STEvil
06-27-2007, 10:46 PM
A misadventure in buying a laptop...
I wrote up a small article on this some time ago but never put it out to the general public.. recently i've done some thinking on my purchase and what happened... maybe it'll help other buyers be more cautious at least.
I wanted one that could play most games respectably, came with a reputable warrant/repair history, and didnt break the bank. Simple request, no?
What'd I choose?
The Alienware M5750 (Uniwill P72 chassis)... quite similar to the P71 chassis.
Oops.
My laptop came in the most basic of configurations.. 17" 1440x900 widescreen, T5500 CPU, 1x512 667mhz 5-5-5-x ram, 60gb HDD, and an ATi X1800 Mobility... all for about $1700. I picked up a T7400 CPU and 2x1GB of 553mhz 4-4-4-x ram a bit later and put them in because it was far cheaper to buy them from other places than Alienware...
There's a clause in the warranty about one of those items.. oops.
For the first while everything was great. Games played acceptably although temperatures seemed rather high resulting in a few blackscreen moments. Using the application RMClock I reduced voltage to the CPU lowering temperatures a few degrees and it helped a bit, unless the location I was in was hot.. I guess that during the ordering procedure when I noticed the laptop go through the testing labs twice over the several weeks that I waited for it to ship that I should have been worried.
I phoned up Alienware on the issue and talked with a rep. Their tech support was ok but the tech didnt seem to understand the issue. I remounted the heatsink setup with the problems were less. Not gone, but less.
I put up with the issue for a while.. artifacting in games, the occasional blackscreen shutdown, then phoned again when the issues started getting a bit more serious. I mentioned reseating the heatsink and making sure contact was well, ran the gamut on dirty heatsinks blocked by dust, hair, etc... and then also mentioned i'd changed the CPU.. oops.
Apparently changing the CPU voids your warranty :(
Anyways, several weeks later and without warranty the problem began to affect 2D use so I went to work and installed a vf700-cu.... to no effect, the damage had been done and my X1800 mobility is now pretty much useless. Well, its stable in 2D again actually..
So, lets analyze the laptop for fun..
Pros:
Decent performance for price
Chassis is sturdy enough for general use and light/small enough that most cant complain unless they're just whiners.
Mid:
Case
Bling overdone a bit..
Cons:
Cant turn off bingy lights resulting in wasted battery power
Poor keyboard design
Poor heatsink design
Poor speakers/subwoofer, poor audio quality
Poor LCD (gets burn-in, HORRIBLE backlight bleed)
Poor lifecycle (will not last very long)
Poor BIOS
Now to break each of those down....
Pros -
When it works, its fast enough.. and you wont break it that easily. That was short.
Mid -
Case is supposed to mimic a high tech alien spaceship/stainless steel/aluminum whatever.. yeah, sure. Bling is a shrug, some like it and some dont. I prefer function over form, but if you make something so ugly you dont want to use it, it defeats the function.
Cons -
Oh boy, that list is a doozy :(
The blingy lights dont turn off and this wastes battery power. Thats pretty self explanetory.
They keyboard isnt very durable. I have had a few keys get stuck and was only able to repair them by wiggling them side to side for about 20 minutes each. They work again, but thats not something I should have to do. Some of them seem to be losing sensitivity as well (I blame all typo's in this on that) and the pain/sticker/applique or whatever is used on each key to show its corresponding letter or nuber is wearing off on quite a few. The plastic under them is even wearing away so you can see through they keyboard and i'll not even get into key placement or SIZE of some of them... overall really shows lack of quality control.
The heatsink just cant handle the load of the CPU and GPU at the same time, let alone the CPU when its pushed to full potential. I used Intel Thermal Analysis Tool ("TAT") before doing the GPU mod and after and before would result in temperatures exceeding 110c (shutdown, 18-20c room ambient). After only resulted in temperatures approaching 80c (approx 25c room ambient) while during normal use temps were only 70-80c loaded before (15-25c ambient) and 58-62c loaded (23-28c ambient) respectively (premodded GPU, after GPU mod). The fact there is only a single heatpipe in stock configuration for each the CPU and the GPU doesnt help anything. Lack of quality control again..
