Which laptop should I get?

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Alienware is the official PC of Rush. That's well more than good enough for me.

For myself, the only brands I bother checking out anymore are Alienware and Apple.

The it's-cheaper-self-built routine is largely untrue and may never have been very true in the first place. Large companies like Dell leverage economies of scale to deliver pre-built machines to you for basically the same price you'd pay assembling the same system yourself.

I guess if you go the janky white-box no-warranty nightmare then you could save 100 bucks on the cost of an entire machine. Not worth it, in my opinion.

Apple and especially Alienware have huge mark ups on their machines. I could buy from pretty much anyone besides Alienware to get a better system for the same price.

It is often cheaper to self build as well. While it is very hard to match a lower end tier one machine on price, it is easier to match midrange, and you can *always* beat a manufacturer's price on a high-end system. The higher end you get, the more the manufacturers mark up their products.
 
The same economies of scale that allows big computer companies to be competitive naturally causes the products to be at the razor edge of reliability
In addition to being untrue, this statement is illogical enough that it makes me question your comprehension of my original claim. I can pop open an Alienware and see the exact same parts I would have bought from Newegg separately anyway. They're not magically unreliable in the factory-built machine just because you claim it's cheaper that way.
Apple and especially Alienware have huge mark ups on their machines. I could buy from pretty much anyone besides Alienware to get a better system for the same price.
Also untrue. Apple's machines are very competitive with equivalent products from consumer darlings like Dell. Alienware's machines are also competitively priced. They're expensive because they have the newest and best parts, and sometimes unique engineering that only Alienware provides. If you price an equivalent machine with the same performance and features from anyone else, it will fall very closely in price. So close as to be a negligible concern. Alienware is an excellent company to purchase from, their products are A-list and their service is entirely painless to deal with. I know this from personal experience. How many Alienware PCs have you bought in the last couple years?
It is often cheaper to self build as well.
This is a fallacy. An Alienware, or any pre-built computer, really, is never going to cost appreciably more than a home-built is going to run you.

Many more people buy whole retail machines than buy individual parts. This means the manufacturers buy more individual parts than retail consumers. This means the manufacturers can purchase these parts at a lower per-unit cost than the consumer. The end-result is that the cost advantage of not paying for somebody's corporate overhead when building your own evaporates as the premiums you pay per-unit - that manufacturers do not - pile up.

I know this because I have built my own and I have bought pre-builts, and I have priced them against each other and the differences are inconsequential, especially at the high end where my personal home-brew machines have run very close to 3000 dollars.

The cost of my brother's Aurora that he bought in 2005 was within 20 dollars of an identical machine made from parts. I know this because I reccommended he buy the Alienware after I checked to see how much I could build the same machine for.

There are many good reasons to want to build your own. Price is not one.
 
In addition to being untrue, this statement is illogical enough that it makes me question your comprehension of my original claim. I can pop open an Alienware and see the exact same parts I would have bought from Newegg separately anyway.

Please reread my post.

The parts, by themselves in isolation, aren't the problem. It's the overall design and combination of parts which stresses the system and causes them to have a lower MTBF.

When talking about hundreds of thousands of units, it's cheaper for the big system builder to go through the warranty procedure and replace any system that has failed within the warranty period, than to design the system so that it has better engineering tolerances but more expensive to build.

Case in point is my previous example of an IBM desktop, with marginal power supplies and high thermal load. These can be confirmed and measured if you so wish.
 
IBM manufactured a lot of their own components, though -- as anyone who remembers suffering through the MWave modemsoundcardetc. remembers.
 
Please reread my post.
No, fuck you you arrogant, Freespace-avatar-having, reading-impaired dick, you go read mine again. I understood you perfectly, and what I said, and what is true and can never be disputed is that statements like this:
The parts, by themselves in isolation, aren't the problem. It's the overall design and combination of parts which stresses the system and causes them to have a lower MTBF.
are entirely made the fuck up by you to justify an irrational point of view.
When talking about hundreds of thousands of units, it's cheaper for the big system builder to go through the warranty procedure and replace any system that has failed within the warranty period, than to design the system so that it has better engineering tolerances but more expensive to build.
The claim that it may be cheaper to replace parts under warranty than design fail-proof parts does not make those parts more likely to fail, rendering your argument stupid. Furthermore; Individual PC components, which are rarely manufactured by PC builders like Dell, are designed around standards which ensure that your cockeyed notion of exceeding "engineering tolerances" does not occur. Assembling a computer isn't some kind of black art that only epic superusers like you and me know how to do.

And now for the fucking fatality: You yourself bring up manufacturer warranties, which homebuilt systems do not have. At most you get 90 days of replacement coverage on bad parts if you buy the retail-boxed ones, and absolutely none if you go white-box. The fact that builders like Dell offer some kind of real warranty and support erases you completely.

Troll somewhere else you worthless sack of shit.
 
Clam down, you make yourself sound really stupid when you go insane like that.

I'm tired now, but I'll refute your claims tommorow, k?

(User was banned for this post)
 
No, fuck you you arrogant, Freespace-avatar-having, reading-impaired dick, you go read mine again.
Oh, wow, you would call somebody an arrogant dick?

If you have anything to say, keep it civil - otherwise, I'll just start deleting your posts.
 
I'm tired now, but I'll refute your claims tommorow, k?

Why would you even post this? Haven't we banned you enough times to teach you how to stop being stupid *a little*?

If you have anything to say, keep it civil - otherwise, I'll just start deleting your posts.

No, Frosty is absolutely right. The guy has a Freespace avatar, he's clearly trolling to some extent and doesn't deserve the same respect you'd give an intelligent person.
 
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