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Dell Aims for Gamers with XPS M1710
Mr Tits writes "Dell moved to solidify its position in the lucrative gaming market yesterday by launching the XPS M1710, a dual-core processor system designed to let gamers simultaneously play three-dimensional games while encoding music or scanning for viruses.
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"Play games while encoding music or scanning for viruses"
Even as a desktop replacement that's just not sensible. Unless you're playing games from 1998 you're still going to need every teeny little bit of power that thing has, and you'd still be alt-tabbing out of games to check the other tasks, which will do nothing for them.
And how exactly the hell does "Dual core" help you when you're thrashing the hard drive wildly trying to virus check?
Is scanning for viruses a regularly scheduled activity for windows gamers nowdays?
WTF?
Heey everyone! Now you can use your computer AND scan for viruses at the same time! How awesome is that!
Is that really a selling point?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Did
THREE DIMENSIONAL?!?!?!?!?!?
O_O
...all cock-blockery aside...
Since nearly every game out there requires you to have the CD in the drive to launch it (ignoring no-CD cracks for the moment), where are you supposed to put the CD to encode music while you're playing games? Or are they referring to the raw wave files of your band that you just finished recording before starting into a heavy gaming session?
This guy's the limit!
There are two big problems I have with Dell computers:
First they have random unneeded software such as Musicmatch jukebox, Quickbooks Demo, various useless Dell phone home software packages etc. There have been several reviews of Dell gaming machines where some games won't even start because of incompatibilities some games have with Dell's TSR's.
Secondly, Dell's warranties aren't worth a crap. For example if a Dell computer has a bad hard drive it will take at least 3 hours of calls and diagnosis before you can get their helpdesk to send someone out to replace it. It's generally easier to go to (insert computer store here) and replace the drive yourself rather than wearing the cost of using Dell's helpdesk at all.
A lot of my customers use Dell computers. I support them a lot. If you do end up with one make sure to reinstal from scratch, try not to use the recovery CDs which will restore all the crappy Dell spyware with it.
That's my 2c.
Kiwi
I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Dell last fall and he mentioned several times that gaming is a major motivation for PC purchases. He said something like, "I think we've sold more World of Warcraft machines in the last year than anything else," in reference to residential sales. He struck me as very savvy, very aware of his market and his products, and how to stay ahead of the pace. I was unsurprised when Dell acquired Alienware.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I doubt so, considering that Dell bundles its XPS PCs with a crap load of software that slows down your gaming exprience. Of course, it's possible to achieve good results by doing a fresh reinstall of Win XP on them.
Or maybe they will just let the Alienware brand die? It's not something that hasn't happened before.
...a dual-core processor system designed to let gamers simultaneously play three-dimensional games while encoding music or scanning for viruses.
Or, you could use *both* cores and play a six-dimensional game!
Makes sense to Atari anyway...
Summation 2
I'm waiting for the M1911, it should perform much better in FPS games. ;-)
Most people run virus software all the time. They also have a few other programs running all the time. Touting your machines ability to run these programs while playing games is an obvious fit.
Unless you're a gamer. You know, the kind of people Dell is hoping will buy an XPS system.
It's all fine and dandy if "most people" want to have all these programs running all the time. Hardcore gamers, though, know to turn everything off if they want the best performance. Dell apparently still doesn't understand this - they first of all load all the same junk onto their XPS machines as they do on their mainstream machines, then rather than tout the raw gaming performance of the XPS line, they tout the fact that you can multitask. Gamers don't care about multitasking. They care about one task and one task only: playing games.
Again, if Dell wants to market the XPS line as sort of a high-end everyman computer, that's fine. But that's never been their stated goal. This was the line intended to garner them street cred, the "top-down" approach where the real hardcore users will spend that extra money and then tell all their friends how great Dell is.
This strategy is ass-backwards if that is their goal. They should be touting how lean their systems are, not how many things you can do at once. They should be touting how many frames per second you can get running the latest games, not how you can encode music while you're playing. These are things that appeal to mainstream users, not the high-end, hardcore users Dell is trying to attract.
If Im purchasing a $4,000 laptop, it surely won't be from Dell. I'd buy Alienware long before I ever even considered Dell.
Ant
Search Engine Marketing
You don't have very creative uses for your PC do you?
... gone are those days with dual core. You have obviously never used a dual-CPU system for any extended period of time, otherwise you would not be saying such foolish things.
The fact of the matter is, dual core processors help tremendously in many scenarios. Why should I wait while my 1 hour miniDV video is being transferred to my PC sucking up 10-15% CPU, when I can play a game during that time and not notice the slightest slowdown? How about those instances when I'm developing, compiling my app and my whole (single CPU) system slows down to a crawl
And which computer these days has only 1 optical drive? Even the cheap emachines from 4 years ago came with a DVD-ROM and CD-RW.
I think the title should read:
Dell Aims for Windows Vista users