Speakers? They work.. and a tiny "subwoofer" which they didnt even bother to attempt a ported or bandpass enclosure with. I cant rag on them hard I guess, but given the room left over a better job could have been done, but that requires effort. It also seems there is EMI (electromagnetic interference) being generated which is causing crackles in the audio. With my Sony MDR-CD380 or Plantronics Audio .90 headphones attached to the audio output I can hear them... if I use my Sony 1130 Solid State amp between then it gets cleaned up quite nicely (its not perfect still, but very acceptable). No i'm not a Sony fanboy ;)
The LCD gets burn in. Really. Its the first LCD i've ever seen it on. Rediculous, no? Ok, maybe i'm ragging on it.. but thats a quality control issue. Oh, and the backlight bleeds like it has been gouged in an artery.
There are P71/P72 complaints popping up all around.. M5500, 5700, 5750, 5790 are all pretty much the same chassis. There are a few Fujitsu models based on the Uniwill P71/P72 as well. A quick poke on google and notebookreview.com reveals a few for starters. Short lifecycle. My old Compaq Presario with an XP-2400 Mobile in it I gave to a friend for college is still working more reliably than this thing. Quality control...
And last but not least.. the BIOS is quite barren. Want to use 3rd party ram? Better hope it works perfect at stock settings, you cant change any timings/latencies/straps/etc in the bios... if you can even get to it. I had to swap my ram around in the slots to get the laptop to POST with the 2x1gb initially.
Conclusion
So, where does that leave us? I dont know about you, but i'm questioning the quality control of Alienware and have pretty much lost any inkling of respect. The tech support I have to score decent.. they were polite and tried to help, but could only do so much really. Of course it is almso my fault. I should have read on Alienware a bit more because there are some users out there that were similarly dissatisfied. A decent Clevo would have done me buch better... or anything.
My original rating which you guys didnt see was -5 out of 10.
This time around i'm going with -8/10
Rating system:
-10: Would not wish this uppon my worst enemy. Ok, maybe..
0: Average, consumer trash.
+10: Lusters even the most jaded users.
Anyone happen to have a "dead" P72 chassis based heatsink around? And an MXM Type 3 GPU.. preferrably something low heat....? :/
edit - forgot pic, here's with the VF700-Cu mounted.
I wrote up a small article on this some time ago but never put it out to the general public.. recently i've done some thinking on my purchase and what happened... maybe it'll help other buyers be more cautious at least.
I wanted one that could play most games respectably, came with a reputable warrant/repair history, and didnt break the bank. Simple request, no?
What'd I choose?
The Alienware M5750 (Uniwill P72 chassis)... quite similar to the P71 chassis.
Oops.
My laptop came in the most basic of configurations.. 17" 1440x900 widescreen, T5500 CPU, 1x512 667mhz 5-5-5-x ram, 60gb HDD, and an ATi X1800 Mobility... all for about $1700. I picked up a T7400 CPU and 2x1GB of 553mhz 4-4-4-x ram a bit later and put them in because it was far cheaper to buy them from other places than Alienware...
There's a clause in the warranty about one of those items.. oops.
For the first while everything was great. Games played acceptably although temperatures seemed rather high resulting in a few blackscreen moments. Using the application RMClock I reduced voltage to the CPU lowering temperatures a few degrees and it helped a bit, unless the location I was in was hot.. I guess that during the ordering procedure when I noticed the laptop go through the testing labs twice over the several weeks that I waited for it to ship that I should have been worried.
I phoned up Alienware on the issue and talked with a rep. Their tech support was ok but the tech didnt seem to understand the issue. I remounted the heatsink setup with the problems were less. Not gone, but less.
I put up with the issue for a while.. artifacting in games, the occasional blackscreen shutdown, then phoned again when the issues started getting a bit more serious. I mentioned reseating the heatsink and making sure contact was well, ran the gamut on dirty heatsinks blocked by dust, hair, etc... and then also mentioned i'd changed the CPU.. oops.
Apparently changing the CPU voids your warranty :(
Anyways, several weeks later and without warranty the problem began to affect 2D use so I went to work and installed a vf700-cu.... to no effect, the damage had been done and my X1800 mobility is now pretty much useless. Well, its stable in 2D again actually..
So, lets analyze the laptop for fun..
Pros:
Decent performance for price
Chassis is sturdy enough for general use and light/small enough that most cant complain unless they're just whiners.
