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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.]
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/