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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
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?