that there were no parts on backorder and that my system was in queue to be built. He said that production is not working on July 4th and that my system would probably ship the middle or end of next week.
Update: I was on Alienwares website and I noticed that the rebate had changed from 499.00 to 599.00 so I called Alienware. They said that they could change the order and that it would be an exchange of funds and the parts that were in queue to be built would stay there until the order has changed and I would stay in Phase 8. The price of the system went up 4.00 since yesterday so my net savings will be 96.00. He did say that my order has to go through billing for the 4.00 but that since it is early in the day that it should happen today.
Second Update: Got an e-mail tonight saying that my system went to Phase 9!
7/5/05 – Phase 9 - Phase 12 – Phase 8 – Phase 13
At 8:00 this morning I was at phase 9 where I had been all weekend. Imagine my excitement when I checked at 10:00 and saw that I had moved to phase 12!!! I figured I might hit my estimated ship date of today. I rechecked it around noon and I saw that it was back in phase 8. I called to find out what happened and the woman that I spoke to said “oh yes, you changed the order” I explained what had happened and she said that the order would be delayed about 24 to 48 hours because of the change. I explained that I changed the order when it was in phase 8 and I asked why it would go to phase 12 and then back to phase 8. She said that it was because I changed my order and that it would be delayed 24-48 hours, not much help there, oh well. At 4:00 I checked my status again and I was very happy to find that it was in phase 13 where it stayed the remainder of the night.
7/6/05
8:00 AM, still in phase 13.
7/7/05
10:00 AM. The website still shows the order as being in phase 13 so I called Alienware and spoke to a customer service rep. The guy that I talked to says oh yes, I see that your payment has been received and that it should go into production in the next 24 hours, you are in phase 5 or 6. I said "it has been in phase 13 for 2 days now, why is it now in phase 5? He says hold on I'll look into it. He comes back and says "oh yes, you made a change to the order and there was a 4.00 charge pending. This change was made on 7/1, today is 7/7...Ok, 3 of these 6 days were weekend/holiday so can somebody tell me why it takes Alienware 3 days to process a 4.00 charge on a credit card when it takes any other merchant about 15 seconds? I mean 4.00 is holding up a 3400 machine? So he says that the 4.00 payment has been processed and that it should ship in the next 24 hours. I said that is not acceptable, I want you to expedite the shipment and ship it this morning. He said that he would do that and that I should call back in the next 4 hours to see if that has happened. I feel like I was just being told something to pacify me. I guess we'll see.
Update: Well I waited 2 hours and called for a status. I spoke with somebody that told me that the order was ready to be shipped and they are waiting for FedEx to pick it up, then it would be about 24 hours before I get an e-mail with my tracking number. I asked about the expedited shipping and he said that they cannot do that. I explained that I was told earlier in the day that they could do that and he said straight out that if I was told that then I was lied to and that I should send an e-mail to feedback@alienware.com so they could look into it. I asked if he could tell me the guys name that I spoke with and he said that he only has his initials and he gave them to me. It really stinks that some of Alienware customer service is not as good as their systems. Please note that I am not saying that all of Alienwares customer service is bad, I have received great service from the Alienware guys on here. So again, it should ship today.
7/8/05
Well, it didn’t ship, it’s still in phase 13. I called them around noon time to find out why the system still has not shipped. I spoke to a very helpful customer service rep. I explained that I was told on more than one occasion that the system was completed and just waiting for FedEx to pick it up and I asked why it had not shipped. She asked if she could put me on hold to look into it, I said yes. She called the shipping department but could not reach anybody so she said she would send them an e-mail and she asked if she could call me later this afternoon after she got a tracking number. I said yes.
Update: at 2:26 PM I noticed that the system had moved to phase 12 on the website??? After about 15 minutes I got an e-mail form FedEx with tracking numbers, one for the system and one for the mouse. I should have them on Tuesday 7/12.
Update: The customer service rep did call me back at around 4:30 with tracking number. I explained that I already had them from FedEx and thanked her for being so helpful.
7/9/05
Just for the heck of it I checked the FedEx website and the system is at the FedEx location about 10 miles from my house. I called them to see if I could pick it up but they said that it is not yet in the building and that it probably wouldn’t be until Monday 7/11.
7/11/05
Checked FedEx site this morning and it said that the system was in the FedEx building. I called FedEx and asked if I could pick it up and the woman that I spoke to said that I could not pick it up until at least one delivery attempt is made. I told her that I had picked up other Alienware packages (my laptop) before a deliver attempt was made and she said that I would have to have somebody from Alienware call them and tell them that it’s ok. So as I was waiting for Alienware to open I noticed that the FedEx site now said that the system was on the truck for delivery. I had some errands to run and when I got back around noon time the system had been delivered.
