"I recently purchased a DV7 laptop from HP only to find out that it was not what I expected. It was not fast enough for my software, (Revit & AutoCad). Did I mention the speakers also went out in two months. I decided to take it back and upon researching other laptops, I found Malibal. It was more pricier, but you got what you paid for. The customer service was great and I hadn't even purchased a thing yet. They help me on the phone compare theirs with others and it was a great experience. I decided on getting a Nine series with an 1&-920 processor, 2-500GB hard drives, 6GB of RAM with the Nvidia 280m graphics card. I barely got it yesterday and have already noticed the difference in the speed and quality of my programs. Thanks again for the help and I HIGHLY recommend Malibal to others."

"Sent my first email to Malibal around 11 PM - figuring I would get an answer the next day - just as I was ready to call it a night, bingo, I had an answer to all my questions.

After discussions with several companies, I decided to purchase from Malibal, as I was quite comfortable with their knowledge and their responsiveness of trying to be sure I purchased what computer was needed to do the job right, not just meet minimum requirements.

After placing the order, I received confirmations and could check the status at any time. I decided to pay by check and therefore, my check had to clear before shipment. That caused an obvious delay in delivering the computer, which I understood and was my decision to make. However, once the check cleared, Malibal was excellent in building the computer and shipping it, exactly matching the process and schedule the committed to when I made the purchase.

The computer was a present for my son to use in his business, which he has received and is in the process of installing some additional s/w, etc.

Once I get a report from him regarding the operational aspects of the computer, I will add to this review.

However, as of right now, everything in dealing with Malibal is very, very positive."

"I didn't make my choice to buy fom malibal lightly nor quickly. I checked out alienware but you mind as well say dell. They would not help me at all with what I wanted it had to be what they wanted me to have. I then started to look other places and came across malibal, I configuered exactly what I wanted in the nine series, the price was right,so i made a call to malibal to see if someone would answer and they did without waiting 10 minutes to get someone on the line. I then ordered the nine series about 10 day's later it arrived in 110% condition everything worked flawlessly. the raid0is fast as sh-- the i7 960 just remarkable nvidia280m wow. I'm so pleased with it. Thanks Malibal for giving me the fastest computer I've ever seen at the price I could afford.James"

"As a rule, if I write a review on electronics I wait at least 3 months because I figure any problems will manifest by then with regular use.

I bought a Malibal Lotus 15.4" 1920 x 1200 WUXGA LCD Active Matrix Display Memory: (4GB) 4096MB, PC3-8500/1066MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M 1GB GDDR3 Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA-300 for quite a reasonable price considering what I was getting. I had been looking at Alienware, etc. prior to purchase and would have ended up paying much more for the same computer. The machine runs smooth and fast, looks sleek (black with silver trim, a lot of people have asked me: what kind of laptop is that?!), handles video editing and gaming well (currently playing Dragon Age and Aion on it). Based on notebookreview.com I got a zalman cooler but honestly it doesn't run all that hot most of the time. I've been trying to talk my wife into upgrading her laptop to a Malibal but she'd rather spend the dough at Barney's. To each their own.



$50.00

Optical Drive: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive "

"I have put all my desktop computers together since college and had the idea that I would try to put a laptop together instead. As it turns out many of the components either come with the barebone (which they're only so few to choose from depending on what type of processor and gpu you want), are expensive, or very hard to find. My other alternative would be to go with a major distributor of high end notebooks (i.e. alienware) which would've made my laptop look like a christmas tree at work and cost a few hundred dollars more. Throughout my month search I found Malibal and it was worth it. Not only did my 15.6" FHD, i7-720QM, GeForce GTX 280M come below budget ready for me to put in windows 7 ultimate x64... It also came in 10 days and I didn't have to put the thing together. Right now I can have 4 cpu demanding programs (autoCAD, Photoshop, etc.) running at the same time and my cpu usage never reaches 50%. Games play flawlessly at max settings and surprisingly the fan runs much quieter than anticipated. Had I put it together I might (after constant searching) have saved maybe $100 if that. Customer service was helpful for cash payment and quick to respond. I recommend this company to anyone seeking high end notebooks. Shopping there again once this badboy becomes ancient. Unfortunately that will be in 6 months. I've never written a review in my life. Enjoy my first!"

