Looking for advice

Hi. So I currently have a Toshiba Qosmio X505 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 Q720 1.60Hz with 4GB of RAM with GeForce GTS 250M laptop. I have had this laptop for three years now until my son decided to help me and drop it damaging the USB ports and who knows what else. So I am now in the market for a new laptop. I have been looking at a Alienware M18x 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3820QM (8MB Cache, up to 3.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M - SLI® Enabled.

I will use this laptop for online gaming (allot), work and college. I think that I am really hard on laptops. I have done allot of research but I am looking to this forum for some input:

1) Will I get my money out of this laptop? i.e. will it last at least three years.
2) Are they any serious issues with Alienware besides the customer service issues that seem to be rampant on customer reviews?

Thanks in advance for your input.
Shawn

I have had very bad experiances with alienware and would not go anywhere near them. Failed video cards, harddrives, etc. The last one I worked on had 4 video cards fail in 6 months. They used to be a good laptop at one time, but ever since Dell purchased them, they quality has gone down hill fast.

Actually, it depends upon who you ask, but Alienware have a good reputation among users, in spite of Dell's poor showing.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400793,00.asp

There are also some 'boutique' vendors who make good (but pricey) 'gaming' laptops. One thing that Alienware and other 'gaming' laptop makers have going for them - for you in particular - is that their laptops do usually have a good balance between CPU and GPU power.
I'd say that if you like the look, feel, and specs of the Alienware, then go for it.
Baring that, you could look at some ASUS models, like:
http://ca.asus.com/en/Notebooks/Gami...specifications

NOTE: you would get more responses from people who actually game on a laptop by posting in the GWguru2 forums.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/...nical-support/

Agree with Quaker, but check out the high-end Samsungs. I have a 700G7A which is a thoroughly awesome laptop.

Thanks. I have posted also in the suggested forum.

I other thing to remember, Alienware does not make thier own laptops. They purchase stripped down laptops from other manufactures (used to be Clevo, not sure who it is now), rip them apart, add thier own additional hardware, slap on a new case then jack up the price. Asus and MSI makes thier laptops themselves, and also makes laptops for a lot of the other big companies. There are actually only a very small number of companies that do make thier own, Dell and Alienware are not one of them.
FYI, I have been gaming on an Asus laptop for the last 3 of years. Never had a problem with it, runs most games just fine, and it is by no means even close to the specs of thier new machines. To be honest, alienware laptops and towers are really about the name and the "cool" factor of all the pretty lights, etc. I would rather go for the best machine, and not the best looking or coolest machine any day.