As with most so-called "boutique" manufacturers, this company is a RIP-OFF. They charge you a 50% (or greater) premium for shoddy tech support (Only available 9-5 mon-fri and I've often called to recieve nothing more than an answering machine that was FULL), crappy warranty coverage (they max out at 3 years and PCs must be shipped back to Voodoo HQ in Calgary, Canada at the owner's expense) and they offer NO incentives for returning customers on the grounds that doing so would "cheapen their brand".  
 
DO NOT buy from the company, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. They only care about their image and their ego. I feel like a fool and a sucker for wasting the kind of money I did on one of their machines.  
 
The offer nothing to justify their extreme price and fail in many areas where much cheaper companies succeed. Do yourself a favour and avoid Voodoo at all costs! Ironically, it will end up costing you a heck of a lot more if you don't.  
 
Summary: All style and no substance. Don't be seduced by their fancy webpage and glossy photos. While their PCs may look special on the outside, on the inside they are nothing remarkable and certainly not worth anywhere close to what they charge. That and the customer care is ABYSMAL. They will excuse everything on the grounds that they are a "boutique" company. Allow me to translate. Boutique = A Scam to mark up thier products and provide inferior support because they are too small and greedy to compete with the big manufacturers.  
 
If you wonder why they sell ANY machines whatsoever, remember what P.T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Don't be that sucker. Stay FAR FAR away from Voodoo PC.

Buying from VoodooPC has been a joy from beginning to end. I've never dealt with a company before that has been quite so concerned about making sure the customer was happy. From the initial calls from VoodooPC when I started looking at the machines, to notifcation when the completed system was undergoing testing, they kept in touch.  
 
I had been told by others to expect it to take anywhere from 30 - 60 days to receive my laptop. I received it in just over two weeks from the initial order date.  
 
From the packaging to the peripherals included, everything has been top notch, including the laptop! The paint job and tattoo on my Envy a:538 are amazing.  
 
My husband is looking at ordering one for himself when it's time to retire his Dell!  
 

Great service, great products. A bit pricey, but in the end it's all worth it!  
 
Forget Falcon Northwest, forget Alienware, forget Dell custom laptops. Voodoo is the way to go!

sent notebook for repairs..  
it was back in only 7 dayz..  
great help pergreat service

Are you kidding me!!! The quality of this product is amazing. I orderd their Envy 732 model in Bavaria Blue in mid Feb, 2006. I simply built it to the speks I desired on their simple to use website, then called Voodoo Headquarters where a polite gentleman by the name of Param created my invoice, took payment, and later e-mailed me a confirmation of my purchase.I anxiously awaited the arrival of my machine and was able to track it's build status on the Voodoo Webpage.When the machine passed the quality checks and was ready for shipment, Param personaly called me.33 days after my order, I recieved my Laptop.First Impressions: The quality of craftmanship shines through, literaly. The paint is beautiful and flawless. I use Carwax to keep it clean. The 1900 x 1200 LCD is stunning, the best I've ever seen with not a Dead Pixel in site. The keyboard and mousepad feel sturdy and definately not cheap. The 732 is much quieter than I thought it would be and doesn't heat up. The battery life is incredible with the option to have two installed at one time.The speed and style of this machine is breathtaking, all in a form that is very practical.Bottom Line: I am very impressed with this companies commitment to building quality products and even more dazzled that they treat their customers as family. I would go so far as to say that they have added a new customer for life to their books.If you are in the market for a high end pc that looks good and won't let you down, go with VoodooPC. If anyone has any further questions about my experience or opinions about the products Voodoo builds, e-mail me at Lukec72000@yahoo.com

Voodoo Envy u:709  
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU  
2GB RAM  
80GB HDD  
nVidia Geforce 7800GTX 256MB Video  
+ a whole lot of stuffs...  
 
Spending $5000+ for a laptop is quite hard to do, especially when there is a lot of alternatives. I did a lot of research to find reason to buy or not buy a boutique Laptop and the fact that there is not much written (that i could find) about VoodooPC made it more difficult. It was a hard decision to make but i decided to order my Laptop on Feb 9, 2006.  
 
The folks at Voodoo was very nice and knowledgeable. I was quite pleased and reassured of my decision. Quite anxious to receive it and hence i've joined the forum at their website to get some info on people who had the Voodoo systems. I found that the forums was quite fun and had a lot of folks ready to answer my questions to the best of their ability. I was also impressed by the fact that the CEO of the company also frequents the forums as well members of the company. This really reassured me even more.  
 