"Overall: Outstanding experience.

There was a bit of confusion initially about when my laptop would be shipped: they gave me a time window when they expected it to be shipped, but their incoming delivery of laptops was smaller than they expected, so they informed me that they'd have to push my ship date (past Thanksgiving, which is when I really needed it since I was travelling).

I let them know that I was disappointed, and a couple days later they contacted me, said they pulled some strings and got me a laptop, and even upgraded my UPS Ground shipping to next-day-air for free to ensure I got it before I went out of town! I was pretty shocked -- it was way above and beyond what I expect from a retailer.

As far as the laptop itself, it's excellent, exactly what they described, and with very competitive price."

"I found Malibal by chance while searching for Clevo resellers and I couldn't be happier with my findings. The customer service was absolutely incredible! Questions were answered promptly and they took the time to ensure my order was to my satisfaction. Shipping was immediate and they even gave me the option to purchase the extended warranty in the 30 days following the purchase date. The website is easy to navigate and the accessible customer reviews can only make my decision easier. I recommend Malibal to all and please send me any questions if you're still unsure whether to go with them or not. "

"After spending 6 years tethered to my old Pentium 4 PC, I'd decided it was time to purchase a laptop. As a web designer, video editor, and hobbyist gamer, however, I needed a laptop that could perform to the highest level. Having never purchased a laptop before, I began to search for the best deal, reliability being a big factor after being forced to troubleshoot faulty laptops of friends and family. I spent a good deal of time exploring outlets such as Cyberpower and XoticPC, and then I came across Malibal. After reading their reviews, I began to take a look at their inventory. Wow. These are some *manly* laptops. I was quick to check their reviews, not being one to believe in miracles. Surprisingly, Malibal had achieved the most spotless customer service record I had ever laid eyes on.

I made my decision to purchase from Malibal, and quickly built a $3000 power-laptop with a 1080p screen, 6GB of RAM, Corei7 processor, and Solid State Hard Drive. This was the most money I had ever spent on a computer... ever -- as such I was somewhat nervous as to whether the money was worth it.

Although the shipping was delayed on Malibal's end due to a back-order on the Lotus series, customer service was quick to upgrade my shipping from standard ground to 3-day, reassuring me about their customer care.

The laptop arrived just under a month after I ordered it -- somewhat of a long wait compared to the other reviews, but it was worth it. The laptop performed perfectly, and I was quickly enjoying Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 on Very High settings.

Then tragedy struck. Listed on the Malibal website was a BIOS update on the Lotus's driver page. BIOS updates are sort of risky, I realized, but my Linux installation was experiencing some issues that may or may not have been related to the BIOS, and I was hoping an updated version may fix it. After installing the new BIOS, however, I was horrified to be informed that the BIOS was in fact for a different model laptop, causing my laptop to shut down after 1 minute of use. I immediately contacted Malibal for assistance, citing their incorrect BIOS listing on their site. They immediately removed the BIOS listing from their site, and within a week I was sent a new BIOS image to flash onto the laptop -- fixing it completely. Although the customer service may be slow at times, they definitely live up to their ratings.

If you buy one of these machines, chances are you will be blown away by the power. But you should be prepared to deal with weight and low battery life. My model will last about an hour on one battery, max. I've purchased two to extend the life to 2 hours. This usually is not a problem for me, though, as an outlet is usually nearby.

These laptops are extremely powerful, fairly priced, and backed by some great support. I'm confident that I made a good decision by purchasing this laptop, and I'll definitely look to Malibal for my next machine purchase when the time arrives, which may be quite far away, judging by the performance of this machine as of now.


11/29/09: I've noticed that the HDMI port isn't working as expected -- I plan to contact customer support soon to see what the issue may be.

