Tuesday, May 13, 2008

New "Low-Cost" Alienware Gaming Rig

UPDATE: Looks like Dell has come out of the woodwork to say that the XPS brand will coexist with the Alienware brand. That doesn't mean they won't share components at the low-end, however. It'll be interesting to see exactly how this pans out.


When Dell, makers of the under-whelming and over-priced Warcraft laptop, picked up Alienware, hardcore, rich gamers freaked. Buyouts like this usually only mean one thing: the degradation of quality of the superior product line -- in this case, Alienware and it's powerful computing lineup.

Dell, very aware of the reaction the acquisition received, promised that they wouldn't meddle in Alienware's affairs. But unfortunately, promises in the business world are about as dependable as Blizzard's oceanic servers -- not very.

After yesterday's announcement that they will be dropping the XPS gaming line (which includes their WoW laptops) and shifting focus onto Alienware, Dell (yes, Dell, not Alienware) just announced a new, "low-cost," AMD-based gaming rig for release later this month. It will be branded with the face of a bug-eyed space invader, and target a chunk of the market that Alienware has ignored in the past: people who won't spend $4000 for a machine to play games on.

If that isn't a tell-tale sign of Dell applying what it learned in Business school, I don't know what is.

GG, suits. GG. And for anyone that is suckered into buying one of these systems, "Dude, you're getting a PoS." Grats. ;)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its only a matter of time before they dump their wow laptops for cheap now that xps systems are done.

Anonymous said...

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/05/13/dell-to-end-its-world-of-warcraft-computer-line/

Anonymous said...

Um, Jag, what do your superiors think of this post?

Anonymous said...

I'm confused. Dell is making the Alienwear gear now?

Zy said...

@Gina

Dell purchased alienware a few years ago.


I own an xps system that I purchased in january. I pumped the little sucker as far as I could without bottlenecking and it came to around 1800. I can tell you its certainly not a bad laptop, and I can play most recent games at full visual quality. (Of course I am a computer tech for a living so I immediately ripped out all that pre-installed dell bs)

AMD is behind in the technology curve right now. Their current chip architecture doesn't touch the core series... I am interested to see what thier " sell point " is going to be aside the alienware logo.

My guess is its going to be a dubbed down xps with vista home a 333 FSB with hyperthreading ( eww. Don't settle for less than 800 if you want to game) And other parts from this last years overproduction.

Despite the sub-par parts the machine will have, they will do what alienware used to do to those poor unfortunates that didn't know a lot about computers.

lol factory overclock and sell it for more!

/sigh

Anonymous said...

I bought an xps laptop a year ago and was suprised by how cheap it is. If Alienware computers end up feeling that cheap, no one will take them seriously anymore.

Anonymous said...

Oh thank you zyphre!

Anonymous said...

you called it Jag

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/16/dell-to-integrate-alienware-and-xps-dev-teams-take-xps-line-in/