The ordering experience between HP and DELL for the most part was the same. They both try to sell you everything and anything in addition to PC you are building. Their extended warranty costs are about the same. It was also not surprising that Alienware offered higher end performance options: SLI for 1GB nVidia cards or Crossfire for ATI cards (they also gave the option of which card you wanted), raid 0, up two 8 gig of memory. While the HP model I bought was in the "Entertainment" category, I don't think it is in the same league as Alienware.
I ordered the HP before the release of Windows 7 and I ordered the Alienware after. The Alienware is coming factory loaded with Windows 7. HP had an upgrade program, which I thought would be electronic…ie once Win 7 was released I could go to a site and download my upgrade CD. This was not the case, instead they are mailing me a disk with was coming in like 6-8 weeks.
The biggest difference, I saw in the order process is that HP charged my credit card the instant I placed the order. It seems Dell doesn't charge until the order ships. Considering both delayed my order, I prefer the latter.
Since the beginning of October, Ive been trying to get KT a new laptop. As of that date, her HP Dv9000 series laptop suffered another video card failure most likely do to the fault chips provided by NVIDIA. NVIDIA paid a heafty settlement to HP over the problem, but I guess that isn't passed on to all the customers who are affected. This laptop has the GO 7000 card in it. You can see more here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/31/figuring-out-which-nvidia-gpus-are-defective-its-a-lot/.
It's now a month and a half later and I still don't have a new laptop for KT yet. I did have an HP HDX 18 for a few weeks, but laptop also had issues not that different than the faulty dv9000. I've decided to break down the experience into a few parts to illustrate how poorly the HP and DELL treat their "valued customers."
Because this laptop was not for me, it was necessary for me (unlike HP or DELL) to try to meet the needs of my customer (KT5K) as best I could. The primary need she had was that she wanted a stylish PC that did not look like an every day business laptop. My primary need was to get her a high performance system that would allow her to game and work. Ideally, I did not want to purchase another HP laptop. Especially seeing as the current HP laptop she has is now unusable, there are many many threads online with people with the same series of laptop that have the same problem, and that American Express and NOT HP took care of me the first time the dv9000 failed for the same issue (1 year and 1 month after purchase…which put it exactly 1 month out of warranty.)
After much deliberation, I decided to order an HP as it seemed to meet both of our goals pretty well. Here are the specs on that rig:
Order Date: 04-OCT-2009
HP HDX18t Premium Series customizable Notebook PC
Estimated build date: October 12, 2009
Estimated Time between order and ship: 8 Days (6 weekdays)
Actual Ship Date: 15-OCT-2009
Actual Delivery Date: 22-OCT-2009
Total Wait Time: 18 Days (14 weekdays)
Cost: ~$2200
After that laptop failed, which I'll explain in a later part. I decided to replace it with an Alienware from Dell. The specs for that rig are here:
Order Date: 25-OCT-2009
1 224-5965 Silver Metallic
1 317-0820 Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
1 317-0859 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 2048MB
1 320-8140 17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X
1 320-0999 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (NB10E-GT1)
1 341-0009 320GB (160GB x 2) 7,200RPM (xMB Cache) – RAID 0
1 330-3924 Name Plate Engraving
1 421-0721 Terra Green
1 421-1398 Genuine Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit, English
1 421-0371 Avatar 2
1 421-0389 Window Style, DFT
1 410-0173 ADOBE ACROBAT READER – Eng
1 313-8977 8X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive,QuickSilver
1 430-3558 Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n 2×2 MIMO
1 421-0405 Automatic Updates ON
1 421-0398 Power Plan, BAL
1 421-0399 Time Zone, CENTRAL
1 410-0181 Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007-Eng, QS
1 994-7017 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus At-Home Service, Initial Year
1 994-3730 Warranty Support,Initial Year
1 421-1719 Soft Contracts,Consumer Complete Care,Alienware
1 421-1724 Soft Contracts,Dell In Home,Alienware
1 950-3339 3 Year Limited Warranty
1 993-8522 Next Business Day In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis , 2 Year Extended
1 993-8552 CompleteCare Accidental DamageProtection, Inspiron Desktop, 3 Year
1 994-3660 Next Business Day In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis , Initial Year
1 994-6858 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus At-Home Service, Extended Year(s)
1 993-8582 Warranty Support,2 Year Extended
1 330-5087 RESPAWN DVD
1 421-0988 World of Warcraft Factory Install
1 421-0381 RSS Feeds,AW
1 421-0393 Wallpapers, C02W
1 430-0628 Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
1 330-5090 Thank You for Purchasing AlienWare
Estimated Ship Date: 09-NOV-2009
Estimated Time between order and ship: 15 Days ( 11 weekdays)
Actual Ship Date: TBD (now promised delivery by 20-NOV-2009)
Actual Delivery Date: TBD (now promised delivery by 20-NOV-2009)
Cost: ~$3000
