Slashdot Mirror
Alienware Admit Trying to Fiddle Reviews
An anonymous reader writes "Alienware seem to have admitted threatening review sites with no future hardware unless positive reviews are written about their products. Hexus.net attempted to obtain a recent Alienware system and were rebuffed in an email claiming that their last review had scuppered the chances of them getting any hardware to review in the future. Follow-up emails confirmed this was part of Alienware's global marketing strategy. " I've read through the whole article and it would appear that the above is what the rep said. Now, granted, one would hope that's one person in that company, but still bad form.
I think not. They have always had over-priced, flashy cases with mediocre hardware. And do you think most companies give out free hardware to get "C" grade reviews? No, of course not. This is just part of the marketing game.
I, for one, suggest "AlienatingWare".
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
I thought everybody just kind of knew that hardware companies weren't going to supply hardware to bad reviewers? That would just be counter-intuitive on the part of the manufacturer. That's pretty much why I don't put too much stock in reviews and try and dig as much info as I can out of user reviews.
I've read through the whole article
Who are you and what have you done with the real editors?!?!?!??
Alienware is AWESOME! Great! Superb! This article is FUD.
/checks mail
/checks mail again
They're still Awesome!! HELLOooO!!! Your hardware rules!
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
Consumer Reports magazine has the right idea... If you're going to review and test products, you need to obtain them the exact same way, and through the same channels, that end-users do. Even if a manufacturer can seemingly be trusted not to withhold new products from reviewers to retaliate for a bad review, it doesn't mean they're not "cherry picking" the products they're sending them!
Especially in cases where there are high numbers of D.O.A. or malfunctioning units, reviewers simply don't catch this problem if they're only receiving pre-tested, pre-selected samples for free evaluation.
Fine. No hardware for you either.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I wrote for a couple of computer industry trade rags back in the early 90s and the editorial policy was that we never gave bad reviews. If a product sucked, the review was never published. We gave feedback back to the manufacturer but nothing got printed.
The reasoning was simple. If the manufacturer really wanted a review printed, they would fix their product (and some of them REALLY wanted good reviews and actually did make improvements). And if the magazine wanted to continue to get advertising dollars, they didn't print bad reviews. It was the unspoken quid pro quo.
It depends on what is being reviewed. For most system makers, no.
There are a number of systems built by the maker for review purposes..they are configured and then shipped out for review. The reviewer has a number of days to do their work and then the system is shipped back. The system maker will clean up, check and reconfigure the system then send it out to the next reviewer.
I would rather have my pictures of getting my ass whipped by a horde of crazy sado-masochist foot fetishist south african mongolian descent hentai zulu tribe circulate around the internet instead of this news in slashdot, if i were alienware.
Read radical news here
Is anyone surprised by this?
Apple has been doing this for years.... sites or publications that don't give glowing reviews are not invited to press conferences, don't get the cool swag, are excluded from preview announcements, don't get access to excutives. It's one way that Apple manipulates (influences) the press... that's why sites that always give great reviews (see Wall St. Journal) always have easy access to the newest equipment and executives.
Review sites are rampant with fradulent reviews on both sides. Manufacturers are giving hardware in exchange for favorable reviews and meanwhile many of the review sites are just shills for hardware vendors. It's always been somewhat true that the advertising side of publications had some influence over the editorial side, it's just gotten much worse (and easier to cheat
You should check Apple's latest prices, now that we can do apples to apples comparisons.
I think you'll find that the hardware is relatively fairly priced, although most is higher level (except for the Macbook - still using a Core Duo - bah). $2500 for a dual Woodcrest system? That's an awesome price.
Now, for the upgrades, they're on the order of Dell's pricing - far too expensive for what you get.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
> Seems to me that threatening a reviews site is a bad move. Rather than give into the threat, they may as well right an account of it. The scandal will draw peoples attention to the review site. Review site wins, Alienware grumbles.
That's what I would do. Start the page with the regular sort of title and photo of the product, then just say that you can't review the product because the vendor didn't approve of your honesty in the last review.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Companies are plural, but company is singular. No matter what country you are in, one business is one business.
Where were you when the voynix came?
HardOCP buys their review systems through retail channels and tests their tech support while posing as a regular customer. They're one of the few hardware sites that reviews the "consumer experience" instead of just the hardware.
A wealthy friend of my wife's came to me saying she wanted to buy the best PC, and money wasn't an object. She doesn't know enough to put together her own system, but her work does require a powerful system since she does financial work including the use of fractal something or other in futures investing. Stuff I don't understand, but she runs Mathematica and Maple and the fancy graphical displays of those programs. She also plays around in Second Life and blah blah blah. Someone else had told her about Alienware, but she sensibly decided those machines were too gaudy.
So I told her to check out Falcon. I mean, I'd much rather put my system together myself, but this Falcon system she got was gorgeous. The case was just stunning (which was important to my friend) and inside the case you could really tell that someone had spent a lot of time organizing things properly, trimming cables, etc.
And the system is just wicked-fast. SLI, the whole nine yards. Drivers were all updated and there weren't even any of those shareware teaser programs like Dell and Gateway put on their machines. It was simply a beautiful PC for someone who could afford it.
I don't know about dropping over $7k on a PC that I'm going to have to upgrade in 18 months anyway, even if it does include two 21" LCD monitors. But she's as happy as if she'd just blown Brad Pitt. God I hope she doesn't read this.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's the problem with PCs and their fanboys - you mistake "flash" for "design". Apple's designs are functional - there are no alien head ornaments or strange plastic bubbles attached for "looks". If you honestly can't see that when comparing an Alienware case to the Mac Pro tower case, you're hopeless.
