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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."
Dear Editors,
You can, you know, edit the submissions. Holy run-on sentences. To wit:
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.
This is 5th or 6th grade level writing. Even MS Word would have suggestions to fix it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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....
I'm confused as to why anyone would buy one of these machines. In a world where hardware that is a success is simple, sleek and nice to look at, why oh why would someone want one of the hideous things from Alienware. And then Dell go and buy the company. Yikes.
i wish i was but oh well
When I first saw Alienware, I just thought, "Hmm, so they painted an Antec case green and filled it with high-end parts". When the laptops came out, they caught my interest, but the PCs never did anything for me. That Antec case they've been using has been around since 1997 or so.
Did you just compare Michael Dell to Steve Jobs?
Here's a hint: one wears a turtleneck and makes innovative computer products, the other one is Michael Dell.
Next Time on Slashdot: "Linus Torvalds (Linux's Bill Gates) tells people to use KDE!!!"
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.
of replacing successful management.
Quite possibly the stupidest thing done in business is acquiring a successful company and then forcing out management that got you there in the first place.
A great example is the airline industry. I used to work for American Airlines and we bought AirCal in the late 1980s, a successful airline. Thinking that somehow we had possessed a magic talisman I suppose, we proceeded to throw the routes to the dogs and our California business went to hell. Then came the establishment of the San Jose "hub" which we did to mainly get coveted Tokyo routes. We signed a deal with the city of San Jose but the deal stipulated that if we ever downgraded San Jose that we could never land in the city again. All was well and good until Southwest came to California (a carrier that also forced us to close up shop in Nashville without a fight).
Within a couple of years Southwest was trouncing our ass and United but one carrier that stood up and fought back successfuly was Reno Air. They put up a great fight with Southwest and did ok. American then suckered Reno Air into subleasing the money losing gates and operations at San Jose and then something amazing happened: Reno Air prospered!
American, thinking like every other arrogant business, bought Reno Air, installed their incompetant management (rife in EVERY legacy carrier which is big reason why they are all hurting so bad now) and Southwest's response was a big "THANK YOU"! American bought their one big competitor and Southwest already knew that American could be taken fairly easily.
Mere possession does not give you advantage, culture does. That is why Southwest is so successful as well as Apple.
"Dude ... you're getting an Alien!"
I'm sure Sigourney Weaver will be first in line.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Those machines look like crap. Dell is going to need more than that to compete with Apple.
I own a Mac and a PC, neither was purchased based on looks. I'm sure Apple marketing would like you to think otherwise, but your computer's look is nice but far from important to most people. Beside's Apple's look is pretty conventional, except for the Mini. It's Mac OS X that looks different and makes people buy Macs, not the case.
I don't know about anyone else, but I would be embarrassed to own a computer that looks like an alien's head.
I'm an AMD user, but if the Core Duo outperforms Athlon and Alienware switches would users care? Would it be inconsistent? No on both. Alienware is about performance. They should not be AMD fanbois and they should sell whatever CPU is the fastest at the time.
everyone can make stupid names like Dellienwarel and the like but to me, if Alienware wanted a parent company, Dell would be the first I would pick. They're the only mass-makers that my institution hasn't regretted buying from. Low maintenance, I think about 1 out of 100 are shipped with something wrong with them. I won an Alienware in a gaming tournament. It wasn't better than my current rig but it was nice. I unpackaged it to take pictures for ebay and I was very impressed with it overall. Dell takes the same care for each computer even though they sell for much lower. This *should* lower Alienware's prices due to supply costs being cut. If so, this will put one hell of an edge on the market for them. I think of Dailmer-Chrystler, now that they merged European cars have boommed all over the nation. Same thing's going to happen with Alienware. My question is, is XPS going to compete with Alienware in good manner?
Who is that masked man?
See UserFriendly's take: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060326 :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
ordering an Alienware will no longer be like putting in an order for a car in East Germany.
You mean even terrorist sponsoring countries like... *Canada* will be able to get Alienware computers now? Wow, that would be amazing, considering you can't get them shipped up here for love or money for some bizarre reason. All the people I know that have them had them shipped to some border town where they picked them up themselves.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
1: Intel could Never buy Alienware and force them to become an Intel-only shop.
2: Dell Can buy Alienware because Dell is already in this business and attempting to compete at the top end with their own immensely overpriced ($9,900) system already.
3: It would have been worth it to Intel to give Apple a lifetime supply of Intel processors for Free just to silence their harshest x86 critic. (Maybe they have done exactly that, however, that's a theory for another day.)
4: If Dell switches Alienware over to Intel Conroe processors exclusively in a few months claiming that On This Day Intel is the best choice, therefore we are going to use them Forever Forward, this will not spawn any anti-trust suits because Dell is simply making a business decision.
5: Dell is now Intel's friend forever, and gets as good a deal with new processors as Apple is clearly seeming to be getting.
I know I left that tin foil hat around here somewhere.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Whoa....why make up silly names when everyone knows Dell and Alienware together make Delaware. All we want is for ID software to merge with Yahoo, and we will have IDahoo! Now its all making sense, those state names were not based on native tribes afterall.
Heh, AC, your jealousy is showing.
Your first point seems to indicate that you're using the OEM software load. Wow, sure sounds like you've been "computing" for 22 years.
Why on earth would OEM vs OTS software matter? More importantly, why would this indicate anything about anyone's experience. My Dell issue can be summed up in two words: hardware problem.
Your second point.. Jesus, chill with the fucking USB devices. You only have so much power for the bus. Get a nice powered USB hub and stop bitching.
Since my HP laptop ran with a similar number of devices there is nothing to say I am doing anything wrong here. But I appreciate your wisdom-at-a-distance.
Also, if it can't handle this many devices, why have this many (7) USB ports?
Your third point, I will say, is a legitimate complaint. You should learn how to deal with techs, though. These are all common problems with computers. Someone who claims to have been in the game as long as you should know how to handle them.
The so-called techs are impossible to deal with -- total denial city. How does one deal with someone who totally denies that there is a hardware problem? Wait, that would be you too.
I come here for the love
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.
Um, East Germany refers to cold-war era communist germany (you know post world war II), wherein it would take forever to get your hands on a lousy generic car. They're not talking about modern day BMWs, Porches, VWs or Audis.
Why not fork?
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.
Opps - misssed the "east" part. I retract my statement.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
...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.