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Mark Vena on Dellienware
Edison Trent writes "Tom's Hardware has a piece up on the acquisition of Alienware by Dell in which they've interviewed Mark Vena, Alienware's VP of Marketing, who spilled some interesting beans on the acquisition. Among them is the fact that Michael Dell himself (aka Mr Steve Jobs-alike) supposedly led the acquisition from the beginning (will this force out Alienware management later?), and that Dell will be handling all of Alienwares supplier relationships, including that with AMD. In the more mundane and day to day changes Dell will also be backing Alienware financing of their expensive machines, which is something Alienware couldn't have done before on its own and because Dell will be handling all of Alienwares suppliers the company expects to get more allocation of scarce products such as new graphics cards and ordering an Alienware will no longer be like putting in an order for a car in East Germany."
Actually, according to Microsoft Word 97, this scores at a 12.0 reading level on the Flesch-Kincaid reading level test ran with spellcheck.
Will you still be able to get AMD processors? AFter all, Dell has a relationship (marriage) to Intel and having a subsidiary buying from the competition could make Intel unhappy....
The story I heard was that a number of key Dell people defected to Alienware over the past year, and Dell acquired Alienware more to regain these people than the company or the brand. FWIW... -a.
I don't know about anyone else, but I would be embarrassed to own a computer that looks like an alien's head.
Some of them are pretty nice. I think the logo is pretty lame though, and the green is just ugly, IMO, but the black cases are pretty nice.
If someone told me a few years ago that there's big money (in per-unit profits) to be made in throwing together off the shelf boards, I wouldn't have believed them. It's not that hard to do.
Ever hear of a company called Sager? Paint their high-end laptops green, add $500 to the price and you've got an Alienware laptop.
It's not like Micheal Dell is just tossing money here and there towards a canidate he likes. He spends the max he can on he RNC, Bush/Cheney. He put up millions for fund unregulated RNC events. Like the ignaguaral balls. Speaking of balls, he had the balls to write Gore in 2000 to tell him to not ask for a recount because it was hurting the country.
I've dealt with Dell from a number of businesses, large and small. Their customer support has always been good: not as good as the guy around the corner who owes me a lot of beer, sometimes, but always several steps up from their competitors. This is true even as they outsource more of it: they seem to be giving the "My name is Mahareesh, but you can call me Jack" first tier tech support enough authority to actually replace parts rather than forcing me through all the "have you done this Windows re-install trick?" on my Linux boxes.
I don't know where you're getting your Dell experience form, but they've been well worth the premium some folks pay for them in a production environment.
...ordering an Alienware will no longer be like putting in an order for a car in East Germany.
Hopefully they'll offer better support. An analogy: Alienware support is to Dell support like a Lada is to an Alfa Romeo. Sure they can both suck, but at least the wait for repair is shorter for the Alfa. I know someone who owned not one, but three Alienware units. The first declared 'lemoned' and replaced. The replacement spent 6 weeks of it's 52 week warranty period at repair. After the warranty was up, the machine became unusable due to overheating. Unbelievably, he went for another. A month after the warranty was up on this one, the LCD quit and they would not repair it. As a responsible admin, I spent countless hours on the phone with them, being referred back to the website for answers, etc., try this and call us back, etc. At least with Dell I got a call center with specific questions that ultimately lead to a resolution even if it took two pots of coffee.
You failed to appreciate the analogy. The submitter was referring to ordering a Trabant or Wartburg during Cold War times in East Germany--none of which exist anymore.
Back then, it was possible to buy an East-German-made car. Although they were terrible from many points of view, these people were living behind the Iron Curtain--they didn't have a choice.
Despite the terrible build quality of these cars, it still took years to get one. An East German family would put their name down on a list for the cars, and anywhere from five to eleven years later they would actually be able to take delivery on one.
Alienware has a notoriously long purchasing process. Entire message boards spring up around "What stage is my order in??" For some reason, it seems to take forever to get a machine from them--from what I can tell, they rarely make their claims on shipping times (two weeks or such). I know that my Alienware laptop took approximately five weeks to arrive, despite being a fairly basic customization job (no crazy video cards or processors or anything). They had claimed it would take 20 or less; a customer service manager was at least willing to send me gift cards to Best Buy as compensation for the delay.