The last game I preordered was Fire Emblem: Awakening. Intelligent Systems has a good track record, I've seen many, many good things about it from the Japanese release, and I got 2 things out of it: an art book, which was kind of cool, although I wish it had more of the characters in it, and, due to a shipping issue, a copy of it a week before it was supposed to be released. The game was not disappointing, either, and the demo was pretty much completely accurate, apart from some small enemy placement changes for some reason.
I more or less agree with Jim's statements, though. I usually only preorder games that have already come out in other parts of the world, i.e. JRPGs from Japan, so that I have some ability to see whether or not they're actually going to be good before I put my money down. The main issue with games like Aliens is that, with preorders, we have no way to see their quality before we order them, and this dishonest business approach has to stop.
I'm still probably going to preorder the next Pokémon games. I've gotten Pokémon games on the first day since Diamond was released, and I've never been disappointed.