Mid:
Case
Bling overdone a bit..
Cons:
Cant turn off bingy lights resulting in wasted battery power
Poor keyboard design
Poor heatsink design
Poor speakers/subwoofer, poor audio quality
Poor LCD (gets burn-in, HORRIBLE backlight bleed)
Poor lifecycle (will not last very long)
Poor BIOS
Now to break each of those down....
Pros -
When it works, its fast enough.. and you wont break it that easily. That was short.
Mid -
Case is supposed to mimic a high tech alien spaceship/stainless steel/aluminum whatever.. yeah, sure. Bling is a shrug, some like it and some dont. I prefer function over form, but if you make something so ugly you dont want to use it, it defeats the function.
Cons -
Oh boy, that list is a doozy :(
The blingy lights dont turn off and this wastes battery power. Thats pretty self explanetory.
They keyboard isnt very durable. I have had a few keys get stuck and was only able to repair them by wiggling them side to side for about 20 minutes each. They work again, but thats not something I should have to do. Some of them seem to be losing sensitivity as well (I blame all typo's in this on that) and the pain/sticker/applique or whatever is used on each key to show its corresponding letter or nuber is wearing off on quite a few. The plastic under them is even wearing away so you can see through they keyboard and i'll not even get into key placement or SIZE of some of them... overall really shows lack of quality control.
The heatsink just cant handle the load of the CPU and GPU at the same time, let alone the CPU when its pushed to full potential. I used Intel Thermal Analysis Tool ("TAT") before doing the GPU mod and after and before would result in temperatures exceeding 110c (shutdown, 18-20c room ambient). After only resulted in temperatures approaching 80c (approx 25c room ambient) while during normal use temps were only 70-80c loaded before (15-25c ambient) and 58-62c loaded (23-28c ambient) respectively (premodded GPU, after GPU mod). The fact there is only a single heatpipe in stock configuration for each the CPU and the GPU doesnt help anything. Lack of quality control again..
Speakers? They work.. and a tiny "subwoofer" which they didnt even bother to attempt a ported or bandpass enclosure with. I cant rag on them hard I guess, but given the room left over a better job could have been done, but that requires effort. It also seems there is EMI (electromagnetic interference) being generated which is causing crackles in the audio. With my Sony MDR-CD380 or Plantronics Audio .90 headphones attached to the audio output I can hear them... if I use my Sony 1130 Solid State amp between then it gets cleaned up quite nicely (its not perfect still, but very acceptable). No i'm not a Sony fanboy ;)
The LCD gets burn in. Really. Its the first LCD i've ever seen it on. Rediculous, no? Ok, maybe i'm ragging on it.. but thats a quality control issue. Oh, and the backlight bleeds like it has been gouged in an artery.
There are P71/P72 complaints popping up all around.. M5500, 5700, 5750, 5790 are all pretty much the same chassis. There are a few Fujitsu models based on the Uniwill P71/P72 as well. A quick poke on google and notebookreview.com reveals a few for starters. Short lifecycle. My old Compaq Presario with an XP-2400 Mobile in it I gave to a friend for college is still working more reliably than this thing. Quality control...
And last but not least.. the BIOS is quite barren. Want to use 3rd party ram? Better hope it works perfect at stock settings, you cant change any timings/latencies/straps/etc in the bios... if you can even get to it. I had to swap my ram around in the slots to get the laptop to POST with the 2x1gb initially.
Conclusion
So, where does that leave us? I dont know about you, but i'm questioning the quality control of Alienware and have pretty much lost any inkling of respect. The tech support I have to score decent.. they were polite and tried to help, but could only do so much really. Of course it is almso my fault. I should have read on Alienware a bit more because there are some users out there that were similarly dissatisfied. A decent Clevo would have done me buch better... or anything.
My original rating which you guys didnt see was -5 out of 10.
This time around i'm going with -8/10
Rating system:
-10: Would not wish this uppon my worst enemy. Ok, maybe..
0: Average, consumer trash.
+10: Lusters even the most jaded users.
Anyone happen to have a "dead" P72 chassis based heatsink around? And an MXM Type 3 GPU.. preferrably something low heat....? :/
edit - forgot pic, here's with the VF700-Cu mounted.