Ask Alienware's General Manager, Frank Azor, Anything on AWA!

http://na.alienwarearena.com/forums...re-s-general-manager-frank-azor-anything/last
(I link to news post because forum thread is locked for the time being)
I don't know how long it'll last, but one thing is for sure, we'll get to know a bit more than before.
As a reminder (possibly), let's be respectful, even in criticism and disagreement, in asking questions and receiving answers. That thread will be bombarded with Q's and A's, some potentially worthless, obvious (or dumb, however you put it), and/or hate-filled, so you can see (hopefully) why I made such a reminder.
To find the responses easier.

 

I'm curious as to what he has to say about the 180W vs 240W power supply with the AW17 R2 withe 980m.

 

I'd also be interested to hear the take on the PSU's for 15/17 with 980m......

 

I'd like to know how they can say (in their promotional videos) that the AW systems are all about "uncompromising performance", and yet they state the AW17 was designed to function with a 180W PSU. Which is fine for the GTX 970M, but clearly not enough for the GTX 980M. Pretty much the antithesis of "uncompromising performance".

Why does ASUS ship their G751JY with a 230W PSU, while AW only provides a 180W? Does ASUS know something Dell doesn't?

 

If you guys want, I'll post your questions for you. Granted, I'll limit them to 5 and there are some questions I want to ask. I'm pretty much guaranteed first sense I moderate the forums in my free time, which this AMA is in.
So far, there's
- PSU/charger question.
- 18 / Dual-dGPU laptop (someone is going to ask it; might as well get it over with)
And I have a couple of my own.
The thread has acquired alot of views, so there's bound to be alot of people viewing it.

 

The answer to why they only offer a 180W PSU is simple: to save money. Frank manages both the XPS and Alienware lineups now, and I guess he was like... "Why don't we just streamline the power adapters and save money on production and warranty costs?" It also limits the ability to overclock, which probably saved money on warranty or service requests as well. I'm sure thousands of people think, "Alienware, me overclock so hard!" And end up bricking their systems, lol.

Pretty much the entire lineup is designed the way it is to be "cheap." Even Frank said in his Alienware 13 review that cutting costs was a top priority. I think asking about that is a waste of a question, considering you only have so many to ask or that he's willing to answer. You may be better off asking why they are trending toward streamlining their products with other companies instead of standing out by keeping things such as upgradeability and "raw performance" a top priority for customers - seeing these systems not only as "toys" but rather investments - ultimately transforming Alienware into a follower as opposed to a market or industry leader.

I'd love to have a long discussion with him. Hell, I would love to work for the Alienware team. It would be awesome if they had an internship program or something... I'd definitely keep enthusiasts in the loop.

 

Better to ask anyways. I'm sure Frank Azor has some limitations in which he prose his responses (vagueness, advertising to divert the answer, etc.), but given what he'll say, we'll have a more concrete understanding of 2015 Alienware.

 

@Game7a1 - Thanks for letting everyone know about the event. We appreciate your contributions here and over at AWA.

This is really important, especially for us extreme performance enthusiasts that feel excluded by the configuration of the current product line. If Alienware wants to meet our expectations in the future, we need to be sure they know what those expectations are and that we are a substantial portion of their clientele. If we don't speak up now, we can rest assured we will be an afterthought going forward.

You nailed one of them (dual GPU beast). It doesn't need to be 18" display as long as it has an unlocked socketed CPU, robust BIOS overclocking options and two MXM slots, along with more PSU capacity than the system is capable of exhausting.

I am planning to participate and ask questions. I will have them ready to copy and paste.

 

And of course someone asks for a PC. Sigh...

 

For those that are too lazy (or received notice too late) to participate in this event, here is what I posted. I hope Mr. Azor can respond.

MrFoxRox said:
Hello Mr. Azor. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to communicate with us and seek our feedback. That you have taken the opportunity to do this is a positive reflection on you and the Alienware brand.

I am an overclocker and extreme performance enthusiast first, gamer second. Many of your customers that share my passion feel excluded by the configuration in the current product line. The graphics accelerator is a nifty geek contraption that anyone can appreciate, and you guys pulled that off in an excellent manner with the external PCIe port. Great job on that.

