As others have said, Alienware makes a fine machine, but they're very overpriced for what you get. As for desktops, it's much much cheaper to build your own or have someone do it for you. That option isn't really there for laptops, but WoW will work on a basic computer just fine. My friend has the really barebones Compaq laptop and plays WoW all the time.

For college and gaming, go for a higher-end regular laptop. A good processor, lots of RAM and a good independent graphics card will give you a rig that will be up-to-date for years with good gaming compatibility as a bonus.
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My daughter has one and loves it but my son does not want one. I hear they are good and I am personally considering one for my next laptop but right now my three year old dell is working fine. It is slowing up and lagging a bit so I need to bring it to a friend to clean it out. Thanks for the idea though I never thought to ask him.
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Good machine, astronomically overpriced.
A dell XPS can be had for far less, and it'll do a damn fine job with anything he throws at it.
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That is what we are leaning towards now. I have an Inspiron E1505 from 06 and it is still working well enough as I stated earlier but I hav eheard Dell's are not what they use to be...

That being said he will most likely end up with an XPS.
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I have had no reason to use the warranty so far. Tech support on the other hand... Of course, I have only myself to blame, for listening when they told me to reinstall my OS to fix a display issue. Turns out the issue was that my monitor cable was bad...
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One of the biggest issues my friends have encountered was after the warranties dropped, too much crap went wrong. Now I know this does happen from time to time, but three people with three separate pcs tells me something. Also two of them had issues with 3 months of purchasing.
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I built the rig I used before this one. The cost savings is really only there when you can recycle parts from previous rigs. Once you are replacing everything, which generally needs to happen after 2-3 years, things start adding up. I priced out the parts to build a box similar to the one I bought from Alienware at a cost savings of less than 10% of the total price. To me, that extra couple hundred bucks is just not worth the time and aggravation of building it, troubleshooting and RMAing at least one part off every PC, then rebuilding, installing the OS, drivers, etc.

WoW just needs a pc with a video card to be playable. The lag is most often a factor of all the addons that people run with their WoW.

Hmm, I think I only got the 1 year on mine and it's been about 18mo since I got it. No problems with the PC itself. BTW, missing you down in the Pumping Iron thread. Not seen you there in a while.
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Been a lil busy, nothing special lolz!
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