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HP Acquires VoodooPC
eldavojohn writes "HP has acquired VoodooPC, a high-end gaming PC provider who's former co-owner will now be the chief technologist of HP's newly formed gaming PC division. Back in May, we saw Dell acquire Alienware. Are gaming machines important options to consumers, or is it just plain profitable? Who will we see enter the gaming market next? Apple?"
-news back. This is over a month old, and was posted here already.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Isn't HP already cursed as it is?
That they are pwned.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
For most people, a "gaming maching" is a PlayStation of XBox, not a high-end PC. There is a relatively small sub-set of gamers who are willing to shell out large amounts of money for high end PCs optimized for gaming, but those machines are non-existant to the vast majority of computer users (and computer buyers). There just aren't that many people who care enough about gaming to spend that kind of money on it. The niche is profitable, but not huge compared to the overall PC market.
David
They'll paint it to look like a Dell or an Apple and start sticking pins into it, now that they have been prevented from engaging in their more conventional business practices.
Where were you when the voynix came?
As far as I know anyone who is a real PC gaming enthusiast custom builds their machine. It is part of the culture to know exactly what is in your machine and exactly why you chose it over its competitors. If you go and buy some pre-rolled rig you'll never feel like you really own it, you'll just feel like you bought it. Most even insist on putting it all together themselves, to me that's half the fun of owning a gaming PC. With that said, I could imagine if dell or hp or whichever manufacturer we're talking about were to offer from the bottom up a choice in every component then I could imagine it would matter.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Get your HPV today!
If you bother to read the article, it says " Effective 1 November 2006, Rahul Sood, co-owner, VoodooPC, will be the chief technologist for HP's newly formed gaming PC business unit. Ravi Sood, co-owner, will be the unit's director of strategy and marketing. Both executives will report to Phil McKinney, general manager, HP's gaming business unit and vice president and chief technology officer of HP's personal systems group." This would mean that any previous post would have been an announcement of intent to acquire, not the actual acquisition. So while one could logically deduce that intent to acquire is equal to the act of acquiring itself, certain realities such as the FTC/SEC, shareholders, competitive offers by other companies, etc may materially alter an acquisition AFTER announcement but BEFORE completion of the acquisition. Hold the applause, just throw money.
in-case-you-missed-it-the-last-time department
No sig for you!!
I live quite close to Voodoo's corporate headquarters and remember back when the company was a small, local system builder. I remember their little classified ad in the Bargain Finder and when their headquarters were in a funky little house. Their exclusive focus on the gaming market is actually relatively recent--for the first decade of its existence Voodoo PCs weren't all visually "tricked out" and weren't all gaming PCs. They used to sell a very cool cube-shaped server on caster wheels (it sported a Voodoo badge but didn't have case windows, unusual paint job or anything like that) and were known for high quality, fast computers suitable for business use as well as being favoured by gaming enthusiasts.
Well, Voodooo has grown up, moving from the funky little house to a unit in an industrial park in southeast Calgary. They've embraced the gaming enthusiast crowd and made the outside of their PCs stand out and reflect the quality of the parts inside. They don't do corporate sales anymore and sell more notebooks than towers now and so it seems to me that they are more of a "detailing shop" than they were when they started as a PC builder. In any case I'd say they comand such a following amongst gamers not just becasue of the product but becasue of the PERSONAL SERVICE...in fact MOSTLY becasue of their personal service nowadays becasue their products grow technically less differentiated from their competitors as time goes on. They seem like the Boyd Coddingtons or Orange County Choppers of the PC world--you'd give them lots of money and they'd sit down with you (in person or over the phone) and go through EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT--what they sell, what they recommend and your final choice from motherboard to processor to drives and what not. It looks to me like it isn't quite like that anymore but it is still apparent that is where their roots are. That is what gamers like--control over how their machine is built and personal attention to detail.
HP/Compaq has always been in my mind the ANTI-Voodoo, even moreso than Dell (which at least allows you to personalise your PC on its website, though not nearly to the extent Voodoo has done before). My past experience with Compaq and HP has been about uniformity and inflexibility and everything gamers probably despise about big PC vendors--you buy model X, get to choose the amount or RAM and hard drive and...well...that's it.
I'm pretty sure that Voodoo machines will continue to be high-quality, high-performace systems and that they will continue to be visually distinctive. Where my doubts come in is with the personal touch you get with a smaller vendor (especially the kind of attention I remember getting from Voodoo a number of years ago). Are Rahul and Ravi going to be more removed from the day-to-day operations now that they are executives in HP's "entertainment PC division"? Will customer's choices dwindle to merely colour and memory choices? Beauty is only skin deep and anything that hurts quality of customer service will do damage to Voodoo's business.
I bought a computer from HP which during check-out they had their own recommendations for anti-spyware programs. They also have tips online to avoid spyware/adware. So, I was very surprised when I got my new computer with the very shaddy WildTangent suite of trail games pre-installed! Their promotion of WildGames does more to hurt with both serious computer users and the gaming community. I very much doubt that buying VoodooPC will ever make up for that. For every lan party that I have been at, the best game machine was been assembled by the owner and not an OEM. And I have yet to see a serious gamer ever purposily install WildTangent. What HP will never understand is that what does *NOT* get installed on a machine is sometimes more important than what is installed.