Originally, supposed to get my laptop in 30 days but at the time of order, my Cust Svce guy (Param) made me aware that they are quite busy and that it may take appx 20 days more.  
Well, one month and 20 days later, i finally receive my laptop. It is an absolute beauty! i love it and i love even more, my owning experience.  
 
Here's some categories i felt needed to mention:  
1) Paint Job:  
gorgeous, very nice, very personal... it grows on you.  
 
2) Size:  
well, i wanted/needed a big one, and so i ordered a Voodoo Envy u709 and this is big!  
 
3) Heat:  
i've researched and found that some of these Laptop with Desktop CPU has a high heat issue (the case of the P4 Alienware Laptop Systems I think... )  
this laptop runs cooler (to the touch) than my P4 Dell that i have.  
 
4) Noise:  
this is a 17" screen, a Desktop CPU, of course a lot of fans here to cool it... but again, to my surprise, the fans were not as loud as my DELL.  
its more of a lowly hum versus a high pitch whirl of my DELL.  
 
5) Performance:  
so far so good, played some games, did some work. (Corel Draw/Photoshop/Illustrator) no problems. i will keep an updated post on the forum in the VoodooPC. you can actually look up my review... my id is same.  
i will also post some benchmark scores later on this week.  
 
6) Screen & Keyboard  
the 17" screen is very clear, no issues with dead pixels on my laptop. the images are nice, the screen is quite bright and crisp...  
the keyboard is not "Clicky" sounding or loud.. it acually feels quite solid.  
 
i am sure there are other things need to be mentioned but i am no pro at reviewing computers... if you have any more questions, you can post on my threads at the VoodooPC and i will gladly reply. i also have some pictures there too.  
 
Conclusion:  
Ok, very important here... I knew ahead of time that i am going to get a very 'personal' laptop.  
i also knew that this is NOT the best bang for the buck deal.  
in fact, i am not buying a Civic or an Accord.... it is much like a BMW or any mid-luxury level dream cars...  
(i say not super luxury beause as someone pointed out to me, Ferraris actually increase in value with time...)  
But for me, it was hard to jump in and commit to an order but after receiving the product, review, taking it out for a spin, i found that i made the right choice.  
 
hope my review helped others who are fascinated by boutique brands.

I just received my Envy a538, and needless to say, I'm stunned. The computer is absolutely gorgeous. I've never seen anything quite like it. I can safely say that VoodooPC is unlike any other computer company out there. They truly are creating something special, something unique. Their computers are not boring standard fare, but rather personalized machines that are a reflection of the consumer him/herself. These guys don't joke around. They are great at what they do.  
 
A background on the process. I ordered the computer back on December 22nd, 2005. I spoke with Param, whose enthusiasm helped sell me on Voodoo. We started chatting on other things not related to the purchase, which I'd never experienced with other computer companies. Very personal guy. I had spoken with other small boutique companies, but Voodoo had a sense of personalism that made them stand out from the rest of the pack. Param always answered during the process, despite some email hick-ups. I have only a few minor issues. First off, the Build Status link on the website is rarely in line with what is actually happening. My advice for any future purchasers is to call Voodoo HQ. They'll answer your calls quickly and are far more accurate in their assessment on your PC's build. The second issue is that the advertised wait time of 1 month is rarely achieved, according to my experience as well as others on VoodooPC's message board. My computer came in on February 14th, which equates to a wait time of 53 days. But please...don't get caught up on these minor matters. Once you receive your Voodoo, you'll realize why you ordered one of the most cutting edge and personalized computers on the market.

I'm the 1st one to receive a nickel plated case omen, and I can't express in words how beautiful, amazing and gorgeous this computer is. It's not a computer at all; it's a work of art. Everyone who see's this thing of beauty is awe struck by it. I am entirely satisfied with it's stellar performance. I also am thoroughly satisfied with my entire experience with Voodoo. Lance helped me design my omen and made sure I was updated on its building and status at all times. He also made sure it was perfect before shipping it to me. I hope he gets a fat commission or a huge raise for all his hard work! Thank you Lance and Thank you Voodoo for building me my dream machine and making it totally worth every penny to have the pimpest computer and greatest service in the computer industry! If you demand the best like I do then Voodoo should be your one and only choice period ;) Scott Shropshire 5 time Voodoo customer

I received good follow-up and received our equipment in a very nice shipping box. The equipment is awesome.

Voodoo is the best company and has the best service in the world. I just purchased one awesome laptop u709, it is amazing! and I had some problems, the tech people tried their best to help, what can i say about this company?! BEST OF THE BEST! I am glad to be their customer!"

