Wow, I was away for the weekend and never expected such a series of responses. Let me give you a couple of the thoughts I had going through this process (some context if you will).
1) Every review of Alienware I've seen has been top-notch. A couple of awards here and there. More interestingly, when reading those reviews, it *appears* that they OC your system as they build it. I believe it was CNET's (gamecenter) review that mentioned what the actual clocking of components was upon arrival. They seem to be a "trusted" brand so I wasn't worried about getting a compaq-ed system. And if I really don't like it, I can return it within 30 days.
2) I thought the 300W PS may be on the low side considering the 1.2 Athlon + Ultra BUT the fact that they build it, test it, and run it for a while before shipping it to me means that if this is a problem they will find out -- goes back to that trusted brand thing.
3) To build or not to build, it wasn't really a question for me. I really don't have enough time at home to deal with all the potential hazards for building what would be my primary sys. Having to reinstall Windows last month due to some corruption ate away at my patience lavel. What I AM doing, though, is gutting my old pii/333 and gain some experience by building that into a decent linux server (CS, most likely). If [-peep-] goes wrong here, oh well. I don't mind "frying" a new mobo or what not on that one.
4) Ultra brand. I wasn't sure what brand they were using and nor were their sales reps (one told me it was nvidia who actually built it). That being said, I have yet to see any performance difference in any of the Ultra's since they are all nVidia reference boards. So I didn't dwell on this too much. When I need to OC it, hopefully not for at least a year, then it becomes a greater concern but still not tremendously so.
5) ALI Magik mobo. This one worried me. I had read the review on Tom's and it put me off. Then I read a review on one of the overclocking sites (OC Club or max. OC (?)) that basically drooled over it. Then I heard from mpjesse who was using it and liked it. What ended up making my decision was that 2 liked it, Tom's review was still on beta drivers, it still outperformed the KT133A, it wasn't VIA based and a hope that the board would continue to improve. And if none of that was of value, at least I have PC2100 DDR sticks
6) I sincerely hope that Alienware is using an Athlon C and not just unlocking a B. I am hoping that it will give me some extra headroom. If they aren't, I'm going to call, bitch about it and get some price reduction since they are "sold me a different product." Plausible deniability is a wonderful thing.
7) The video cooling system for $46 is another fan installed in the side of the case, presumbably near the AGP slot. It was relatively cheap and I liked the idea of keeping the Ultra as cool as possible.
8) Hardware DVD decoder. I have a DVD player and a PS2 so I didn't think it necessary to spend any more than necessary on the DVD aspect of it (versus everywhere else, I guess). I did want to have DVD in case software really becomes available on it.
I think that's about everything. It seems like the "general" consensus is that it was a good price. No one seemed to have issue with the components.