Out of box experience
As I’ve read on here numerous times, this box is HUGE. I carried it to my apartment and opened it. The accessory box sat on top of large foam inserts that protected the tower from any possible shipping damages. The tower was sealed in a large plastic bag. I opened everything carefully and took some pics. The only thing that I saw that was out of place was when I opened the door on the front of the case one of the covers for the drive bays fell out. It must have come loose during shipping. I popped it back in and that was the end of that. I opened the case to get a look inside and I was impressed with the fantastic wiring job and the acoustic dampening looks very cool too. I closed it back up and hooked everything up to it and pressed the power button. The blue lights came on the system started up. My first impression was how quiet it was. I expected a lot more noise. I finished the Windows XP setup and restarted the computer. The next thing that I was impressed with was how quickly Windows started. I know I don’t have anything loaded yet but it loads quickly. I made sure everything came up ok and everything was listed correctly and then I downloaded 3dMark03 and 3dMark05 and ran each of them. See the Benchmarks section for info on that.
The next thing that I did was to configure my speakers. I bought the Creative Inspire P7800 system and it worked great, so far I am very happy with them and with the Audigy2.
Well now I’m installing stuff and getting the system as I want it. I’ll post updates as needed.
7/12/05
Last night I installed Antivirus software, GTR Racing, MS Flight Sim, and Doom3. I started up Doom3 and attempted to configure it but I could not get the game to recognize my surround speakers. I read that I needed to install the Audigy2 Beta drivers for it to work which I did and the game now lets me select surround speaker, the thing is, it doesn’t seem like the side or rear speakers are working. It seems like this is simulated surround with just the front 2 speakers.
Video Card
Unfortunately for now I have to use my old Gateway monitor, I used an included pin converter to allow me to connect an analog monitor to the DVI connector on the video card. There was an accessory that came with my video card, a break out box that plugs into the card and gives you an s-video out port as well as Y Pb Pr ports and it also gives an s-video in and what looks like composite video in. There are 2 DVI ports on the card itself. I will post an update when I try to use this breakout box. I would like to maybe try to do some DVR on this system.
Benchmarks
These were the scores that I got with the system right out of the box before doing any tweaking or anything like that. Both tools were run at the default settings.
3dMark03 – 15844
3dMark05 – 7597
I will post updates to this thread as I start tweaking things and getting different scores.
Conclusion
So far I am very very happy with this system. The only thing that was a little bit of a let down was that I thought the fan on the side of the case was illuminated and it is not. I could have sworn that I saw pics of somebody’s and it was illuminated. Maybe the fan they use for the acoustic dampening is different? Oh well, this is a small and easily fixed problem. I think I am going to add a cold cathode tube to the inside of the case and just let the light come through the fan that is there instead of getting an illuminated fan. I am also planning on adding some light to the bottom of the case as I’ve seen on here.
Let me know if you have any questions.
-Mark
I configured the system on the Alienware website. I’ve done this about a million times before so I could have done it with my eyes closed. The website is easy to use and allows you to configure the system that you want. I was not ready to place the order right away so I saved the configured PC in my shopping cart.
When I was ready to place the order I went to my shopping cart and the saved configuration was there. I rechecked the configuration and then went to the checkout page.
I have a credit card that gives me frequent flier miles and I wanted to use it but I was about 500.00 short, well Alienware allows you to split the purchase between 2 credit cards which is pretty cool because now I’ll still get my miles for most of the purchase price.
After ordering I received an e-mail with my configuration. I checked it and it was correct. Now the wait begins. Oh, when I ordered they gave me an estimated ship date of 7/5. I seriously doubt that is accurate so I am not getting my hopes up.
My configuration
[1] Aurora™ 7500
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case - Space Black
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 510 Express 650 Watt peak power
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology
Motherboard: Alienware® nForce™4 SLI™ Chipset Motherboard PCI Express
Memory: 1GB Ultra Low Latency DDR PC-3200 SDRAM at 400MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 GTX PCI Express 256MB DDR3 w/Dual Digital and TV Out
Chassis Upgrades: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System with Acoustic Dampening - Astral Blue
System Drive: High Performance - Serial ATA - 74GB Serial ATA 10,000 RPM w/8MB Cache
Storage Drive: Additional Storage Drive - 250GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: NEC® ND-3520 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround Firewire (IEEE® 1394)
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Display One: No Monitor
Display Two: No Monitor
Mouse: Razer Diamondback Mouse
Alienware Exclusive Offers: Gamespot Complete - Free 90-day Trial (a $20.85 value)
Alienware Exclusive Offers: 10% off your next EB Games online purchase
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
AlienInspection: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $99.99 Value - FREE!