I really can't make a fair judgment on usably since I just received the computer, but so far so good. Voodoopc customer service from lance was top notch. He guided me in building the perfect machine for my needs. He even called to say my Hard Drive was on backorder and explained my options. After going with a smaller Hard Drive, my CC was credit the different in a matter of days. Also received a phone call saying that the computer was in final stages and after testing it will be shipped. Received an email from Voodoopc with PDF invoice and tracking number.

When I first called Voodoo I talked to Lance Davis. He is one of the sales reps there. He was really good from the start. I had a lot of questions and problems with my laptop but he solved everyone of them. He bent over backwards for me. When my laptop arrived it was in prime condition setting it up was a breeze. The best part about Voodoo is the people who work in it. I talked to Rahul Sood and he talked me through a few of my laptop decisions. The ability to talk to the president of the company does wonders for calming nerves. Although I recieved mine later than I would have expected it was because of my own indecisions. I would recommend Voodoo to everyone. These PC's are just awesome to say the least. Just so you guys know I ordered an u:703 but then changed it to an u:732. Hence the delay in getting my laptop. I am loving my laptop so far.

This review was modified by its author, ManofTroy, on 1/6/06 10:55 AM.

*Since the review below was posted the company president Mr Rahul Sood has been in constant contact with me and an agreement on a course of action i found wholly acceptable was reached, I thank him for all his help in bringing the matter swiftly to its conclusion*  
 
I ordered a Rage computer from Voodoopc, firstly my order went missing they had the credit card details and payment but not my pc specs then they messed up taking payment so all in all this wasted about a week, the pc arrived late anyway, it was shipped without anyone telling me, i called Canada from the UK three times to get the waybill number after i missed its collection as the UPS note was too faded to read, each time they promised to email it to me but they failed, a day later after the first attempt at delivery it arrived with scratches on the casing scratches on the anodising inside and the dvd rw drive door failed to shut flushly and after a few minutes a warning went off as the cpu fan had fallen off! I spent almost two weeks with Mr Trevor Kells of voodoopc trying to get it returned, eventually they did this and in fairness they paid shipping from the UK. The pc came back without the new recovery cd which i had to ask for and i am still having issues with the unit as it now is giving me a BSOD concerning hardware problems. The cas latency settings in the manual were not those set in the bios thus giving possible misleading benchmarks, the paperwork listed the drivers wrongly, it also listed the installed software wrongly as well, it said i had Nero i had Roxio it said i had McAfee antivirus i had AVG, and the bios version was listed as version 1008 it was then actually 1007 infact they listed the wrong motherboard in my speck sheet stating i had a A8N SLI Deluxe when in fact its a premium! The bios was also set up for SLI gfx cards when it only had one 7800 gtx fitted therefore effecting the bus speed which fluctuated between x4 or x8 not x16 as it should have been! Every time i have contacted Voodoopc they have been rude, ignored me or failed to acknowledge the huge list of problems. All in all this company charges alot of money for a product which in my case was badly made and which they had failed to input the most basic of settings correctly into the bios forcing me in the end to put right their mistakes. This is only my opinion of course but i am still trying to get a refund of nearly £3400 due to shoddy workmanship and failed customer service, I dont expect to have to strip my own pc to find its faults or to be told its your fault for buying from so far away let alone to be told by Trevor Kells to use a permanent marker pen to cover blemishes on it when it was just out the box, this whole situation is out of order.They use other manufacturers casings anyway so you could save yourself a lot of money and get better reliability knowing you can actually count the number of gfx cards you really have! And build the computer yourself! Voodoopc seem to believe they are the Rolls Royce of the pc manufacturing world but so far i have not seen any evidence of this just a list of shameful mistakes you would expect a first time builder to make,they are quick to take your money but slow to offer it back and short on customer relations. Quality over quantity should always be the case. Avoid Voodoopc like the plague.  
In reply to Voodoo the scratches were not as they described they were screwdriver marks in the anodising and i sent photographs to them to prove this since most of the marks were around areas that had screws! and was advised to use a permanent marker pen on a brand new £3000 pc! One of the thumb screws for the casing was missing as well, though they did in all fairness send me a few as replacements. The mark inside the pc on the red anodising which went through to the metal certainly was a screw driver mark as well. As to the BIOS setup for the graphics card there is an auto setting which lets the gfx bus speed operate at x16 for a single card and x8 for dual mode as the motherboard recognises what is installed so a customer would not have to alter anything at all, i consider x2 and x4 would effect performance as the speed varied on bootup and rarely remained at x8 every time. All emails have been replied to as you would expect when you are in dispute with a company.Once again Voodoo is passing the buck and is deflecting the blame away from themselves it appears, but this of course is only my opinion.

