I need a replacement for the laptop that I’ve just managed to knacker…

Does anyone on here have experience of Alienware – I was thinking of a refurbished 17 R3, possibly with a 4k screen from America to get the price down to a merely eye-watering level.

Or is there something else that would suit my needs:

Doesn’t need to be carried around that often
Ideally 4k screen
Good keyboard
Fast as a hungry cheetah

Macbook pro still ticks the boxes… install windows as your operating system if you prefer..

We’ve got 3 of them – all have been excellent.

Macbook pro still ticks the boxes… install windows as your operating system if you prefer..

Someone will be along shortly with a sensible suggestion.

What’s up with the old one?

One extra requirement:

No Macs

Aren’t Alienware usually game-focussed? Is that a priority or do you just need speed?

The focus would be speed and a good display over gaming. Though gaming would be nice to have,

I’ve not tried one but check out the Scan 3XS laptops

Dell DPS or dell precision could be an alternative. Up to 32gb ram, high def screen etc. Monitor dell outlet.

I’m hunting a dell precision and maxed out direct it is coming in at close to 2k! Hence looking on outlet store.

I’ve used Alienware gaming laptops for an event before.

1. They’re enormous and heavy. If you’re carrying one around all the time it’ll break your shoulder.

2. Might be isolated to the ones I worked on, but the driver support/installation was pretty poor. They were packed with the wrong discs in the boxes, and the website also directed me to the wrong drivers for the actual GPU in that model of laptop. It took about four hours work to find the right display drivers and update them. This is not typical of most PC manufacturers.

PC Specialist are worth a look – might not be the cheapest, but the developers I know who’ve bought from them have only had good things to say.

Was just going to mention of specialists too as I had forgotten about them

Yes Ive had one for work as it had the beefiest spec for the money. It’s about 4 years ago though. And yes it was heavy. V reliable though.

Something Thinkpady? I’m not 100% if they do 4k though.

I had a highend dell laptop with nothing but issues.. I’ve had a macbook pro thats wanted for nothing and has been a 14 hour a day workhorse 5 days a week for the past 2 years – its still as it was on day 1 with no annoying fan noises, no dodgy battery life and no random crashes… I’m not a fan of mac’s but I do like their operating system and their laptop hardware… shame they’ve made them unibody so not as easy to pop larger ssds and ram in but they are specced well enough off the shelf and for their reliability they are very much worth it in the portable world.

silly suggestion it was not…

microsoft surface’s are meant to be pretty well built and this is what I was thinking of to recommend a gaming laptop..

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro

I’d avoid dell like the plague

Incidentally is it worth having 4K on a laptop screen?

My primary monitor at work is 27 inch and that’s only a 2560×1440 pixel display.

My 8 year old 17″ laptop is 1920×1200.

Alexx – I am on my Nth Dell laptop, where N is more than several.

I’ve not had any major problems with them and one that I bought in 2002 is on a farm in the country living out its retirement doing light duties with my Uncle. Everyone has been in working condition when I gave it up – none have failed.

Which makes my cack-handed attempt to clean the fan on this one a bit painful. I now have an Inspiron 7000 which only boots if you take the keyboard out and disconnect the power switch cable, then quickly tap it into place. It won’t run if the cable stays connected for more than a second or so.

Something Thinkpaddy would be nice – I looked at the X1 Carbon, but having had a 17″ screen for some time, I’m not sure if going back to 14″ would be a step forward.

If you’re minted the Surface Book might be cool?

I’ve gone from 15.6″ to 12.5″ X series Thinkpad. I love it, lightweight, nimble and just works.

Me, family and friends have had quite a few dell laptops – no issues with any of them. All gotten from dell outlet, and mainly gone for the business class ones.

My work pc is a dell precision m6700.. it’s 3 years old and is bullet proof, it really has had a hard life of big 3D CAD work, with a lot of time spent in factories designing stuff on the hoof, and the ‘desk’ often consisting of a plastic storage tote and a piece of sheet metal. if i’m lucky. Highly recommend them.

Dell and Alienware are the same thing, ofc.