2/20/10: Finally contacted Malibal about the HDMI problem... sent the following, along with photos:
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"I've been loving my Lotus notebook -- however one issue is still getting in the way occasionally. The HDMI port does not seem to be working properly, and the issue persists despite trying different cables, different TVs/Receivers, and even after reformatting the machine itself.
The laptop seems to recognize the devices it's attached to, and even tells me the specific model of each device. However, either the device does not output any video at all (sometimes reading "no signal"), or it gives a distorted, static-filled image. This happens under both Windows 7 (with the packaged video drivers installed), and Ubuntu Linux (with official Nvidia drivers installed). Changing resolution/color/refresh rate settings does not seem to affect the problem.
The DVI port still seems to function properly, however. "
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3/15/10: Shipped the laptop back for repair, and it was promptly shipped back. Quick and easy! Everything works properly. Thanks Malibal!"

"Delivered ahead of schedule, per requested specs, in perfect condition, and free of bloatware.

In terms of appearance, the 15.6" Lotus reminds me of a "sleeper" car: highly tuned under the hood without all the flashy colored plastic and bling lights on the body. This is a clean, understated laptop that does not shout "gaming rig" with its appearance but instead proves it through superior performance. "

"I have to say initially I was hesitant to order a $2,000+ laptop from a boutique laptop shop. I'd ordered from larger companies like Dell in the past and always received a decent product, but the larger companies just didn't offer the kind of performance in a laptop I was looking for. After some intensive research, I happened upon Malibal. I'm not the type of person to place an impulse order and I extensively reviewed my options over the course of three months. Malibal offered the best price for performance across the board, so I eventually placed my order for their Lotus series of laptops.

To start things off, I placed the order incorrectly, hitting the wrong button on checkout. I immediately hopped over to their website, and was about to send them an email when I noticed the live chat option. Soon I was talking to a Malibal rep, explaining the problem. They updated the order, and processed it correctly within minutes. I imagine had I done the same at a large corporation, I'd have still been listening to elevator music while I was put on hold over the telephone.

Their website made it easy to verify and review my order status, and any questions I had were answered promptly. I chose ground shipping to save money, and after the long wait for UPS to get me my laptop, it arrived on a Wed night. I was impressed with everything, from the free laptop case to even the small details like the ease of unboxing everything. Unfortunately the laptop was a bit "buggy", and would blue-screen at random intervals. I work in IT, and have been working with computers in one fashion or another for 15+ years, so I started to probe a bit deeper into what was causing these problems, hoping it was just a software issue. After several OS installations, driver upgrade, etc.. the problem persisted.

I finally created a ticket to Malibal support regarding these problems on Thursday evening, around 11PM. It was my expectation that I would get an email back the next day with some silly settings to check, or even have to sit on the phone with a technician while he verified what I already knew to be a hardware issue. None of that happened. I received a response back from Malibal support at 11:30PM in the evening, only 30 minutes after my original email. After reviewing the steps I took to track down the root of the problem, they agreed it was a hardware issue and the next day provided me everything I needed to return the laptop.

Obviously I was disappointed that my brand new laptop was a lemon, and that I was going to have to wait another 1-2 weeks for a replacement to arrive. Before I could even express my disappointment, Matthew at Malibal contacted me and told me they would upgrade the replacement shipping to 2 day air, instead of ground shipping, which took 5 days. A day later, Matthew sent me an email stating that there was a back-order on the specific configuration that I had chosen. Instead of saying "Sorry, bad luck", Matthew offered me two options. I could certainly wait for the exact laptop I had ordered to become available, or I could take an upgraded model that would ship on-time, for no extra charge.

After about 2.1 seconds of thought, I took the free upgrade. When their supplier dropped the ball on getting my laptop out on the correct day, Matthew and Malibal took it upon themselves to make up for that by upgrading my shipping yet again, to overnight. The laptop did indeed arrive on the day they promised, and I've been using it (with the upgrades!) ever since without any issues.

