tyler811 said:
You dont buy DX10 it will be available for download soon. The price of Vista will not go down
Yes, you are right it's a d/l for DX10, not a card.
I have an ALX Aurora system from Alienware, the Athlon 64 FX-53 with three SATA Raptors (74.5 Gig)
two of the raptors are paired as RAID 0, a 400 Gig SATA Hitachi, two burners, a plextor and Lite-On, Sound Blaster Audigy ZS Platinum Pro with a 5.1 Klipsch Pro Media speakers and it's $8,000 of awesome.
There was a big downside to all of this though, I will try to explain the best I can. This should not happen to you because SP2 has been out already, but you never know.
When I received the unit Aug 29, 2004 I hooked it up on Sept 11, 2004 due to delays with my new desk.
When they sent me the unit it never functioned properly, I mean all the BSOD'S and all the versions of software were old and 3/4 of the drivers were so old the system didn't function properly. The reason I knew the drivers were old I ran a scan from Drivers HeadQuarters and printed it out. Another big problem was it had only 6 updates from SP1.
All this combined caused a lot of major problems, especially when all this hardware was hi-performance.
The hardware and system needed those updates to function properly that's why it was BSOD'S and driver conflicts, software conflicts, etc.
Finally it got to the point I needed to reinstall Windows. The Ghost Image they gave me didn't work. So the Tech told me we will have to do it from the Recovery Disk. Well, guess what! All theTechs tried continuously to get Windows installed and it never worked. You have to install the RAID drivers at the F6 prompt when installing Windows and the Promise FastTrack had to be installed manually which could never be done anyway. Each Tech was doing something different, that told me they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
To install Windows each time it had to be shipped as well as fix all the hardware issues.
Mean while they tied the system up for 8 months trying to do this and it literally beat the system to death. They put the system through such stress they ended up replacing every single thing in the box except the HD'S and the Sound Card.
Don't get me wrong there is just a few Techs there that know what they are doing, but it's a matter of hitting the lottery in order to get one.
During the last try to install Windows I needed to d/l a newer VIA Driver but I didn't have another computer to use so they said they would send it through the mail, I asked how long it would take and I was told 2 days. Guess what, it took two weeks for that floppy to get here. Then on top of it they kept sending the wrong driver, so they had to constantly resend the floppy. Well that went on for two and half months until they got it right.
Eventually none of this worked anyway and it was shipped. So I started learning imaging software so I could have some kind of back up.
The last episode I had with them was when the power supply failed and it was shipped on May 19, 2006 they had it for a month. Everytime the system was shipped back and forth it came back with more wrong with it, than when it left.
Now mind you, the previous time they had it from the last, I pointed out to them that the coolant needed to be filled. When you see any kind of an clear spot on one of the tubes, it needs filled. But when I got it back I never noticed because there were so many things going on with this system I forgot all about it.
So that's what lead to the power supply failing. Like I said they had it for a month, I got it back and checked "My Computer" first thing to see if all the HD'S were there. Guess what, the other two HD'S were not there. I looked in device manager and the driver was uninstalled. I was pissed. I called them and asked what would a Promise FastTrack driver being uninstalled have to do with a new power supply being installed and they said "nothing" of course. So immediately I packed it back up and sent it back because we could never get that driver installed from my end.
I get it back after three weeks and fired the box up and still no Promise FastTrack driver and none of my storage HD'S. I was livid. It's like they never touched the system at all and shipped it back to me that way.
Once again, it went back and this time the driver was installed and the storage HD'S were there, but I guess they needed a burner when my system was there and they yanked mine and put in the one that didn't work back in mine and sent it back to me. I noticed this because they inverted the two different drives. The Plextor was now on the top instead of the bottom slot. So I tested each drive to which was working and the Plextor was the only one that was working. The other was dead.
I called them and they said to ship it back and I said "NO", you get a tech to come to my house and replace it because I don't trust anything you people do. You make way too many mistakes. They tied up from May 19, 2006 to July 29, 2006 on this last episode.
Also the door was broke in three different places after I got it back. It wasn't like that when it left. And of course they said ship it back and I said "forget it", you people could fix anything right if you tried.
I did not build a system at that time because I didn't have enough knowledge so that's why I bought the ALX. Now I do have the knowledge and I will never purchase another computer from a mainstream manufcaturer again.
I discovered a month a half ago when I had a Tech on the phone we tested both Recovery Disks that I had and neither one would copy the files, so they were useless. Earlier in this process they did work, so your guess is as good as mine why they seized to work. Even the Tech said "he didn't understand this". I asked for a new Recovery Disk and I was told "NO".
So four weeks ago I had to purchase a new XP Pro OS, thanks to them. It is the best thing I ever done though, because explorer would hang every single time on a restart or shutdown. They had the OS so screwed up it wasn't funny.
Since I re-installed Windows for the first time from scratch with this system I now realize the mistakes they made and why they couldn't get windows installed. Number one, you can't put the whole folder for the VIA Drivers on a floppy, the file is too big, you have to copy the the one specific driver to the floppy that you need in order to install windows, not the whole folder and that's what they were doing.
Then after the installation you install the rest.
Yes, despite that they had the system more than I have had it in the last two years I'm amazed by it.
They should have never sent the system out without all the updates it needed, they should have updated all the drivers and this would have never happened. They handled the situation very poorly. My system has been shipped 12 times.
I'm only pointing these things out so you are aware of it.
Like I said you should not have any of these problems if they load all the critical updates before you get it. The new OS I bought came with SP2 B. So I was able to install the Promise FastTrack after the windows installation with no problem.
I wish I had known about this place before I ordered from Alienware. I have talked to some folks that has made purchases from them and they said they Tech Support is excellent. If you need anything replaced it's overnighted to you so you don't have to wait a week or two and if you need a tech they will come out.
http://www.tastycomputers.com/
Good Luck to you what ever you choose.
