Submitted by Dell has announced it has acquired Alienware, a well-known digital solitaire machines maker. “Dell said Alienware will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary following completion of the transaction and will maintain its own product development, product marketing, sales, technical support and other operations as well as brand. The management and founders of Alienware will continue to operate the company as a standalone unit of Dell.”
OMG WTF! There goes the neighbourhood.
-Ad
Even Dell know that there’s no money in commodity PC’s. Alienware will give them a distinct advantage over HP, PB and the rest.
so they have bought the company in name only. why play with a successful buisness plan I guess
“…a well-known digital solitaire machines maker…”
WTF is that supposed to mean? In case the author is not aware, PC’s have been able to do a lot more than just play solitaire…
You obviously don´t get the joke, the authors means the exact opposite, they usually make dream PCs…
When an economy shows signs of Acquisitions, it will mean very badly injuried one. Acquisitions= less competition=less ideas’ diversity=less innovations.
Imagine Apple, HP, Dell unite in one company then you will understand previous equation.
Or imagine Adobe, Quark, Macromedia merge on Desktop publishing.
I hope this will stop soon otherwise computing future will be in doubt. I pray.
My friend, it will not stop. XGI is acquired by ATI. Actually crashed by ATI because of innovation. It will not stop!
However I pray with you. Governments these days seem to be rushing to partys and paying little attention to our countries. 🙁
Or imagine Adobe, Quark, Macromedia merge on Desktop publishing.
I’m pretty sure Adobe already bought Macromedia and if Quark keeps putting out crap like 6.5 then they are going out of business.
// if Quark keeps putting out crap like 6.5 then they are going out of business.//
>sigh< proabably not, as much as I would wish it. Quark is still firmly entrenched is thousands of design shops, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere. We have to have it on our Mac, because our clients need it.
I sure wish everyone would switch to InDesign …
Resistance is futile./sarcasm
Smart move though.Never liked the style of the XPS’s from DELL, to litle distinction.
Edited 2006-03-23 10:49
Maybe I’m mistaken here, but isn’t this one of those “uppermanagement not have a clue” issues? Or perhaps it’s the complete opposite “Uppermanagement genius plan”.
The thing is (without knowing far to much about Alienware) is that they hardly target the same customer base. My thought here is that the Alienware customerbase will flee from Dell? Anyone else expect this?
OTH maybe with Dell selling, some of the customers who wouldn’t find Alienware get a chance of buying their stuff, and will do. I wonder which one is right.
The thing is (without knowing far to much about Alienware) is that they hardly target the same customer base.
Exactly– that’s the whole point in companies buying other companies. One can do that to a) strengthen one’s core business, or b) to expand into new markets.
This is clearly a case of b).
it could be genius… it FINALLY allows dell to sell AMD without losing their Intel privilages
I’ve played with few Alienware laptops. They’re aren’t that good. Dell has way better laptops for consumers.
I’d take the XPS 600 over Alienware any day.
“I’d take the XPS 600 over Alienware any day.”
And you would regret at the performance difference between that oclocked p4 and an oclocked AMD. Also power draw, heat etc so yeah I dont think I would.
I think given some more time Alienware could have dethroned Dell from PC leader like Dell did with Gateway… Basically when ever a company gets well known for building good system, and the current leader is getting known for slipping in quality the New one start to take over and in a period of a decade it finally takes over.
“I think given some more time Alienware could have dethroned Dell from PC leader like Dell did with Gateway… Basically when ever a company gets well known for building good system, and the current leader is getting known for slipping in quality the New one start to take over and in a period of a decade it finally takes over.”
Possibly. The thing is Alienware and Dell have 2 seperate market segments. Alienware specializes in high end gaming machines. Dell specializes in Business and Basic home machines, with a foray into gaming with the XPS line. I don’t think they would have dethroned Dell so to speak as Alienware is not about business machines, although they could be used as such obviously, but are more expensive then standard Dell’s due to better components.
..in light of this recent news-item:
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14070
It also shows The Inq occasionally is spot on:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30043
(see date of article)
It also shows The Inq occasionally is spot on.
As I’ve said before– look beyond the Inq’s tone, and they often say the right thing. Same goes for El Reg.
We just finished switching over from our poor quality controlled Dell’s to AlienWare machines this year. While battery life isn’t comparable, they are far more sturdy and seem to be better built than the Dell laptops that we’ve had. Without an on-site support contract I wouldn’t own a Dell laptop that is mission critical. Now I’m stuck back where I started! I hope someone can come up with a quality laptop that uses a GeForce graphics card and reasonable screen sizes and form factors.
dell doesnt use AMD. will this mean alienware will eventually cycle AMD out too??
Maybe their quality will go up on their laptops. They’re well known to be crap, reliability-wise.
Actually, their business lines are pretty decent (I won’t say the same for the Inspirons).
It will be interesting to see whether Dell actually does what it says it will and keeps its mitts off Alienware.
/. had this awhile ago … but it’s worth repeating.
From what I understand, Alienware support is *HORRIBLE* … google for it.
Perhaps Dell can help in that regard.
Personally, I still don’t get why folks wanna pay top-dollar for a Dell XPS or Alienware box … when they can build one themselves for 25-30% less cost.
And, really, with all the resources available nowadays — it isn’t that hard to learn how to build a box.
/. had this awhile ago … but it’s worth repeating.
And ‘awhile’ would be less than 8 hours earlier?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/22/2324229
“Personally, I still don’t get why folks wanna pay top-dollar for a Dell XPS or Alienware box … when they can build one themselves for 25-30% less cost.”
Because, not everyone’s a technician. Beside, they heavily test their systems to make sure every part would work, whereas folks will get tired after building their systems, so they drop testing the system for stability.
Testing is a big issue here cause some OEMs might get certified if their systems are heavily tested.
Possibly because people have lives and better things to do with their time than build computers?
Goodbye Alienware! …and thanks for the fish!
how unfortunate. I used to really like and lauded Alienware’s rise to success and fame. So sad it’s left its roots and become a corporate slave now.
You know it could turn out that Alienware will become better and actually deliver their products on time…and they will have better tech support and better eveyrthing. It could be seen as an improvement. Dell did not get big because they sucked…they got big because they knew how to handle customers.
They are well suited to come together, they’ve got one thing in common, they both have awful service. We’re still trying to get a Alienware machine up and running after 4 months from delivery, freezes every few days, Alienware won’t take it back until we’ve figured out the problem, so if we don’t figure out the problem we’re stuck with a broken machine.
An obvious aquisition,nevertheless a smart one.
Subsidiary. Look it up and stop freaking out, people.