Now I've finally managed to read the full article, the email chain is pretty embarassing. When words like 'moron' start getting bandied about then the author has overstepped the bounds of professionalism IMO.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I would always advocate building your own vs. buying, however, there's becoming a finer line between pricing, power, service, and hassle. I recently (like 6-months ago, so I guess that's like a different era in computers terms) went through the whole, "I'm going to get a new computer" process. I ended up with a Dell XPS 600. I'm quite happy with it so far. Some small annoyances, I shouldn't have gotten the WinXP Media Center, so much crap software is installed on it, and for some strange reason, at random times, my mouse wouldn't activate on boot-up until I re-plugged it in.
The thing is, I can build my own and I've done it enough in the past. However, build your own only works best if you have 'known good' parts you can swap out, should something drastically bad go wrong. Like my last effort to upgrade my old box to the point of building my own. New MoBo, CPU, RAM, etc. Well, the MoBo I ordered was bad, it fried the whole system, and I had to replace all the parts. I can tell you, it was not a pleasure to contact each manufacturer and/or online store to get the warranty invoked for replacement parts. It was taking over a month, and so I just bought a nice laptop instead.
This time around, I could have built a 'faster' computer for the same price as some XPS systems, but then I'd have to still buy a Monitor and such. However, the speed I would get out of the new system wasn't significantly better than the XPS system I built. Nor did it have the 3-year warranty(even if Customer Service is a PITA). However, with my DELL laptop, I can tell you, when parts broke, like a Hard Drive, or RAM, one (long) phone call and I'd get a new replacement part in the mail practically the next day, with FedEx, where I could swap parts, and mail (at no cost) the bad part back. I also didn't have to setup the RAID drives or purchase a WinXP license, install all the software (though it would be better since I can skip all the Dell crap they add), etc. etc. Basically, it was easier and just as expensive, after doing to pricewatch.com and picking all my parts, paying for shipping, buying a monitor, putting everything together, crossing my fingers everything works, and hopping for the best, to just buy a Dell and go from there. Of course, now, I can just upgrade at this point. Which was my whole plan.
Dells prices have gotten to the point that, it's actually not such a bad idea, if you have to get an entire new system, that you might as well get it all at once with a warranty for all your parts from the same place, to save some hassle.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Just as I'm about to launch my new site: http://www.pleasesendyouritemstomecauseiwillonlywr itegoodreviews.com/ This site is of course ad-free and will be sponsored by people that send stuff. The new breakthrough will be "The Button" on the site. We have only one button and it will take you to random company that has sent stuff. Thanks!
In Britain companies can be plural or singular depending on context. You would use singular when the company is acting as one e.g. 'Zob corporation is in agreement with the ruling' but plural when the corporate entity is not acting as one e.g. 'Zob Corporation are internally in disagreement about the best way forward'. See the Economist style guide here.x .cfm?page=805687
http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/inde
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Now that I've actually RTFA, it doesn't sound like a threat to me.
"We'd love to have a SKU which we can review and activate on launch day, to coincide with NVIDIA's release."
(The offer is made)
"Hello Tarinder,
I'm afraid, after the last review, our ability to send you any hardware for review is pretty much gone."
(The offer is refused)
"Matt,
the email inviting 'Alienware' to submit a G80 based system was sent without my authority."
(the offer wasn't permitted)
Matt was responding to an invitation. He declined because it's not his job to allow for less-than-perfect reviews.
Could it be that hexus is upset by this refusal?
...a hypothetical person came to me stating he/she wanted to astroturf for company "A". She stated she didn't have the technical expertise to do it on her own, so she wanted to pay for someone else's expertise. I told her I could do it, with the following formula:
1.) Point out superficial problems with company "B", then supply a reference to company "A".
2.) ???
3.) Profit!
I agree. Mr Bettinson didn't have to give a reason for refusal, but he did. This was taken by the people at hexus to be a threat or hint that they would accept so long as a better review was given. Did Mat Bettinson say he'd conditionally accept? It was a straight refusal in my eyes. So any reasons given for the refusal would serve to inform rather than persuade.
The high-end Alienware laptops blow. My company has gone through 5 of their "desktop in a laptop" computers in less than 2 years because the level of quality is so low that they just don't last. The Intel systems just stop working after a little while(requiring Alienware replacements because Alienware won't refund our money) and the Aurora 7700 "gaming" laptop won't even play Stronghold 2(too choppy) or Black and White 2 (speeds up and slows down a lot). However, if you read the reviews of the hardware, they're all glowing and happy about them. The problem is that regular laptops simply aren't powerful enough for our needs. Even the fastest laptop processors are FAR behind desktop processors as far as performance is concerned.
Somehow, I'm not surprised that hardware reviewers throw massive hissy fits. "Professionalism?" Please. These are guys who are given new, shiny toys to play with. They then get to write about the experience on the internets, and people think they're pretty cool. I would be shocked by the presence of professionalism among the reviewer corps, not its absence.
"Simply because if Hexus has been critical in the past of a ('our') product, then when they release a favorable review regarding another of the company's products, it appears much more honest (and thus more trustworthy) than a site that has always had glowingly positive reviews of our product line."
Hexus asked for the same sku again. No reason why they would have reviewed it differently.
"The editor of Hexus did kinda come across as a dickweed in his e-mail, but that's forgiven because he's British... I don't think they know how to sound polite."
I doubt being British has anything to do with it. Many of the guys who run review sites are amateurs with delusions of entitlement and no sense of professionalism. As another poster put it, they are "children playing at business."
Back when I was hands-on in providing gaming hardware to reviewers, there was a world of difference in working with the print pubs vs. reviewer sites. Hexus' reaction was nothing new... the review sites all seemed to be run by people with the mentality of 16-year-olds who would pull stunts just like Hexus did: printing your private emails if you dared to refuse to send them free stuff.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.