AlienWiring: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $99.99 Value - FREE!
[1] Free Shipping Mail-In Rebate; on Alienware systems excluding peripherals - Continental U.S. Only
[1] $400 Mail-in Rebate; on select desktop systems
[1] Special Financing Offer; 6 Months Same As Cash Financing with the Alienware Credit Card
SubTotal: $3,313.00
Shipping: $99.00
Discount: $0.00
Tax: $0.00
Order Total: $3,412.00
Final price after rebates: 2913.00
Phase Game
6/30/05 - Phase 1
Note: I waited for about 2 hours and Alienware did not call to confirm my order so I called them and was put through to the billing department. The rep verified my order with me and told me that he was going to process my credit cards. He did that and told me they were both approved and that he would import the order so that it could be built.
6/30/05 – Phase 2
7/1/05 – Phase 3 – Phase 9
On 7/1 I went into Phase 8! A few hours later I checked and it was in Phase 1 again! I called Alienware customer service and spoke with Bernal Jimenez who took my information and put me on hold. He came back a few minutes later and said that my system was in fact in Phase 8 and if I would like he could put me on hold while he checks if there are any parts that are backordered that would prevent my system from being built. I told him to go ahead and check which he did and he informed me that there were no parts on backorder and that my system was in queue to be built. He said that production is not working on July 4th and that my system would probably ship the middle or end of next week.
Update: I was on Alienwares website and I noticed that the rebate had changed from 499.00 to 599.00 so I called Alienware. They said that they could change the order and that it would be an exchange of funds and the parts that were in queue to be built would stay there until the order has changed and I would stay in Phase 8. The price of the system went up 4.00 since yesterday so my net savings will be 96.00. He did say that my order has to go through billing for the 4.00 but that since it is early in the day that it should happen today.
Second Update: Got an e-mail tonight saying that my system went to Phase 9!
7/5/05 – Phase 9 - Phase 12 – Phase 8 – Phase 13
At 8:00 this morning I was at phase 9 where I had been all weekend. Imagine my excitement when I checked at 10:00 and saw that I had moved to phase 12!!! I figured I might hit my estimated ship date of today. I rechecked it around noon and I saw that it was back in phase 8. I called to find out what happened and the woman that I spoke to said “oh yes, you changed the order” I explained what had happened and she said that the order would be delayed about 24 to 48 hours because of the change. I explained that I changed the order when it was in phase 8 and I asked why it would go to phase 12 and then back to phase 8. She said that it was because I changed my order and that it would be delayed 24-48 hours, not much help there, oh well. At 4:00 I checked my status again and I was very happy to find that it was in phase 13 where it stayed the remainder of the night.
7/6/05
8:00 AM, still in phase 13.
7/7/05
10:00 AM. The website still shows the order as being in phase 13 so I called Alienware and spoke to a customer service rep. The guy that I talked to says oh yes, I see that your payment has been received and that it should go into production in the next 24 hours, you are in phase 5 or 6. I said "it has been in phase 13 for 2 days now, why is it now in phase 5? He says hold on I'll look into it. He comes back and says "oh yes, you made a change to the order and there was a 4.00 charge pending. This change was made on 7/1, today is 7/7...Ok, 3 of these 6 days were weekend/holiday so can somebody tell me why it takes Alienware 3 days to process a 4.00 charge on a credit card when it takes any other merchant about 15 seconds? I mean 4.00 is holding up a 3400 machine? So he says that the 4.00 payment has been processed and that it should ship in the next 24 hours. I said that is not acceptable, I want you to expedite the shipment and ship it this morning. He said that he would do that and that I should call back in the next 4 hours to see if that has happened. I feel like I was just being told something to pacify me. I guess we'll see.
Update: Well I waited 2 hours and called for a status. I spoke with somebody that told me that the order was ready to be shipped and they are waiting for FedEx to pick it up, then it would be about 24 hours before I get an e-mail with my tracking number. I asked about the expedited shipping and he said that they cannot do that. I explained that I was told earlier in the day that they could do that and he said straight out that if I was told that then I was lied to and that I should send an e-mail to feedback@alienware.com so they could look into it. I asked if he could tell me the guys name that I spoke with and he said that he only has his initials and he gave them to me. It really stinks that some of Alienware customer service is not as good as their systems. Please note that I am not saying that all of Alienwares customer service is bad, I have received great service from the Alienware guys on here. So again, it should ship today.
