That I've yet to find any maker do well on issues like this one. At the office we use an exchange system where the employee brings in the cranky laptop and if the IT staffer can't correct it then it's swapped and then the usual repair arrangements are made.
In business you know not to rely on just one thing. Backup systems are key and those new to this area seem to explode when these problems happen. The newer folk really expect 1 day service. Reality shows us this is never quite true.
On top of that we have software app or GAME problems. One poor soul was crashing their Alienware and wanted to prove to me that it was a Alienware bug by showing it working on another model. A little research had me change a setting and no more crashes.
-> So what does that tell us about this industry and how we need to protect our business needs?
Bob
I have an Alienware M17x R2. I have a next business day warranty included in my computer package.
I called customer support on the 12th Jan to tell them my graphics card kept crashing and issuing a blue screen to my computer. This is an issue that has happened at least 10 times in the past, and the graphics card has always been replaced to just go on and die again. Each time this happens the tech asks me to reformat my computer, which takes two hours to do and about eight hours to transfer all of my files onto a removable drive.
This time, after I reformatted my computer for the nth time, the tech team told me the engineer would contact me the next day to arrange an appointment. I waited until the 14th of Jan and no one had called. I called Dell again and asked them to book the engineer. Nothing. It wasn't until the week of the 20th that an engineer was booked to come to my house finally. I took the day off of work to ensure I could be home when he arrived, which was supposed to be between 12-3pm. At 3PM, I had heard nothing, so I called the Engineer to find out his status. His reply shocked me, "Dell sent the wrong parts, we are not coming today". Great. I call Dell up once again (about the sixth time now about this issue), who tell me they will arrange for someone to come after my working hours so that this doesn't happen again. A guy comes to my house on the 21st of Jan 3 hours earlier than they had stated (thankfully my housemate was home) and starts replacing parts to my computer. 3 hours later he comes out and tells my housemate that the computer will no longer switch on and that he will have to take the computer back to his office.
It is now the 18th of February. I have not had a computer for over 22 days. I have repeatedly called Dell, who can only say, "Sorry for the inconvenience". I have tried complaining via their customer service team, who took 3 weeks to call me to say the same thing. I have spoken to their Twitter support, who tell me because my computer is in Asia, they cannot help me.
This is shocking for a computer that is supposed to be worth over $20,000 HKD. If anyone is even contemplating buying an Alienware I would advise you heavily against it: the amount of time I have spent on the phone to the team is nearing the 100 hour mark in the last 2 years. The number of times an engineer has come out to replace parts for my computer cannot even be counted by the fingers on my two hands. It is disgusting, shocking, disrespectful and utterly outrageous that a company can get away with such ludicrous behaviour.
Save yourself the hassle and DO NOT BUY DELL OR ALIENWARE.

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