Personal Review of MALIBAL

I know there is a dedicated review thread for MALIBAL, but I wanted to create a separate one anyways. This isn't going to review the Laptop itself, but mainly the experience I had with MALIBAL as a company. Maybe it will help some folks out in the future.

I find the stars or points system most helpful and efficient when I look at reviews online (be it computers, books, restaurants, et cetera).

5 = Super duper. 1 = Not so good.

Professionalism = 5 stars
Response time = 5 stars
Friendliness = 3.5 stars
Knowledge = 5 stars
Support [ Pre-purchase ] = 5 stars
Support [ Post-purchase ] = 4 stars [ only because their phone seems to be down and also live chat has not been available ]
Shipping time = 4 stars [ a week past estimated delivery time, not too bad ]
Courtesy Next-Day Air Shipping Due to Delay = 5 stars! [ very nice way to make up for delay ]
Price = 5 stars
Discounts = 5 stars
Packaging Quality = 5 stars! [ they use two boxes ]
Overall Experience = 5 stars

So that's the basic review. I am very happy with my purchase and would recommend this company to anyone. I'm sure resellers also offer great support/prices (in fact several helped me while I was researching which laptop to get), but MALIBAL is top-notch. Comparatively the reps were not as friendly as the ones from Xotic and LPC-Digital, at least towards me. But their answers were on-point and precise. They just lacked a little extra friendliness.

As for production time. I placed my order on September 04, 2011. I paid it for the following Tuesday (after Labor Day). The order was then processed on September 07, 2011. The email I received from MALIBAL said to check the order status for estimated ship time. It said September 14, 2011. By the 14th I was a little anxious of course, but I did not get a confirmation of shipping or not. Turns out, there was a delay. The laptop shipped on September 21 and I received yesterday, September 22. While I was disappointed in the delay, I was more disappointed that I wasn't informed of why or received more updates. Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the shipping was bumped to Next-Day air. Thanks MALIBAL.

But overall, my experience was great. And I am really happy with the P150HM. It looks great and feels like a quality machine. A review will come shortly on it.

I do have one question. I didn't get a MALIBAL name plate on the inside underneath the screen, like you see on the website. I kind of like the look of that. Can the branding be sent so that I can apply it? Thanks!

What was ordered: MALIBAL Lotus P150HM [S1 Promotion]

Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED AUO B156HW01 V.7 95% NTSC Glossy
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz
Memory: (16GB) 16384MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 4 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 750GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: Hard Drive Caddy For Optical Bay
Wireless: Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Branding: MALIBAL
Build Time: 5-7 Business Days
Warranty: Lifetime Ltd. Labor and 1 Year Parts Warranty with 24/7 Support (USA)

 

All these people with delayed orders from MALIBAL have me kinda worried that mine will be delayed as well(seriously, everybody has been posting about delayed orders).
I hope me contacting them every day will bug them into not delaying my order XD
Nice machine... you gonna get a SSD or something? Looks nearly identical to my P170HM in construction right now, shrunk to 15" size

 

You left one off. Humanity = 100 stars.

 

I think your order is shipping today or Monday, so it won't be much longer now.

 

Hahaha Yeah Man, delays certainly do not help the average reputation of a company... It also makes customers lose money >.< I'm just praying for MALIBAL to get the parts for my P170HM 120hz Matte ASAP so I can get my machine before my boss thinks about firing me for not resuming my Work soon enough... T_T

I'm truly hoping I get my machine in perfect conditions before my business trip to Tokyo, my boss made me change my fight to the 8th of October.

I can barely do something on the machine I borrowed here (it has a lame graphics card and a 2 core old processor) ^^;

Edit: By the way man I do agree with you on the Professionalism = 5 stars, Knowledge = 5 stars They are truly knowledgeable and do not hesitate to explain everything you ask

 

I think part of the delays were for the backordered AMD 6990. They had a bunch of those to make up before shipping the new orders like mine. This is only speculation based on what I read on the forums.

Good to know I'm not the only one to contact them often. lol. I didn't everyday, but it was often.

Yeah I ordered the optical bay caddy. In the future, maybe a month or so, I will order an SSD and put the 750gb hdd in the optical bay and use as storage. i haven't used Windows in a long time, and the Windows Experience Index is 5.9 (harddrive limit). Everything else is 7.4 and above. That should increase with SSD. Using Windows 7 Enterprise from my Univerisity.

You guys have been more than awesome. Any info about the branding below the screen?

 

Good luck with your screen! I almost went with that option when the upgrade to the 120hz was free. But 17.3'' is more real estate than I really need. I can't imagine carrying around anything bigger than the Lotus P150HM.

I just came from a Core 2 Duo with nVidia GeForce 8600GT. The difference is incredible.

And yep. 5 stars