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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'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.
Not true. I've given very poor reviews of kit and the manufacturer still supplies me with new product to evaluate. I've never had the 'Alienware' problem myself. The only thing like this is if the review is for a magazine/website that the PR company or supplier may think doesn't have enough clout in which case you'll get the 'sure, it's in the post' line and no amount of chasing will make anything actually turn up.
One thing I would add though and this is purely anecdotal, I work within the UK market and there, it is an often repeated statement that US magazines can have very different standards for reviews and often print what the manufacturers give them to print rather than writing the copy themselves. No idea if it's true or not.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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
I've been a subscriber for four years. I don't recall ever seeing them rate eMachines highly. In the most recent issue, they rate a Compaq Presario highly for Budget Models (512MB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive). For workhorse models (1GB RAM, 250GB Hard Drive), they rate a Gateway highly. But, for both Compaq and Gateway, they point out that support and reliability are below par. You should note that being rated HIGHLY, does not necessarily mean CR recommends a particular item.
In general, CR recommends Apple. In their benchmarking system, Apple doesn't usually rate highly. There are almost always Windows machines that perform better than a particular Apple product (at least in CR's testing). But, when it comes to reliability, support and the general lack of Virus issues, CR prefers Apple.
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.
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.
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