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Dell fights Alien Invasion
Asakawa writes "With manufacturers like Alienware and Voodoo sucking up the low-volume/high-margin high-end gaming market, it looks like Dell wants a piece of the action. The machine that these guys have reviewed looks pretty awesome, but they reckon it's overpriced. It will be interesting to see if Dell can shake off its grey box image and entice the more fussy gamers and enthusias."
Dell's had a competent gaming laptop for a while now, why not a competent desktop? Inspiron XPS, now there's a laptop you can bring home to mom. According to their site, it starts at 9.06 lbs. Don't move it around too much.
Dell can want to sell me a machine all they want, but they won't get my business because:
* The quality of their support has fallen through the floor due to offshore outsourcing it (the non-business support, at least).
* They don't give me the option of buying computers built on AMD CPUs, which have a better price/performance ratio than Intel CPUs.
* In most cases, they still force me to buy their systems bundled with Microsoft software, whether I want it or not.
Sorry, Dell. No sale here.
Seriously - what the hell is up with Computer equipment prices in England? Is their economy so strong that $5519.37 is a reasonable price for a 3.6 ghz P4 with a Radeon X800?
This isn't the first time I've noticed this absurdity - I've read reviews of English kit before, and it's always ludicriously overpriced. Hardware sellers are making a killing off of the lot of you.
English slashdotters, is there some sort of law or something that says you HAVE to buy computer stuff in the UK? Seriously, just buy all your computer stuff from the US, but buy an English AC adapter and an English keyboard that actually has the pound key on it. You'll save a ton of money.
We have one of these at work (a new professor speced it out as his workstation when he arrived; no doubt he plays games in his office sometimes) and it's surprisingly quiet when not too busy.
Dell uses nice and quiet temperature controlled fans in most of its systems. When the system isn't too busy, they spin slowly; when things start getting hot they spin up and can get rather loud, but still not annoyingly so.
Dells prices may be a bit high, but I love their cooling systems. Top notch efficient design. You can't do this easily in home built boxes because case fan and CPU placement differs on different cases and motherboards.
-Z
Quick little story:
;)
My girlfriend moved in (shocking, i know) with a hobbled together PC, same way i do mine - buy mobo-proc combo, case with decent psu, some video card that works with the mobo and some ram from crucial.
i normally repeat this cycle about meh, once every 2 years (recently graduated computer engineering student) and it worked out okay, but both of our machines always suffered from the old, *something* has gone wrong and died all the sudden.
With just one real workstation at any time to mess with for many years, i didn't mind all that much. Well, with two of them in house pulling that crap - it seemed like every month, i was buying some new component for either her pc or mine. It was getting old.
She scored a few contracts for her art (the Papa Roach cd and a slew of Brit albums from various artists that will hit soon have her stuff on them). Well, it was time to get a real machine. i wanted her to get a dual g5, but she wanted to stick with windows for all of her art software and plugins (well over $4k of x86 only stuff). Soooooo, we got her one of these...and here is the point of this post:
Blah, blah, blah as you will about Dell-this and Dell-that - i've not had *one* problem with that machine. i'll remind you, she is not doing light weight work. Not one problem. Er, and it kicks some serious ass with ut2k4 i might add
Uhh, the cheap looks are horrible.
Crappy cabling all over the place in spite of clips & belts (uh, but perhaps it's UV ready right!?).
Breathing power switch done wrong (they understood it backwards, it's distracting... ask the Apple designers)
A lot of fans! Hmm, helicopter or whisper? They look like off the mill beigebox fan, one can only hope the motherboard supports speed scaling like that other PeeCee would-(rather not)-be ;-)
Oh well, I'll continue lusting for that G5... wake me up when a PC manufacturer finally gets to properly copy Apple's designs
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
First, they say the graphics card I selected which guaranteed an August 6th ship date became limited availability which would delay my order. So since time is of the essence (I need it at home before I go to school to transfer a LOT of files) I switched cards to a better one, which was NOT limited now (it had been when I first configured my system) and now they're saying it MAY ship on the 9th or 10th.
On top of that Alienware had offered us a $150 rebate. Then, on the order confirmation they say its only $75. We bitch and complain, and they finally get us the $75 rebate, and a $75 coupon for Amazon, which, while we use it extensively and will have no problem with that....is STILL a very bad business practice.
Its at the point where if it doesn't ship via next day ground service at their expense, we just may well cancel the order and tell them we're getting a Dell instead.
And a tip for buying from Alienware: If you don't care about a flashy case, check out their small business computers. They're just about the same specs, and a LOT less expensive.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I've been a Mac user for years and currently use an old dual-processor 450 MHz G4. I realized that Macs are generally better designed inside, but didn't realize that current PCs were this cobbled-together. Compare these two shots:
Dell XPS
PowerMac G4
alas, that still seems like a bit too much hardware to play the big three Mac games:
:)
-Breakout
-Super Breakout
-Photoshop
The Mac doesn't have anywhere near as many games as the PC, and they're usually released later... But the Mac DOES HAVE GAMES. A lot of them, and a lot of great ones. On my G5's hard drive right now:
Battlefield 1942
Call of Duty
Medal of Honor
Halo
Black Hawk Down
America's Army
Command and Conquer Generals
Tron 2.0
Tropico
Warcraft 3
Unreal Tournament 2004
Neverwinter Nights
Iceland Dale
Dungeon Siege
Max Payne
The Sims
Age of Mythology
And I'll be picking up Republic ASAP.
For a casual gamer-- and I stress the word casual, it's a great system.
Befor ya'll go crazy, now, remember; I'm a Mac user too
Then why feed the troll flames?