Alienware hardware? I don't think so! You are better off going with a Mac

As seen in my previous post, I don't think much of the Alienware Aurora m9700 (supposed) gaming laptop I purchased. As a matter of fact, I despise it. Here it is a year later and all I can say for it is that it has a pretty case with a cool looking alien head that has eyes that glow when it's turned on. Sad...

I can honestly say that this experience put me out so much that two things happened this year:

1. First, my wife was due for a new laptop (she was having some hardware issues with her out-of-warranty IBM ThinkPad). I was so fed-up with Alienware and Windows Vista that I absolutely refused to purchase a Windows system for her. Being the loving wife she is, she agreed to be the first person in our home to receive a MacBook.
   
2. Second, I finally made the decision to purchase a MacBook Pro...much to my wife's dismay. Now here's a system worth talking about.
   

Let's take a moment to break it down to the basics...

Graphical User Interface:
My wife's needs:
She has some basic needs that I had to be sure were met. I'm still running a little short on some of them. :) She needed the following capabilities:

• An office product that included a word processor and a spreadsheet application. This was easy since there are so many open source office packages out there these days. She has mentioned to me (at least a few times now) that she liked Microsoft Excel better than the OpenOffice equivalent but she's a trooper and has stuck with it...
• Internet access, of course. I downloaded and installed Mozilla Firefox although I really like Safari. It's just not as well supported in most cases. NOTE: This was for working from home as well as general email and fun. It turns out we're finding several banks and institutions out there are not currently supporting anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer so she is still needing to use one of the PCs periodically when trying to complete her work.
• A few simple games. Turns out Apple has a very easy to navigate website that is organized in a fashion that is intuitive enough for technology-challenged to find freeware games to download...
  

My Needs:
Since I have spent quite a few years working with Unix and Linux servers on the back-end of the products I help customers implement I initially thought I would spend most of my time in a terminal working with the command line. OK, to be honest, I do still spend quite a bit of time in a term session but I find the Mac OS-X Leopard to be fast, smooth and efficient for a GUI with all the extra wiz-bang features that make the interface pretty while not interfering with it's basic functionality. Apple has done a bang-up job.

Considering that I had not spent hands-on time with an Apple machine since the Apple 2e I thought I would have a lot of catching up and/or re-learning to do. As it turns out, switching to a Mac is only difficult if you let it be. Apple is right on top of helping out with the transition if you have always been a Windoze user. If you have worked on various OS platforms over the years it's a no-brainer to get going.

Don't try this on a Windows platform:
I basically needed the continued ability to run Windows, Linux and Unix (Solaris x86) for my job. VMware Fusion performs extremely well for this use and I've even put together several demos showing interaction between a virtual Windows XP, virtual RedHat Linux Enterprise Server, virtual Solaris 10 for x86, virtual Ubuntu 8.0.5 client and my local Mac OS-X 10.5.3 all interacting with the RedHat server acting as the back-end for my products and all the others (yes, all of them running at the same time...try that on a Windows box) running local clients without a hitch. As a matter of fact, the Windows XP image with 512 MB allocated was the slowest of the whole setup.

On top of all of that I was also running:

• an AT&T Network Client out of the Ubuntu image and connecting my Mac to that over a PPTP tunnel so I could piggy-back off AT&T to access my work network. (AT&T is still an incredibly lazy company and won't write a Mac version of it's VPN client). Yes, I'll bash on any organization that flat-out tells its single largest paying customer (for this particular product at least...) that it refuses to create a version for it's (rapidly growing...) Mac sub-culture.
  
• Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta
• SameTime 8.5 Beta, (although I ended up switching to Adium to reduce my overall headache dealing with SameTime configuration issues)
• Mozilla Firefox
• Lotus Symphony
• Apple iWorks (Pages and Numbers)
• Rational Team Concert (RTC) (local on all except Ubuntu and Solaris)
• Rational Web Platform (for CQWeb local on RedHat LES)
  
• Rational ClearCase (local on RedHat LES as the server)
• Rational ClearCase Remote Client (CCRC) (local on all except Ubuntu and Mac)
  
• Rational ClearCase Web (CCWeb) (local on RedHat LES for CCRC access)
• Rational Team Server (RTS) with the ClearCase Connectors (local on RedHat LES)
  
• DB2 Enterprise (running on the Solaris 10 image)
  
• Rational ClearQuest (local to all except Ubuntu and Mac)
• Some other applications I can't recall at the moment I'm sure...
  

All without what I would consider to be major performance issues.

Performance:
Apple comes in with a hands-down overall performance edge over any of the Windows XP/Vista/Server products. Not only is the interface much faster and more elegant than the Microsoft products the basic configuration of the MacBook (my wife's machine) comes with a 2GB DDR2 base RAM configuration and a 250 GB hard disk and a 256 MB Nvidia video card. Not too bad for the lower end machine.

Mine weighs in at a slightly heftier 4 GB RAM, 512 MB Nvidia video card, 200 GB 7,200 RPM drive and add on top of that the eSATA ExpressCard I purchased to plugin my two 160 GB 7,200 RPM external drives and I'm packing around 1/2 TB of disk space.

I should point out that most of that is full of VMware images, product ISO files and work documents and not nearly as much music, videos or games as you might think...unfortunately.

All that said, this system screams.

Configuration Issues:
Unfortunately, no matter how much I wish to be rid of the Microsoft platforms, there are just too many products that run on Windows. There are still three things I need to continue using Windows for:

1. Microsoft Project (yeah, I'm cringing when I say it as well...)
2. Microsoft Visio (There is a great equivalent for the Mac but I don't have a license for OmniGraffle Pro...yet)
3. Games...Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons Online, etc...only come on Windows. :(
   

For Project and Visio I could easily just run an VMware image and access those anytime I need them but for the games that becomes more problematic. VMware has made great strides in it's video drivers but still lacks full 3D support for DirectX 9c or 10. As most of us know, Windows is just about the best portable gaming platform out there for the high-end MMORPG type games. Yes, I admit, they have a claim to fame. I like gaming too much not to.

I should point out that I did attempt to get AoC running in a virtual image first though. Yes, I'm that much of a geek. When that didn't work I decided to put Apple's BootCamp to work. That was a serious diamond in the rough as far as the Mac is concerned. Once I got Windows XP SP3 installed and all of the drivers configured I was able to run AoC without issue. MUCH better than I could on that Alienware piece of crap.

In Closing:
I don't know if I got a lemon from Alienware or what but that system has been a serious thorn in my side since I wasted the $3,500+ on it. I should have taken the hit with the restocking fee back then but my pride and foolish stubbornness prevented me from admitting defeat. I have learned a serious lesson and now I own a Mac.

In the meantime I will just continue to provide some serious bad press for Alienware. I have already cost them business (at least 16 people to date that were ready to order from them before I caught their ear) and I know I will continue to do so. They should have just offered to fix the problem back when I originally asked... Now they won't even return my support emails and that's WITH the 3-year 24/7 support contract. Gotta love that.

In case you're not getting the rambling message:

DON'T BUY FROM ALIENWARE!!