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Dell's Quest For Gaming Cool
Slate is running a piece looking at Dell's attempt to grab gamer customers via their acquisition of the Alienware brand. From the article: "Gamers want powerful computers, of course, but they also want stylish systems made by a company that they believe understands them. Dell's XPS line of machines certainly provides the requisite power. The PC giant's market clout earns it premium relationships with component-makers like ATI, Intel, and nVidia, often allowing it to be first to market with the hottest technologies. But devoted gamers have still stayed away from Dell. Halo obsessives are not IT managers: They ogle expensive, flashy machines ... and they buy expensive, flashy machines. That's where Alienware comes in."
The main difference between an XPS and an Alienware machine with the same specs is not how finely the hardware is tuned, it is the software. Dell ships everymachine out with a bunch of crap software bundled, some of which trips off populare anti-spyware software.
Here at work we purchase Dell laptops for our sales force and the first thing we always do after receiving the machine is to reload the windows disk, but not the auxillary software.
Crufty software doesn't belong on work machines let alone a gaming system. Some of the software bundled could even be considered offensive to gamers looking for high performance computers. Why not bundle software that is relevant to your target customers (i.e. quickbooks isn't it).
My inner self is ineffable, so don't eff with me.
Wrong. Pure and simple.
In the last week, Dell has been selling QUALITY machines for prices that you can't beat by putting together the components from mail-order-madness from PriceWatch. At the low end, you could spend $370 and get a "basic" machine with a 19" LCD and a licensed copy of Windows. After that, the "basic" computer is free. $1000 machines have been 40% off for weeks, with stackable coupons, free shipping, free 19" flat panels...you're paying $600 for a solid machine, great monitor, licensed software, home delivery, and A YEAR OF ON-SITE SERVICE.
The answer to most people is, in fact, Dude, you're getting a Dell. [And you're getting it at a good price, with solid features.]
I too handle Dell servers and desktops at work. What is proprietary you ask? Ok here is my experience:
1. Power supply. The Dell (at least Optiplex and Dimensions I've used) power supply is not standard. You cannot mount an off the shelf power supply because the power cord connector will be blocked by the Dell case.
2. Case connector. The connector that attaches to the motherboard for power switch, reset, speaker etc. is in one solid block which plugs directly into the motherboard. Now the ordering of connectors on the block will not plug into an off the shelf motherboard. So you are generally out of luck if you want to use a non-Dell motherboard with a Dell case. You CAN cut the block off and rewire seperate connectors to allow connection to a different motherboard, but it's hardly worth the effort.
3. Fan. The fan connector that plugs into the motherboard is not standard. Replacing the fan with an off the shelf generic one will not let you connect the fan connector to the Dell motherboard. This means that the Dell bios will think the fan has failed.
Small things, but things that mean replacing a cheap part (power supply, fan) will not be as simple as going to the store. Also a major upgrade such as a motherboard swap is more of a pain than it should be.
You are correct in that add in boards and drives are not proprietary but you may find that Dell skimps in some ways on their motherboards. For example, the mid range Optiplex computers have no AGP slot and no PCI Express X16 slot. So no way you can add in a video card, you are stuck with onboard. Also most Dell desktops have only 2 DIMM slots compared to 3 or 4 on most standard motherboards. You also will need to pay a bit more if you want to get say 1 512MB DIMM versus 2 256MB DIMMS - in order to leave a slot open for future expansion.
I have no problem will Dell's in the business environment. At least their business sales and support is excellent. As a home gaming system, there are much better (and cheaper) options.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
The gold level business support is actually quite excellent. I haven't had any problems with understanding the support staff or getting replacement parts shipped out and in the office next day. Ditto for the onsite support. And if I do have problems (has happened once in 5 years) a quick call to my acccount manager got them jumping.
From what I hear their standard support sucks ass. I guess it's a "you get what you pay for" situation.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
From a harocp article a few months ago, the Dell XPS 400 gamers rig wont run Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Quake 4, or The Sims 2 because of conflicts with the bloatware.
After reading their out of the box experiences, and add in their additional customer support ordeal trying to remove the bloat, I think I will be staying away from dell and alienware for gaming purposes.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0LDEsLG hlbnRodXNpYXN0/