Having low-TDP processors with BGA mounting is unacceptable for enthusiasts that care about extreme performance, the ability to perform simple repairs or upgrade their expensive systems with newer and better components after the point of sale. Having to buy a new machine to improve its capacity for performance is not a good product model for us. It doesn't need to be 18" display as long as it has an unlocked socketed CPU, robust BIOS overclocking options and two MXM slots, along with more PSU capacity than the system is capable of exhausting. Having the options of adding a Graphics Accelerator to an already amazing monster laptops would be great, but the machine needs to stand on its own as the best high performance product the industry has to offer without a peripheral device attached.

Having made these comments, my questions are as follows:

(1) What are the product design team’s plans for future models that would be viewed as acceptable by the performance enthusiasts for future Alienware laptops?

(2) Will there be an option for purchasing bare bones or “configure your own beast” rather than the cookie-cutter configuration approach that we see now?

(3) What are Alienware’s plans for supporting the existing (last generation products) that still need attention? I ask this for a couple of reasons.

- The M18xR2 and Alienware 18 both have issues supporting GTX 980M SLI, as do the M17xR4 and Alienware 17. They malfunction. It appears a BIOS update to allow full compatibility is needed. Can we expect the product updates that we need to continue to support these amazing machines, or should we sell them and look for a product from another OEM to fulfill our expectations?

- People that own your best products already are not ready to buy new. The new products do not meet our expectations and they are outperformed by your previous models. In the event of a system exchange under warranty or performing our own upgrade, we want to be sure we have the support we deserve having purchased a very expensive flagship product. Being locked out of an upgrade path or being downgraded to a lesser product in the event of a system exchange has us worried.​

 

In response to Mr. Fox (this is for easier readability),

 

Why x4 PCIE bandwidth on the GA? You're effectively making your "ultimate upgrade" solution useless.

 

Just the fact that we (customers) have such questions shows there's something wrong, lol.

 

The AMA will last until 2 pm PST / 5 pm EST. I think the end time is a bit loose.

 

...this could get bad.

 

This is what I imagine what the director of the Alienware sub-brand is doing at Dell now.



They still have idiots to buy their crap soldered computers, and they're making more money than ever by removing most of the features found in the previous generation laptops.

 

Here was my response to his reply.

 

Frank, I will be "frank" with you... You should go back to XPS full-time and stay there. Stop trying to make Alienware the "fancy" big brother of the XPS lineup. Alienware is not a branch of a lineup. It's the whole damn tree. The Alienware name was an industry leading name, now it's just the name of another gaming laptop in a pretty wrapper.

@Mr. Fox,

You should explain to him that 980M SLI outperforms a single GTX 980, making the Graphics Amplifier a joke (to say the least), and not worthy of its place having been a supporting factor in replacing the AW 18. And those weak i5/i7 processors aren't even sufficient enough to support a desktop GPU.

 

For me, there is far too much emphasis on the graphics accelerator being made by Frank.....I mean, if I wanted to chain my laptop to an eGPU, I'd buy a desktop instead. It's almost like an excuse for not making a powerful laptop in its own right.......it's like "oh well, we couldnt be bothered to do that, but you can turn it into a desktop if you want performance" - He commented earlier about SLI & MXM solutions being too power hungry and making the machines too thick.......Frank.....we WANT to have a beefy machine, we don't want ultrabook mentality.

 

I couldn't read his responses. They look like this dealer vendor that no matter what you say (even if you know more about cars than him) he will still say what the book tell him to say.

Its just about making people that don't know about computers, hardware, laptops, etc. to buy this new "things" that they call gaming laptop.

 

It would not do any good. Plus, it would come across as disrespectful in that forum. That is no my style and he deserves my respect even though I don't agree with everything he says. If I call BS on what he says and offer rebuttal in a manner that makes him look bad on his own turf, then I (or anyone else that does that) can forget about them listening to us.

To say that the only machine that outperforms their current best was the Alienware 18 reflects ignorance about the performance capacity of their previously released flagship products. The bottom line is that statement was completely inaccurate. The M18xR1 (with CPU and GPU upgrades) has performance potential that matches the 18 and the M18xR2 exceeds it.

If he is truly not smart enough to know what was said is not accurate, then I have to question whether further effort here is futile. I believe that he is very intelligent and saying what needs to be said to avoid backlash. But, I do give him a ton of credit for responding. If they did not care what customers think, then the event never would have taken place. Results are what matters most, but caring does deserve a degree of credit in a world filled with people and companies that don't care. The part of this that I do not like is what comes across as an attempt to reshape our views to match their product model rather than stepping up to the plate and meeting our expectations for hardware configuration and performance.

There never was a response to the inadequate AC adapter. I think they only responded to things that would make them look good publicly. The President of the United States never admits his mistakes, so why should the General Manager of Alienware feel compelled to?