7/8/05
Well, it didn’t ship, it’s still in phase 13. I called them around noon time to find out why the system still has not shipped. I spoke to a very helpful customer service rep. I explained that I was told on more than one occasion that the system was completed and just waiting for FedEx to pick it up and I asked why it had not shipped. She asked if she could put me on hold to look into it, I said yes. She called the shipping department but could not reach anybody so she said she would send them an e-mail and she asked if she could call me later this afternoon after she got a tracking number. I said yes.
Update: at 2:26 PM I noticed that the system had moved to phase 12 on the website??? After about 15 minutes I got an e-mail form FedEx with tracking numbers, one for the system and one for the mouse. I should have them on Tuesday 7/12.
Update: The customer service rep did call me back at around 4:30 with tracking number. I explained that I already had them from FedEx and thanked her for being so helpful.
7/9/05
Just for the heck of it I checked the FedEx website and the system is at the FedEx location about 10 miles from my house. I called them to see if I could pick it up but they said that it is not yet in the building and that it probably wouldn’t be until Monday 7/11.
7/11/05
Checked FedEx site this morning and it said that the system was in the FedEx building. I called FedEx and asked if I could pick it up and the woman that I spoke to said that I could not pick it up until at least one delivery attempt is made. I told her that I had picked up other Alienware packages (my laptop) before a deliver attempt was made and she said that I would have to have somebody from Alienware call them and tell them that it’s ok. So as I was waiting for Alienware to open I noticed that the FedEx site now said that the system was on the truck for delivery. I had some errands to run and when I got back around noon time the system had been delivered.
Out of box experience
As I’ve read on here numerous times, this box is HUGE. I carried it to my apartment and opened it. The accessory box sat on top of large foam inserts that protected the tower from any possible shipping damages. The tower was sealed in a large plastic bag. I opened everything carefully and took some pics. The only thing that I saw that was out of place was when I opened the door on the front of the case one of the covers for the drive bays fell out. It must have come loose during shipping. I popped it back in and that was the end of that. I opened the case to get a look inside and I was impressed with the fantastic wiring job and the acoustic dampening looks very cool too. I closed it back up and hooked everything up to it and pressed the power button. The blue lights came on the system started up. My first impression was how quiet it was. I expected a lot more noise. I finished the Windows XP setup and restarted the computer. The next thing that I was impressed with was how quickly Windows started. I know I don’t have anything loaded yet but it loads quickly. I made sure everything came up ok and everything was listed correctly and then I downloaded 3dMark03 and 3dMark05 and ran each of them. See the Benchmarks section for info on that.
The next thing that I did was to configure my speakers. I bought the Creative Inspire P7800 system and it worked great, so far I am very happy with them and with the Audigy2.
Well now I’m installing stuff and getting the system as I want it. I’ll post updates as needed.
7/12/05
Last night I installed Antivirus software, GTR Racing, MS Flight Sim, and Doom3. I started up Doom3 and attempted to configure it but I could not get the game to recognize my surround speakers. I read that I needed to install the Audigy2 Beta drivers for it to work which I did and the game now lets me select surround speaker, the thing is, it doesn’t seem like the side or rear speakers are working. It seems like this is simulated surround with just the front 2 speakers.
Video Card
Unfortunately for now I have to use my old Gateway monitor, I used an included pin converter to allow me to connect an analog monitor to the DVI connector on the video card. There was an accessory that came with my video card, a break out box that plugs into the card and gives you an s-video out port as well as Y Pb Pr ports and it also gives an s-video in and what looks like composite video in. There are 2 DVI ports on the card itself. I will post an update when I try to use this breakout box. I would like to maybe try to do some DVR on this system.
Benchmarks
These were the scores that I got with the system right out of the box before doing any tweaking or anything like that. Both tools were run at the default settings.
3dMark03 – 15844
3dMark05 – 7597
I will post updates to this thread as I start tweaking things and getting different scores.
Conclusion
So far I am very very happy with this system. The only thing that was a little bit of a let down was that I thought the fan on the side of the case was illuminated and it is not. I could have sworn that I saw pics of somebody’s and it was illuminated. Maybe the fan they use for the acoustic dampening is different? Oh well, this is a small and easily fixed problem. I think I am going to add a cold cathode tube to the inside of the case and just let the light come through the fan that is there instead of getting an illuminated fan. I am also planning on adding some light to the bottom of the case as I’ve seen on here.
Let me know if you have any questions.
-Mark
