Alienware NOT influcenced by Dell

Hi all, I've been an avid reader of this forum for sometime and greatly appreciate the level of insight and speculation presented by you all (especially GRB.. props).

I feel obligated to address Alienware's position as a subsidiary of Dell Inc. as several of you make wrong assumptions about this kind of partnership which can mislead several readers to believe that Alienware's products are substantially influenced by Dell's gaming laptop division in terms of sharing technical knowledge and build components.

Firstly, I can only speculate how this partnership works myself as I do not work for either company, but several things are clear about their relationship from a marketing/customer standpoint.

Alienware and Dell are competitors. On the surface, it appears that Dell purchased Alienware to control the "boutique" end of the gaming laptop market, but they haven't limited Alienware to producing products that do not compete with already existing Dell products. For instance, the Dell XPS 1730 and the Alienware m17x directly compete for the same customers. Dell has not closed their gaming notebook division as a result of purchasing Alienware, and Alienware was not "consumed" by Dell as a result of its purchase either.

As such, both entities are working to achieve your money and while some of of the funds generated by the sale of either a Dell or an Ailenware notebook end up in Dell's giant pocket, some of those funds are also likely appropriated to whichever division generated the sale. Those funds are used to bolster the division itself with new research and products. In this fashion, Alienware is trying to "out do" Dell's gaming notebook division in the same way it did before Dell owned them. Since sharing technical knowledge/build materials with your competitor hinders your ability to create a truly competative product, I'll argue that Dell's gaming notebook division and Alienware are completely isolated within Dell's framework.

Those not familiar with inner-company competition can look no further than GM and the isolation and competition it sustains between divisions.

With this argument, any statemets stating that "Alienware is getting help/learning from Dell" and that the Alienware product will reflect similarities as a result is likely incorrect.

Your educated input will be greatly appreciated.

 

ok thanks.

 

Haha if you look at some older posts of mine you'll see that I pretty much correct tons of people here when they say Dell and AW are together in terms of management. Yea but thanks for posting this so that newbies won't say that Dell and AW work together when the manufacture or anything.

And what do you mean by speculation?

 

I'm glad you agree. I must have missed your posts defending this position. All too often a statement like "since Alienware is Dell" goes without contention.

As for "speculation", this forum is ripe with user's trying to guess what Alienware is doing behind the scenes! I recall individuals claiming that m17x was going to be released "in the next two weeks" back in February. This claim was then stated every two weeks when the original statement turned out to be false. It's all healthy though as most of it is just positive hype.

 

Oh lol I thought you were talking about the whole fiasco that went down with Alienware - Steve when I called him out because I thought he was a fraud

But yea I was one of the people who were like "Wouldn't it be funny if the M17x came out in April or May (to prospective M9750 buyers and others). Well I guess I was off by 2 months but in the wrong direction

 

Dellware, nuff said.. lol oooonly jkin

 

dell monitors sold by alienware.

 

While not necessarily influencing the laptops themselves, there are other areas where AW is influenced by Dell, such as Helios pointed out, access to Dell accessories such as monitors and printers, and when AW was asked a question about an ultraportable 13.3", AW kindly pointed us towards the XPS m1330

But otherwise, I completely agree, don't know whether it's a wise strategy or not, before the revamp, Sony was killing itseld by competing with itself, and now that it's been streamlined, it's a much better company for it

 

what do you mean by sony killing itself by competing with itself?

 

Perhaps I can shed some light on that. I'm not familiar with the Sony case, but in general releasing two products that either overlap or are generally equivalent is a risky move for a manufacturer most importantly because of inventory control. When a consumer chooses one of Sony's competing laptops over the other, Sony may have sold one, but the other potential sale still remains in inventory. When the consumer chooses a non-Sony competing laptop, Sony now has two unsold laptops in its inventory. In terms of what Sony likely spent to research, develop and then market two overlapping products, this can easily be seen as a huge loss.

 

We carried Dell monitors for quite some time before the merger happened. I occasionally see groups of Dell guys walking the halls, but for the most part Alienware is still run by all the same people.

 

Those guy in the hallway are auditing your finances and transactions, and in the meanwhile asking why is NBR forum more popular than AW Forum. EVen the AW mods are here right stevie?

 

@ Alienware-Steve: I assume your not an impostor? I'm glad you chimed in for this thread topic. Perhaps you could elaborate more on your relationship with Dell in terms of knowledge sharing? (obviously nothing we'd all have to sign an NDA over). I'm curious to know just how much research and development is handled internally.

 

The divisions did not communicate with eachother, to the point, where two divisions brought out competing cameras...
Sony also had other problems, but there was an article in Fortune about it a while ago, how the new CEO cleaned, and streamlined Sony

 

Actually, before the introduction of the m17x I would have agreed 100% with that statement. The XPS line of dell is usually below the alienware lineup. Sure they might have the high end video cards but the m1710 only had a single card while the 9700/9750 had sli. And there was no talk of a 15" gaming unit until the m5750 was dead and the m15x monster was in development. But now here comes the m17x, designed and brought out entirely under dell ownership and...it's an m1730 in different packaging...

