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Dell to Buy Alienware?
An anonymous reader writes "Well, looks like rumors are flying, and Dell may have bought Alienware according to an article on cnet.
It really would fit Dell well. They are the last big manufacturer not to use AMD, and this would fill that void. Acquiring this company would also help them grow their business to where they want it to be ($80 billion anually). One can only hope that Alienware support and hardware won't be ill effected by this acquisition."
"One can only hope that Alienware support and hardware won't be ill effected by this acquisition." Whoa!..Alienware has so many post purchase CS complaints...Hell its hard to even talk to a competant rep once you get your laptop/desktop..When i ordered mone in November 18, 2005...and the did not get it to me until January 31 2006..Thats a little bit of a problem..You actually think Dell buying them out will help this..Maybe the will help with the 8 Stuck pixels that my laptop came with, that Alienware CS is still insisting that they will not replace the laptop for, because it is not center of the screen..When has it ever been ok to release a completely faulty product!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
All my rich uncles have either Alienware or Dell systems. These are users who need tons of support, and they are all equally happy. Also at the school district where I work we are 100% Dell. As long as the box is under warranty or service contract Dell is amazingly responsive to service and support needs.
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
I have avoided bulk manufacturers such as Dell and HP like the plague. They give you about as many choices as you got in the old Soviet Union. You can have any configuration you want as long as it's the one they want you to have. It's also a bit like buying a Japanese car: 5000 models, all alike.
The good thing about companies like Alienware (and other smaller makers) is that you get lots of choice and you can configure your box just about any way you want it. Also, you can change things after you buy it. I hope those days are not soon over.
If true, this smells like Dell trying to make an end-run around Samsung and the other OEM builders for Dell's notebooks.
With this, they'd get a company that makes it's own AND gain access to some supply of AMD without having to bring it in as a full mass market Dell product with the supply issues that would cause.
Samsung would probably jump for joy as they would no longer be embargoed from selling computers under their own name in the US.
Who knows. Voodoo says it's true. Dell denies it. Alienware will neither confirm nor deny. If these were politicians speaking, Dell's denial would be laughable and Alienware's respose would be code for confirmation.
Sig for hire.
I cannot stress enough how true this is. Alienware support is terrible, terrible, terrible. They also use unsupported generic versions of some parts. For instance, I ordered my Alienware with a Sound Blaster Audigy 2. It came with some kind of a Audigy 1 that had been modified to be recognized as an Audigy 2. Official Creative drivers do not work; I've had to resort to alternatives.
And don't be fooled into believing that your Alienware will never overheat, with all of those fans. I do everything I can to prevent overheating -- to the point of underclocking -- and somehow the system still hangs when it gets too hot. I think it may have something to do with the motherboard (which I wasn't able to specify).
I'm not completely disappointed with the machine. It's had less problems that previous machines, but for such a high price... I mean, I've built my own computers before, but I thought it would be nice to just order a nice clean gaming package. Never gonna make that mistake again.
The merger can only help. We bought a handful of Alienwares (desktops and laptops) for our employees - we are a government software development research lab. The desktops have been okay, but the laptops are horrible. Every one of them has had some major problems and mine (Sentia) has had the keyboard replaced twice and the optical drive replaced once. I have personally spent hours waiting on the phone for an answer from their technical support. The other two Sentia laptops we bought are in worse shape than mine. All of these problems cropped up within a year of owning the machine. Add this post to the long list of Alienware beefs that is resident on the Web...or should I say ALEMONWARE?
Not to mention that it's extremely unwieldy to use an adverb in that situation. A better structure would have been:
One can hope that this acquisition won't adversely affect Alienware hardware and support.
(That is, if you're OK with the occasional split infinitive).
Too many verbs and modifiers in the original.
(I hope you're OK with this sentence fragment).
(And I hope you're OK with my use of the abbreviation 'OK').
(And I hope you're OK with me beginning a sentence with a conjunction).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In the end, there will be two computer manufacturers: Dell and Apple.
How ya like dat?
Especially in light of this story from two days ago which talked about Alienware and its founders.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It really would fit Dell well.
Alienware is like the Mercedes of PCs. Their computers are typically over priced and aim for a very specific niche market (gamers).
Meanwhile, Dell is a bulk seller of commodity parts. They're the Civics, man. How in the world is this a good fit? It seems more like a really awkward fit to me.
I'd trust a dell over a system with the same specs I put together for under 400.
Dell doesn't use top end components, but their parts are quite a bit better than the real bottom of the barrel stuff you'd have to go with to meet their price points buying individual components. Most dell systems are pretty solid. There are ridiculous numbers of them out there, and except for the 270 series optiplexes, the vast majority will go their warranty period without a problem.
Have you really seen the true bottom of the barrel components that are on the market? Motherboards that are almost guaranteed six month failures. Cases that trap hot air around the processor. PCI slots that fall apart. Seriously, to meet Dells specs at the same price buying individual components, you'll be buidling a computer with *at best* half the lifespan of the dell. I've seen friends buy such parts. I've stupidly bought some myself. Dell quality far exceeds this stuff.
And I'm not saying its bad to recycle components, its just that some people will say they built their entire computer and it saved them like a hundered bucks... and don't mention until you prod them that they recycled at least 200 dollars worth of parts from the old system. It's a valid moneysaving strategy, but many people use it to misrepresent the costs of building to people who don't have parts worth recycling in the first place.
Why can't they put in a larger keyboard into these massive portables? Look at all that wasted space on either side of the keyboard.