As I mentioned originally, I was a bit wary about spending that amount of money with a small company. However, I have experienced a level of customer service that is completely new to me. Malibal is dedicated to their customer's satisfaction, 100%. I know that with any computer, problems can happen, and that was out of Malibal's hands. What they did do, was take control of the situation the best they could, and went above and beyond my expectations (certainly at the expense of their bottom line) to make sure I was happy with the laptop, and their business. I can only imagine that had this happened with Dell, or any other large company, I'd still be calling daily to try and get this problem fixed. Not the case with Malibal. I'm so pleased with my order, and how their customer service operates, I'll be ordering another $2,000+ laptop from them in a month.

If you're like me, and are hesitant to put your faith in a small company you may not have ever heard of before, let me be clear on this. Malibal will take care of you. It doesn't matter if you’re ordering 200 laptops for your company, or a laptop for your 10 year-old. At the end of the day, they'll make sure you're happy.
"

"Excellent sales and tech support up front. Sale had a slight glitch with the Paypal and discount. Perhaps a more succinct description on thier website might have helped. Delivery was faster than expected. The product is excellent so far."

"Where to start...? Well lets say your friend buys a new laptop with a pretty advanced equipment, since your laptop recently broke you are looking for a similar one for roughly the same price. So here is the story, the friend buys a brand name laptop for $1,700.00 and it is pretty fast, actually really fast. But you don't like the RAM it has and the video card just isn't enough for you. So you find this company online and you find a laptop for the same price roughly. Except it has better ram and a much much better video card. Thats exactly what happened to me and Malibal came through in spades in delivering a super fast laptop that I can do everything I want and more than I could have expected. With great customer service before i ordered it, and great shipping and dont forget the best possible computer you can by for the money!!! I highly highly recommend them and will in fact use them again!"

"I have nothing to say but excellent about Malibal. Their tech support, info on the laptop I purchased,shipping, etc., was outstanding. My situation was a little unique in that I ordered the laptop, D900F, without an operating system. After installation, the machine worked flawlessly. Since there are few laptops using the x58 chipset, and a nvidia 280m video card, I was anxious that all would work as designed. I had no problem at all getting the machine to work and I couldn't be more pleased."

"I highly recomend to buy from Malibal. Every process were perfect.

Before I bought the d900f, I did more than 60 questions and every one were answered in less then 15 minutes. One of these questions was at 9:00 o'clock (Brasil time) and aswered at 5:00am (EUA time).

After paid and received the laptop, the support still was the same, answered in less than 15 minutes every annoying questions of mine.

In brief, you can buy with don't worries. "

"I ordered a DF900F Nine Series laptop (i7-920 CPU) with 6GB of memory, dual Intel SSDs, with Bluray RW. The first thing I noticed was that the machine felt like a tank! It was pretty heavy, but since it was going to be my desktop replacement, it really wasn't that heavy. It was super fast and for the most part it seemed fine, but then after installing Norton 360 it crashed on me. I thought it was the Norton software, but even after removing the software, re-installing Vista and letting the machine run just with Vista, it would crash periodically. The event viewer showed an "unrecoverable hardware memory error" and the blue screens I got said "Memory Management". Since I'm used to building machines, I took it upon myself to start removing memory from the laptop and happened to remove the correct module causing the problem. Memtest didn't fail on me any more so I knew I had found the problem. I had encountered a similar problem with an Alienware machine I had purchased 3 years ago and was now not looking forward to asking Malibal for a replacement. To my delighted surprise, the tech got back to me almost immediately when I emailed them about my problem, created an RMA for me sent me a UPS label to send my bad memory back, and the day after they got the chip they sent me a replacement!!!!

It took me 6 months to get Alienware to give me a replacement part and even after that the machine still never performed to my expectations.

My nine series laptop is now stable as a rock and never needs a reboot. Norton 360 runs fine on it and it's every bit as fast as I expected.

I'll definitely go back to Malibal for my next machine when the time comes. The customer support really is as good as everyone says it is!"