Bookmarking this, I’m after a speedy laptop which needs to run Linux,and the MBP seems a good option, though they’re dear even second hand. Dell xps 13 also in the running, chrome books eg Pixel probably don’t have enough ssd.

Dell and Alienware are the same thing, ofc.

This.

Also check

Gigabyte, Razor, Asus and MSI. Eurocom/Clevo probably make the *most* badass “laptops”, but my gods they’re massive. Plenty of SLI graphics options from them, lol.

My 8 year old 17″ laptop is 1920×1200.

Exactly.

4K, depending which 4K standard you mean, is around 4000 by 2160 pixels. That’s a lot of pixels to cram into a laptop size display.

Plus you sometimes get the issue of older apps that don’t scale to resolution properly so you end up with tiny text and buttons.

Bookmarking this, I’m after a speedy laptop which needs to run Linux

Thinkpads have great native Linux support.I have Win 10 on mine running vm workstation pro and it’s a treat.

sitting in front of an MSI now, with i7 and gtx970m graphics. nice keyboard ( windows key has been put out the way so you don’t end up triggering it when you’re playing ), boots in the blink of an eye, will run the latest doom on high settings quite happily.
next one up had 4k display for another 200 quid-ish?
think they do one with a full fat 1070 now, but might be wrong.
anyway it seemed best value for what was admittedly a daft spec for a laptop, but it sounds like you’re thinking along similar lines to me. 🙂

I wouldn’t bother with Chromebook for Linux. Most of them are pretty slow, that’s why they are so cheap. Everything is optimised with ChromeOS.

I wouldn’t bother with Chromebook for Linux. Most of them are pretty slow, that’s why they are so cheap. Everything is optimised with ChromeOS.

Even with a dedicated spin like Gallium? I run it on a couple of low end Chromebooks and haven’t noticed performance differences either way. Ubuntu I’d understand being slow.
Anyway, with maximum SSD of 32gb (even on the $1000 HP CB 13) that’s a non-starter.

Love the idea of the Dell XPS13 but not available in Spain and I need a Spanish keyboard.

Will check out some thinkpads cheers, Monkeychild (and soz for the hijack OP)

They run the OS fine, but you realise how low power they are when you try and do something slightly heavy like using say pixlr. The OP said he wanted a fast laptop so presumably he has some reasonably strenuous tasks in mind.

Anyway, with maximum SSD of 32gb

Acer used to do one with 320Gb hard drive in it – is that not around now?

Admittedly the most intensive thing I do with any regularity is pull a few hundred raw files off the camera. Currently using a pavilion i7 thing, which is perfect but is going to be living at work, so may just look for the new model of that. Can’t see that Acer on their site and Istr that chromebooks with lots of ssd went against the ethos of the OS which is why you don’t see them any more. Could be wrong though.

Transferring files is about the least intensive thing you can do.

It might be against the ethos of the OS but the reason most people seem tp give for not moving to ChromeOS is not being able to keep their photos on the device. Uploading tons of photos to the cloud requires good broadband.

well, I meant importing into a LR type program rather than simple transfer. It keeps my i7 busy for a while depending on the number of files.

Thanks everyone ( even those who mentioned Macs or Chromebooks 😉 ).

There were some very nice laptops suggested. And Chromebooks and Macs.

I’ve bought a manufacturer reconditioned Alienware 17 R3 from the US which, even with import duty, was a significant saving over anything from the UK with approaching a similar spec.

i7-6700HQ
16GB RAM
1TB + 256GB SSD
UHD 4K
GTX980M

$1500 + import duty

That’s about 1400 quid once the taxes are included. I’m surprised you couldn’t find a laptop in the UK for that money that fit your requirements.

^^ I am a bit surprised too but good luck with it, your money your choice.

Yes, hope you are happy with the funny keyboard 🙂

I’m used to using different keyboards everyday – both UK and Swiss German, compared to the latter, a US keyboard is no problem.

All in, buying refurbished from the US is a saving of about £500

Dell XPS 15 is about that price – slightly lower spec.
GTX960M and FHD not 4K with only a 512gb ssd. Plus only 15″ but good enough for me

Same chip and memory tho

Biggest annoyance of a US keyboard isn’t the few switched keys, it’s the different shaped enter key.