I see it as a bad omen. I see either alienware disappearing completely into the xps lineup, alienware just being an "image", or dell knocking the xps products back down a peg (not likely). Look at alienware's timeline of "innovations" - http://www.alienware.co.uk/innovations_pages/innovation_timeline.aspx

They were aquired by dell in early 2006 so we can probably assume that most of the 2006 projects were still completed while not under dell ownership and were started while still independant.

Not dell owned: Sentia notebooks - light, fast, unique. mALX - best looking notebook ever with power to spare.

Dell owned: m15x - deadly fast but teething problems hurt sales badly. 9750 - powerful and fast but overstayed its welcome by being too expensive for too long after launch. m17x - same specs as 1730 but in a different, more expensive package.

 

For years Dell actually fostered competition from within. If you notice when you log into dell's site you can choose home user or business user. These two divisions have battled with different specials and prices for different computer lines for years. It's part of Dell's overall strategy of confusing the customer and rewarding those who really study their latest offerings.
Secondly, as someone in this forum mentioned, that alienware sells dell monitors, well I was on Dell's website not too long ago and dell was offering the m15x directly on their own website. When you clicked the link, it took you to alienware's website.

 

Steve's not an imposter, he's the Support Forums Administrator at Alienware. He's been very helpful to this community.

 

I dont see how dell leaving a link to the m15x is like them selling it. The reason they would put up he m15x is because the m15x is, and stil is the only 15.4 inch formfactor that can carry an extreme cpu and the 8800m GTX.

Lets just say some guy comes to the dell website and is looking for a top gaming laptop. He sees what dell has to offer, but is not happy with the large size and weight. Then he looks DOWN! the page and notices the m15x link and follows it. He finds that this laptop meets his needs of mobility and gaming and chooses to buy it, rather than leaving the dell/AW area and looking elsewhere. This way, they have a bette cance of getting a sale that stays in the circle.

Perfect marketing strategy!

 

Okay, I'm going to clear up some things first.

"Not dell owned: Sentia notebooks - light, fast, unique. mALX - best looking notebook ever with power to spare.

Dell owned: m15x - deadly fast but teething problems hurt sales badly. 9750 - powerful and fast but overstayed its welcome by being too expensive for too long after launch. m17x - same specs as 1730 but in a different, more expensive package."

Well while your argument sounds good, it is flawed in my opinion.

1. The Sentia notebook was just your average portable notebook with the same crappy intel integrated card and the Pentium M processor. There was nothing special about it except you paid out the ass for it.

2. The mALX was a decent notebook. The screen resolution on it was a little too low and it also used a single core processor which made it a bad buy.

3. The M5500 and the M5550 were developed by alienware as well. Both of these notebook had horrendous heating issues (just look on the forums). Mine went up to 98C and downclocked and my friend's M5500 is going up to 105C before downclocking. The heat from the GPU has actually cracked his case over time from him constantly playing WOW with the high temps.

4. The Alienware "D900" was an Alienware notebook "designed" by them but had many issues with the motherboard crapping out on some systems which was pretty bad.

5. I have seen a lot of Alienware notebooks and I actually regard the M9700 and the M9750 as two of Alienwares BEST notebooks that they have ever released. The M9700 came in cool colors, and more importantly stayed cool. The M9750 expanded further on this good design by having a Matte surface, a Dual Core processor, and (2) 7950GTX cards. The M9750 also stays cool no matter how long you use it. I have played counter strike and other games for hours and the palm rest does not warm up at all. This is not the case with the "D900" and the 15" notebooks which all got so warm that my wrist sweat while using it.

 

Well i believe theres influence and just my 2c the reason m17x took so long to release was that Dells heavy infantry XPS1730 reach a target profit first,cant see any other reason since m17x went on release just a month before monteniva and R&D could resolve heat/downclocking problems with the chassis months before.

 

how about getting people to by the m15x. if they were both released at same time, then the m15x sales would have dropped by a huge amount.

 

AW m15x and m17x refers to 2 different groups of customers,is portability vs desktop replacement,well even if m15x sales were dropped im sure the profit AW would had made if the same consumers were buying the m17x would be much more since we talking about a very importand increase of budget,close to 30-40%++.

Im sure m17x will not have the same success m9750 had (we can have an idea just by looking how frequently someone post a m17x thread) even if it carries 2x8800 GTX,1TB HD and so on and the only reason for that is that they are late,Dells XPS 1730 had a huge success in the market,Clevos had been on the market all that long with 8800GTX and now m17x comes a month before monteniva to give noth new but looks after all this waiting.

From all this strategy,AW didnt got any benefit i believe(other than the advertising m15x have in Dells site) but lost many 17''inch buyers that were absorbed from Dell/Clevo.