"I preodered one first RockDirect Xtreme CTX laptops on the day it was announced in June 2006 so I got the one of the first one in July. I was considering the Dell XPS M1710, as well as alienware offerings. I choose Rock because I heard good things about there customer service.

Unfortunately the first model had teething problems and the screen had a minor flicker. I rang rock and they had it picked up, no questions asked and base unit placement and shipped back in about 5 days. Again bad luck, this it still didn't work but took longer for the flicker to occur so rock could not have been picked up the problem in test.

By this time they had properly diagnosed the problem to be a version of the power inverter board firmware, and again in a week had replaced the base.

Still bad luck the video occasionally had ripple patterns in the pixels. The web forum said this can occur with the if the Nvidia video RAM was not correctly in place.

No problems rock this time replaced the entire laptop with a brand new laptop. Upgraded my to an Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz from the Intel Core 2 Duo

T2700 2.33GHz, and to the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 Go GTX 512MB from the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Go GTX 512MB, ALL for FREE. Because it was the third time in the

shop. They wouldn't even let me pay the upgrade costs which I thought I should have paid becuase I was going to upgrade anyway the the problem resolution to

the video ram was simple.

In Summary Rockdirect customer service is amazing. They are fast on the phone whith people who know their stuff, they fix problem quickly and are incredibly fair. Its a shame I had so much bad luck, but the way they reacted proves that my situation must be uncommon. I have not ha a problem since.

Why anybody in the UK would consider a Dell XPS M1710 compared to a RockDirect Xtreme CTX Pro and take their chances with Dell Hell is beyond me. If I had this problem with a Dell, I'd probably still be waiting on hold, waiting for a fix, ignored or in court."