SawkenDotCom said:
You are putting a lot of money into buying their name brand. You could probably get a comparable rig from Dell for cheaper. I would hit up Dell.com and compare first.
I have heard horrible things about their customer support and that the overall quality has been slipping.
I have an Alienware rig back home (P4 2.4Ghz, 512MB RAM) and a brand-new Dell with me here at college (P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM), and the Alienware, for the most part, works better for recording purposes. I can run lots of tracks with effects on my AW, no problem, while my Dell gets bogged down after just a few tracks with FX.
The big difference, as far as I can tell, is that I made the mistake of not wiping my Dell HDD clean before installing everything. When Alienware sends you a rig, they send it free of excess bloat. When Dell sends you a rig, there is a TON of crap pre-loaded on your system that bogs it down. So if you go the Dell direction, do yourself a favor and wipe it clean before you do anything else.
I don't have anything bad to say about my Alienware rig, though, other than it set me back a nice chunk of change, and that the tower is BIG and LOUD. Seriously, it's like having a 747 in your room. But, they have new towers now which are probably quieter and you mentioned you were getting acoustic treatment for it anyway.
AW tech support isn't great, but neither is Dell's. But then again, I've had a lot less go wrong with my AW.
As punkin said, check out Falcon NW for comparison -- I've heard a lot of good things about them (though I don't have any personal experience with the company) ... or you could save a few bucks and build your own.
