Tobold's Blog
Thursday, May 03, 2007
 
I love Alienware technical customer service

Somebody buying a standard Dell computer is not necessarily an idiot. I should know, I already bought three, although you might not accept that as proof. :) But the range of computer expertise of Dell customers spans such a wide range that the Dell technical customer service has to *assume* that all callers are idiots. And as Dell needs to save money, and assumes that the people calling the technical service are idiots anyway, it is sufficient for them to man their call centers with people that only have a basic knowledge of computers. That makes calling Dell with a technical problem a pain, because sometimes you know more about the problem than the technician, and he *still* treats you like an idiot. "Is your computer connected to the power outlet, sir?".

Alienware, although owned by Dell, has a completely different type of customer. Their computers are way too expensive and powerful to be bought by laymen, most customers are gamers with quite a decent knowledge of computers. So Alienware assumes that people that call them are not idiots, and lets them talk with technicians that really know their stuff. And that makes talking to the Alienware technical customer service a *lot* more pleasant than talking to Dell.

My Alienware computer has a blue screen of death random crash problem. It was pretty bad at the start, crashing several times per day. I assumed that Vista was somehow involved with it, and as I was also otherwise unhappy with Vista, I formated the hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro instead. Still the PC crashed with a BSOD at least once a day, hard to say whether it was less than before. So I called Alienware, and first got the advice to open the computer, remove the SATA cable from the motherboard, and put it back into one of the other SATA connecters on the motherboard. That was already a lot more than a Dell customer representative would have possibly asked from a customer, opening up the computer. No problem for me, although I did have to cut one cable binder to do so, the Alienware machines run a tight ship in the interior. I'm not expert enough to know why that should help, but it did help. The computer isn't crashing that often any more.

Nevertheless it still crashed once in a while, not more than once a week, and of course I would have liked to get it to run perfectly. So yesterday I called the Alienware technical customer service again, and the technician helped me flash my BIOS to the newest version. He also helped me to create a Memtest bootable CD, in case the BIOS upgrade doesn't work, and the problem is somewhere with the memory. As I have 4 sticks of 1 GB each, and Windows XP (just like the 32-bit Vista) can only use less than 3 of it, we discussed how I could first test all the memory, and if that shows any errors remove one memory stick at a time to find the culprit, without even noticing the missing RAM. The technician was very friendly, very knowledgeable, and gave me advice adequate to my own level of competence with computers. Now I have the latest BIOS, too early to tell whether I'll never have BSODs again, but nevertheless something that is always good to have. And with BIOS flashing being one of the more dangerous operations, which can leave your computer dead if you do it wrong, I'd assume that Dell would have me send back my computer to do it, and not let me do it myself. I already ran Memtest all night, and the memory seems fine, no errors found after 10 hours, which is good to know.

So the Alienware computer might have a slight flaw, not sure if its fixed now. But the Alienware technical customer service is a pleasure to work with, very cooperative, and that alone makes me think that my next computer will be an Alienware again. Meanwhile my Dell desktop PC still has the problem that once in a while it doesn't boot when I turn it on, and I need to turn it off and on again to make it work. And Dell has been no help at all on that problem, except for offering to come and take the computer with them, leaving me for weeks without it, and sending it back with the hard drive reformated and the problem probably still not solved. The holding company might be the same, but I really prefer Alienware.
Comments:
This sounds *extremely* familier...very much like a fault my alienware laptop developed after I tested Vista on it.

I went through all the tests and still couldnt resolve or find the problem (then I went through them a second time as alienware support asked me to...but ho hum...)

I was on the verge of sending my HDD back to them, and decided to wipe it all out and blank the disk before doing so. In total I think I deleted the partition and recreated it, along with formatting and reformatting it, approximately six or seven times. Doing this actually seems to have resolved the problem. Don't ask me why or how, but it has. The only thing I can think of is that something in the file system was screwed up and hadn't been corrected by the 3x windows xp installs I had tried since installing Vista...