This review was modified by its author, Killhippie, on 1/12/06 2:19 AM.

I purchased an OMEN, formerly the F5 liquid cooled machine in December of 2004. A couple hours after starting the order process, Rahul Sood, the President and founder of the company, called me to confirm. That was kind of cool. I guess it gave me a little piece of mind.  
 
The computer arrived the first week of March 2005, kind of a long build time, but to be expected from a high end custom builder. The computer arrived with all necessary hardware, but not one single article for instructions on how to set it up (e.g., which video card slot out of four possible to attach the monitor). It required a call to tech support for someone like me who is a relatively inexperienced computer user. Tech support returned my call the next day and got me up and running. One thing about this call that was curious to me was that the tech guy was following a set of written troubleshooting instructions to solve my problem. This is the same thing you get at Dell, and quite surprising based on the technical expertise that Voodoo touts on their website. Regardless, the problem was solved.  
 
I must say the computer looked very nice: well built case, artistically wired, and custom tweaked decorations including cool lights. I was quite mesmerized by it.  
 
One issue that I had was the noise. Voodoo advertises the OMEN on their website as "silent". It is nothing of the kind. It is at least three times louder than the Dell 8250 I purchased 5 years ago. I was a little disappointed in the noise, but decided to accept it. But a warning to anyone looking for silent computing: this isn't what you are looking for, trust me.  
 
The computer ran well and I had no major problems until about August of 2005. I began to have bootup failures that occurred about once every couple of days. Shutting down with the power button and repowering would allow for startup after a couple tries. This problem became more frequent as time passed. I notified tech support and they passed it off as a BIOS problem. I didn't buy this because curiously, my liquid cooling pump had begun to make very loud gurgling noises which coincided with the frequent bootup failures. Eventually, I began to get errors telling me that the CPU fan was failing. This was strange because the CPU is cooled with liquid in this machine. There is no fan on the CPU. Soon after this, the liquid cooling pump showed no signs of life and the computer would no long startup.  
 
I contacted tech support at Voodoo. They told me that I needed to replace the liquid cooling pump myself and proceeded to ship out a new liquid cooling pump. Now, for someone with almost no technical computer experience, the thought of draining the liquid out of my computer and replacing the cooling pump was quite daunting. Therefore, I talked them into allowing me to ship the computer back and replace the liquid cooling pump with fans. Quite frankly, I no longer trusted the liquid cooling technology that they told me pre-purchase was completely reliable.  
 
So I recieved the computer back a week later. It came back to me without plastic covering, which I found troublesome considering the distance it's travelling. They just stuck foam pieces on the end and stuck it in the box. I put more effort into shipping it to them for service. Anyway, it arrived with a broken optical drive cover. In addition, one of the harddrives in my RAID array is failing. On top of it all, I still cannot start the computer reliably because I keep getting CPU fan failure, disk boot errors and RAID array failure errors which prevent startup. Folks, this is after shipping the machine back to them for service. Shouldn't it come in tip top shape?  
 
Guess what they told me when I contacted them this second time? They said that I could take care of those problems myself. They told me that it costs them too much money to have me keep shipping the computer back for service. They also indicated that shipping the computer is what probably caused these problems in the first place. They take no responsibility for anything. Everything is blamed on either shipping or the customer.  
 
I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau which got me nowhere. The BBB really did nothing for me.  
 
Long story short, I am stuck with a dead computer containing the most expensive computer hardware available. I paid $6000 plus for a machine that I can't even use. Voodoo shows no willingness to help me and frankly they don't seem to give a damn once they have your money.  
 
My advice is to run far and fast from Voodoo computers. You do not get what you pay for here. Far from it. From my experience Voodoo engages in false advertising (e.g.-"silent machine").  
Also, when something goes wrong, it seems that the problems fall on the shoulders of the customer. Not something you want to see from a company that claims to have stellar customer care. Don't believe their hype.

My initial rating - October 16, 2005 - Custom configuration process (laptop - Envy Mn:522) was easy and smooth. Pickup was efficient and clear. After sales tech support was awesome!  
 
This latest purchase (August 2006) was for a desktop/home PC. Their Hexx model. Ordering and delivery was excellent. Had to wait about 6 weeks for delivery but, they were not willing to compromise on the quality by rushing the testing and burn-in. This is very important for high-performance PCs. The sales consultant was extremely attentive, knowledgeable and helpful. All-in-all, it was excellent value.

This review was modified by its author, murch, on 10/22/06 5:58 PM.