Dell to Buy High-End PC Maker Alienware

Kinda ironic - yesterday I was discussing to a friend the advantages of an Alienware system to the Dell gaming systems. Looks like that argument has been taken care of.

As long as Dell leaves Alienware alone to contine building the same as they have, it should work.

ditto

I bet that comptuer is worth every penny, esp with the 2gb of ram :P

As the article points out, this is a great move by both sides. Dell gets the market that they've desperately wanted for a long time, and Alienware gets the best logistics in the industry.

"cheap, high-quality computers"

anybody else see anything wrong with this statement?

"cheap, high-quality computers"

anybody else see anything wrong with this statement?

Not really.

I have about 600 dell computers that I admin. I very rarely have any hardware problems with them, and when I do its usually a HDD or a CD-ROM (the pieces that you expect to have the most problems with due to moving parts). I have to call dell, maybe, once a month for service.

When you factor in the 4 year complete care, hit it with a sledge hammer and we'll still replace it, warranty they are a great value.

I agree with Michael, anyone that uses there systems on a daily basis I think could agree to that statement, not saying that every part is high-quality and that nothing breaks, things do. But I think they do a really good job compared to the industry standard, and it's part of the reason they are so successful.

As long as the brand integrity of Alienware stays intact they should be fine. Gamers like the niche, most don't want to say they have a dell gaming rig, but rather some crazy wacked out insanely expensive super sick unknown computer. That's how Alienware started.

I hope that Dell does have one impact on Alienware - and that is the overall price. Dell, with it's vast purchasing power, can probably negotiate a lower price for the components Alienware already uses - and thus some of that savings could be passed onto the consumer.

I agree, that is logical, finalcut, but I'm afraid if anything, Dell would bump up the prices.

I bought an Area-51 7500, it never functioned properly, don't get me started, but that system was still $400 less than a dell XPS configured the same way.

The most ridiculous part, however, is that in order to upgrade from GeForce 7800 with 256 MB per card to 512 MB per card, the price must go up $1,500. Not only do the two video cards not cost that much together, but that is also subtracting the price of the two 7800 256MB. Maybe, maybe, a $600 upgrade. Tops.

No, dell won't lower prices.

Dell hasn't had a real focus on high end gaming machines in the past (they haven't had sufficient market share most likely and thus haven't been cutting better deals on parts).

Typically Dell is well known for their highly competitive prices (some may say uncompetitive undercutting of prices) - it would not suprise me that with this shot across the bow of the high end gaming market if Dell ended up improving their competitive advantage in the area by bringing the prices of Alienware machines down to a level that is more inline with Alienware's current competitors.