Anyway, just thought I would share the info that helped me. Give it a go before flashing your bios!
 
A number of NVidia drivers are having BSOD problems. You might want to upgrade if you have an NVidia card. They've been releasing new drivers every other week lately.
 
I was thinking of getting an Alienware machine last year but still ended up with a Dell because it was a little less expensive. I do agree about their lousy customer service. Since you have owned both machines, would you say Alienware is more reliable of the two?
 
This is like saying that your dentist accidently pulled the wrong tooth, but at least it didn't hurt while they did it )

Let's bottom line it. Would you still buy a Dell if you had a do over?
 
I'm buying PC's for over 20 years, and never had one which *didn't* have any problems. So technical customer service is important. I found pre-built computers to be generally more stable than self-built ones. So next computer will be an Alienware again.

Wouldn't say that the Alienware machine is more reliable than the Dell one, probably pretty similar in that respect.
 
It's a shame that you've found pre-built to be more reliable. With proper research and good parts selection, a self-built computer will give you years of trouble-free operation.

I still have a 2.4c overclocked to 3.2GHz with a 1066FSB and it not only was cheap, but it smokes anything single-core up to about 3.5GHz. It's all about parts selection and proper cooling for computer longevity.
 
Alienware is a great company. Sure their products are more expensive, but they're built for gamers :)

Your problem with the dell sounds like it could be a hard drive problem. If it boots past post and then hangs while trying to load windows, that is. You could try a /fixboot or recreate the boot sector for the drive but as this is a "once in a while" problem, I'd say it's probably more along the lines of a hard drive going bad. You can try swapping connectors, wether it's IDE or SATA with another on the motherboard and try switching cables just to be sure. But I'd recommend backing up anything you don't want to lose :)
 
It's awesome how bad their case design is. Do people really think that's cool?

Anyway, the hardware is good, nice to hear their support is, too.
 
Hi all!

It's nice to hear some nice feedback once in a while, as always everything that we do good is just forgotten but everything that we do wrong is very strongly emphasized.
Again thank you for the nice feedback.
 
Hi Tobold,

Thanks for your informative post. It sounds like Alienware is much preferable to Dell in customer service, but I'd still prefer to have a computer that just works. :) In general I've had pretty good luck with home-built machines, as long as I don't overclock them.
 
Does some rep from alienware read your blog? Thats lmao...

Anyways, I've always built my own machines. The first 5 or so computers I had all crapped out on me very quickly. I blame it on the hardware back then, coupled with the fact that I'd always push my system with graphics and games. My last two machines have ran flawlessly for years. Right now I have a 4800+, 2gig ram, 7900gtx 512, 500gb hd. I spent probably a little over $1000 on the whole system. Its not state-of-the-art, but runs todays games no problem. I always buy just under the current top of the line computer to save a ton. I run vista on my machine and the only problems I've ever had with it is that WoW has crashed two times on me.

I've very much a build it yourself advocate. Its cheeper, I find it fun, it lets you customize your machine perfectly. What sucks is that there is no technical support to call, but most technical support sucks anyways, and the internet is great resource provided you can still get on the internet.
 
For myself, it all comes down to the available funds for a new machine. I would love to go buy a top of the line computer from alienware, but like a lot of people I am forced to find cheaper alternatives. My latest post discusses this subject a bit. Cheers!
 
After one of my friends filled my head with horror stories about building my own comp, I decided to tell him to cram it and built my own anyway. I couldn't be happier. It may have taken a little longer to assemble everything, but my new computer has been running like a dream for 3 months now. The only problem that I had was when my motherboard refused to recognize the driver disc that was sent with it. Easily fixed by downloading the drivers directly from the Intel site.

I'd be pissed off if I were you Tobold. You paid 3000 USD for a computer that isn't functioning properly? Thats rough man.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
Newer›  ‹Older

  Powered by Blogger   Free Page Rank Tool