 

I felt extremely let down by this lack of response - it wasn't as if it was raised late on with no opportunity to reply......just avoided. Poor show, Frank......

 

Well, I'd obviously recommend wording it a bit differently, lol.

No response to our concerns about the PSU? Interesting.

 

Nah, this kind of post would have been fine.

Since I was the one would asked that first, I can say that yes, he did respond to it; however, his response got deleted, so his memory is conflicting with reality. I don't know if the spam filter caught him or if someone with moderator/admin powers deleted it (couldn't have been the regular forum mods).
Wished I could have seen it, but I won't be able to. He also "didn't" answer my SLI question either.
And too many stupid posts about the Steam logo and the Alpha availability. Really? The latter is something one could check, but the former is just a logo. Why is that important?

 

I see he avoided answering about the 180watt psu for the 17 r2.

 

Kinda fishy to me how his reply about the PSU is gone.

 

I did not want to debate. I viewed this as an opportunity for frank discussion (pun intended, since his name is Frank) about issues they need to regard as pressing. I could have pointed out where he is wrong, that the M18xR2 outperforms the 18 and the 18 outperforms the 17r2 and supported it with benchmarks, but that would have disrupted things and made me look like a jerk even if I did it in a polite way. People than know better already know his statement was inaccurate. The people that don't know any better are those that asked stupid questions like the Steam logo, LOL. I just cannot relate to people that place importance on stuff like that, or those than value form over function. I try to relate to them, but it is so foreign to me that all I can do is acknowledge that they are different, scratch my head and move on.

From everything that was said in that discussion, I think the writing is on the wall for the Alienware brand. They are focused on making ordinary machines that look nice and are built well for the mainstream bubble gum gamers and the performance enthusiasts that made the brand famous are just collateral damage. They are going to say what supports their agenda. That's business and that's why I bought a Clevo. I hope they go back to making machines I am interested in owning, but I am prepared to move on and be thankful for the nice memories. It was awesome while it lasted, and forgiveness will be graciously extended if they eventually make another product I am interested in buying.

 

Well this AMA has made news.
But in any case, even if it were to start a debate, it wouldn't. Any offensive post towards wouldn't be deleted. Hence why a couple slipped loose like that person wanting to get the MSI GT80 Titan.
I'm disappointed, but I'm interested to see the media reception to this (other than the tablet thing). But the AMA does make something very likely, no desktop processors in the laptops in the near future (or in the next revision). This whole year is going to be fun for me at AWA.
Also wondering why Frank typing out that Alienware knew that going BGA was a bad idea wasn't omitted. That's something very bold and blunt to say.

 

Is anyone seriously interested in a gaming tablet? I can't say I would ever consider such a thing ... but to each their own.

 

Bold and blunt is good. I am glad they left that comment. Intel needs to hear it from their "partners" and know that end users hate the idea. But, I have to ask myself why they did it anyway. As I have pointed out already, BGA was not the only option. They made a conscious decision to do it. They could have refreshed their existing product line and added BGA machines, or built the new machines with Haswell mobile MQ and MX socketed processors. If they knew it was not going to be well received, had another option (and they did) and deployed this filth anyway, that shows they are more driven to go with the flow than to do what is right by their customers.

I put that into the same category (the one under the heading "Stupid") as the one asking about the Steam logo and Alpha. I'm actually surprised some idiot did not ask about when an Alienware smartphone would be released, LOL.

He side-stepped the inadequate AC adapter post more than once. I alluded to it in my post. He quoted it and still said nothing about that.

 

Because the people that doesn't know anything will say, well that's a reason because he quoted it so I think I'm ok with that and I will buy it anyway...

 

The more scary part for me is how many people are going to buy that machine and not have any clue that it may not be performing to it's full expectations or capabilities.

 

I got word from Frank Azor. The AMA thread will be updated tomorrow of any missing posts.
Here's is what he PM'ed me.

I see what he is saying, but he's only half-right. I think someone in the Alienware 17 R2 3Dmark thread pointed out that with Clevo machines, the 240w PSU made very little to no difference in comparison to the 180w PSU. However, I worry about the PSU's life and why it cannot deliver the same performance as a Clevo 180w PSU.

 

I wish we could tell him that he's full of crap. Someone needs to show him the numbers in the threads on this forum and Mr.Fox's video.

