mccahon

That is strange, I have not had sound vanishing issues. I have had an issue where the speakers ring very loud and will not mute, forcing me to hold power until the Laptop shuts off. It sucks because this seems to have damaged my speakers. It was not from feedback or anything either, the first occurrence was when spotting a witch in Left 4 Dead 2.

I had the same luck with my school pc. My macbook died 5 days after the warranty expired, but Apple still replaced it for free. My Alienware laptop however has been having issues and Dell just seems to not want to help(I am still on warranty for 3 more months). With a squaretrade warranty I was able to get my other Windows pc replaced easily with no hassle. If you feel the deal you are getting on the manufacturers warranty is good then just stick with it. I always go with a manufacturers warranty at the least due to my terrible luck with electronics lately. I am very careful however so I never buy the accidental coverage, just the failure coverage.

People seem to hate Alienware, and personally I have no idea why. I would say go with a new AW laptop. It has Haswell and is very nice from what I have heard. I have the M14x R2 and have seen very few issues myself. The laptops are always good build quality and I love the ability to customize the lights. Of course that is not a necessary feature, but the speed and graphics ability is great for a laptop of their price.

That is strange, you should contact support. Not sure how one would fix that, if your warranty is out you may just have to replace the fan yourself.

Any time I tried BF3/4 I had some pretty bad FPS along with extreme heating of my CPU. I tend to stay away from them now. Wish they could be better optimized.

Whoa that is high, make sure your fan port is not covered, and limit your CPU to 90% in battery options. I am sure there are better ways of managing, but that is what I do.

Personally I did not like the R1, the R2 has given me issues(throttling and heat), but overall has been a nice machine. I wish I had held out for the new M14...