If you REALLY believe this, then you've never actually built a PC on your own. Out of all of the dozens of PCs that I've owned, either as a new setup or as an upgrade from a previous configuration, I've only ever bought FOUR - my first 12MHz, 286 PC; a Texas Instruments, 25MHz, 486SX laptop; a Gateway of some kind of speed for my wife; and an HP, Athlon 1.4GHz. All of the other dozens of different PCs that I've owned over the past 17 years are my own builds, so I have full confidence in saying that you're full of it.
My current PC took one day to get it all put together, and that includes the installation of three additional fans, two of which required drilling new holes in the case. A plain-Jane PC, regardless of its speed, can be put together in an hour once you have all of the parts ready to go. It takes no more than 5-10 minutes to install any one part - CPU, fan, PSU, motherboard, RAM, hard drive(s), add-on cards, etc. If you use a Shuttle-style, micro-ATX case, okay, I'll give you a few more hours because there's less space to work with. But if you have a full-tower case ready to go, you have no excuse to not have it put together in less than an hour.
Now, of course, those who are smart you would have already downloaded all of the BIOS upgrades, drives, and application upgrades onto another PC or an external hard drive. So, if you're including the time needed to download those in your "time spent wanking around" excuse, that's your own fault. Same thing with the personal data that would be migrated over.
Linux or Windows XP install. 1 hour tops -- TOPS!!
Get the drivers installed, let Windows update itself, get your games installed, get any other apps installed, transfer your data from your existing PC or external hard drive... No, there is no reason why the new PC wouldn't be completely ready to go within a full Saturday or Sunday.
As for tweaking, I find that to be seriously overrated. I take the safe route and pay a bit more for additional power in order to avoid the need for overclocking. My system can play any game out there and play it WELL for less than $1,000 with all-new parts including a dual-core AMD, GeForce 7600GT, 2 GB dual-channel RAM, dual hard drives, dual optical drives, in a microATX case with five fans keeping it at a nice, cool 45C under full load. No overclocking, no tweaking necessary -- in one day.
If you are going to get so uptight about losing one day of gaming to build your own PC, then you clearly have no appreciation for the satisfaction of building a killer PC by yourself.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
...um, "feasability research", hehe, we determined that Voodoo would be a valuable asset.
(we can edit this later right?)
HP used to be a great name for all kinds of hardware before Carly took the reigns. She then came up with these wonderous ideas that got rid of good ideas and filled them with more and more sh!t. It takes a while for that to be cleaned up.
I wish they'd just to back to what they were good at. My pre-Carly LaserJets are still cranking out pages that are as good as if they were brand new. I couldn't wait to get rid of my post-Carly Athlon PC because it kept breaking (needed four parts replacements in three years), I had to threaten a lawsuit in order to get recovery discs, and their customer support was anything but, particularly because I couldn't understand the representatives most of the time.
Just remember -- it only takes a day for a fire to obliterate a forest. It could take decades for the forest to fully recover.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
If "gaming machine" == console, and all three consoles have a secret bootloader, and none of the three console makers is willing to talk to a developer who has no experience, then how are game programmers supposed to break into the industry and get noticed by a development studio?
How many laptop computers did you build?
Then why is this a full article, not a Slashback?
It isn't just the time spent building the PC, its the time spent making sure you're building the right PC. I live this stuff, and even I have to spend a few days checking benchmarks and finding all the right parts.
I like building PCs, I've built over a dozen for myself, work, and friends. But, if I had more money than time, I think it would be totally worth having somebody else deal with all of it and just give me the best PC money can buy.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
It isn't just the time spent building the PC, its the time spent making sure you're building the right PC. I live this stuff, and even I have to spend a few days checking benchmarks and finding all the right parts.
I like building PCs, I've built over a dozen for myself, work, and friends. But, if I had more money than time, I think it would be totally worth having somebody else deal with all of it and just give me the best PC money can buy. If you didn't have time to research the components, how exactly could you be sure it was "the best PC money could buy" - or, indeed, a decent PC? My current PC is a fairly ordinary, commerically-bought model, and I still ended up researching all the major components to chack they were up to scratch before I bought it...
>how exactly could you be sure it was "the best PC money could buy"
>
That is where brand name comes in. I don't know if it is still true, but Falcon Northwest use to make a killer rig. Sure, it costs 2-3 times more then I'm willing to pay but, if I had the money, I would trust them to give me the best.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Not off-the-shelf PCs. They might want some strange piece of hardware that VoodooPC or another outfit won't provide, or they bight want "better quality" components, a lot of fancy case designs come to mind. In fact, I would argue that gamers probably make up the majority of the DIY and hobbyist markets. However, the high price of the PS3 coupled with the requisite HD display means that PC gaming might seem more attractive than it has in the past, especially with the allure of online games like World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2142. So this niche might be bigger than you think. Oe it might simply be a case of "Dell did it, so we'll do it too.". I expect a buyout of Falcon Northwest anytime now.