A Year with Windows

AlienwareAbout a year ago, we bought four Alienware personal computers at Behavior. Alienware is widely acknowledged as the manufacturer of some of the best Windows-based personal computers on the market, and yet, as of yesterday, all four have had serious problems, and one of them has even broken down on two separate occasions. They all suffered the same problem — poor cooling requiring a fan replacement — and, at various times, each of my colleagues has been stopped cold during the course of several work days owing to this defect. It’s been a complete pain the butt, though less so for me, because I had opted instead to buy a much-less sexy Hewlett Packard earlier in the year. That one, however, has stopped running Microsoft Outlook reliably, and is such a mess of Windows patches, viruses, spyware and generally misbehaving software that I can barely use it anymore. Next week I’ll probably have to completely erase it and reinstall Windows, and everything else, from scratch.

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2 Comments

  2. Richard Law

    Ah…so when does that cost of ownership of a PeeeCeee actually come in lower than buying a Mac? I think it’s only lower the first week you own the box…then each day, week, and month afterwards the cost of ownship increases exponentially. So actually the risk of getting hosed with an equipment failure or needing to reinstall the OS is just around the corner…the question remains as to how long you can avoid these pitfalls. I really liked my Cisco-issued IBM ThinkPad T22 for the first 15 months, then the ownership experience declined dramatically. I reimaged the system and it was never the same. I avoid using that laptop like the plague now, and rely on my Titanium PowerBook for day to day work and life computing tasks. Granted, it’s not perfect either, but it’s really a joy to use and it’s reliable. It just works! — RL

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