 

Work has kept me away for too long, sucks that I missed this. Not sure if I should upgrade my GPUs or buy a new clevo now =/

 

Honestly the fact that they no longer have an sli machine is a much bigger issue to me than the fact that they are using soldered processors

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

See my sig for my opinion of this.

 

What he said about the AC adapter is correct, but it does not address the fact that the system will draw more than 180W if you attempt to overclock it. Their performance is not exactly what I would call optimal the way they roll off of the assembly line. (This applies to all systems, every brand.) I have videos that show that an overclocked 17 R2 with 4980HQ and 980M exhausts the rated capacity of the 180W AC adapter, as well as an increase in performance when overclocked with a 330W AC adapter connected. 240W should be adequate for most applications, as most gamers are not avid overclockers. 330W is more than enough based on the peak power demands of a maxed out 17 R2 with the low-TDP CPUs they are installing. Having ample power is important to meet the demands of the end user with more than basic gaming expectations. "Adequate" isn't necessarily what every Alienware owner is looking for.

The puzzling part about his response is why they refused to release a dual AC adapter setup for the M18xR2 and Alienware 18. They suggested that was inappropriate or dangerous instead of this approaching it from the angle of it being unnecessary even though we have ample proof that it is necessary. While it is true that an AC adapter only delivers what the system demands, that completely ignores the fact that their systems only has their power needs met when operating in a stock configuration. Clevo recognized that need a number of years ago and delivered a solution for it. A laptop that shuts itself off or begins to throttle from lack of power before it reaches its full performance potential is not a satisfying user experience.

This seems to reinforce the impression that they are moving away from attempting to meet the expectations of performance enthusiasts and aiming for a mainstream audience that unboxes a system, plugs it in, posts their joy on Facebook while downloading games, and then immediately goes to town with their Steam library without any real tweaking or heavy performance tuning to speak of. They are emphasizing use of the eGPU to get more performance and skirting the subject of extracting more performance from the laptop that is not used with an eGPU. I would assume that not everyone that buys a new 15 or 17 R2 would be thrilled about the expectation that they will pay extra for a peripheral accessory that anchors their laptop to a desk in order to extract a superior level of performance from it.

 

Nobody asked about the Graphics Amplifier incompatibility.

 

I've read the Frank's anwsers, it seems they will focus stronger on Graphics Amplifier expecially for replacing SLI/CrossFire. Ok the perfomance but not the mobility. If i buy a laptop it means i need more or less mobility, so GA will broke it.

BTW: what does it mean AMA acronym?

He said they are working to fix it.

The AMA is closed? Or will be back today?

 

AMA = Ask me anything.

 

He should hold an AMA every quarter to get feedback from his customers. Be proactive...

 

Why all dual post all time in many treads ?

 

I don't know how often Frank goes online or even reads his PM's. But I sent him a PM addressing the PSUs and even sent him a link to a thread for benchmarking the difference PSUs. I hope he reads that and sees what the issue is.

 

Every time I attempt to make a post, it is very laggy and nothing happens.

If you look above, you'll notice my "second" post was made BEFORE my "first" post, which makes absolutely no sense, LOL.

 

Read through his answers.. Looks like standard corporate b u l l s h i t... The fail is so strong.. Well this confirms it, I'm not going to be buying AW again.. I don't need a stupid unportable graphics amplifier that takes up a load of the limited space I have around my desk.. What I want is a laptop with upgradeble CPU+GPU and I don't care how thick it is etc.. If Alienware can't do that well, keep your'e BGA crap for yourself and I'll go buy Clevo..

Also on the 180W adapter question, nice way to avoid answering.. It's good to see him coming out to answer questions but when dodging something like this which so many people asked, shows what a corporate snake Frank Azor really is.. The Alienware brand is definetly dead now as far as I'm concerned.. They've nerfed their so called premium warranty, nerfed the machines, nerfed the PSU and really what else is left now?


ZEROO!

 

I doubt he'll be able to message back. Today, they're supposed to inject any responses that got caught by the spam filter (that would be the only technical error I think would have done this).

Did you read my post with his PM to me in this thread? Go back and read it.

 

Yes I did read the post.. His answer is BS.. The fact of the matter is Dell have convineintly rated it for 180W to save themselves a few $$$ and screwed everyone over.. They need to own up.. Clevo at least has a PSU that doesn't cause such problems even with a 180W rating..

 

That wasn't his full reply to me (he even said that), so don't take it as if it was. Better to hear all he said rather than a few words.

 

That's what I figured, but if he messages me back or posts more about it, huge respect for him.