alienware

Dell: Alienware, XPS will coexist

Dell issued a statement on Tuesday night, saying the XPS brand will live on but that more resources will go into Alienware.

Part of Dell's statement takes issue with a Wall Street Journal report.

"Dell XPS and Alienware are both great brands...and both will live on," spokeswoman Anne Camden said in a blog. "But we are going to expand our focus on Alienware. We are going to invest like crazy in product development, design, and engineering to propel Alienware as the premier gaming brand in the future."

Camden emphasized that XPS is a premium, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 723: Best bad idea ever

The military has proposed creating their own botnet to help combat cyberfoes. Kevin Poulsen at Wired thinks this is idiotic. We think there's a certain amount of mad genius to it, and debate the points. Meanwhile 6 million Chileans had their personal data leaked to the Internet. Don't worry it's not all shock and awe. Harvard says violent video games are A-OK! Shoot 'em up, kids! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 723

Note: We are making a change to our podcast feed system on Friday, May 16. However, you do not need to subscribe to … Read more

Dell to cut XPS gaming desktops, embrace Alienware

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning on Dell's plan to stop competing with itself. Rather than selling both high-end XPS gaming PCs as well as similar products from Alienware (which it acquired in 2006), Dell will shift all of its gaming energies at Alienware, including providing Dell R&D resources. As the Journal also noted, this shift will mirror the move that Hewlett-Packard made when it acquired Voodoo, although in that case HP immediately involved Voodoo in developing HP's BlackBird 002. The Dell-Alienware relationship has seen each brand operate under its own silo, with little product … Read more

Alienware to bring out low-cost AMD graphics powerhouse

Dell's Alienware unit is slated to put AMD-ATI front and center. The Dell subsidiary will bring out a relatively low-cost game PC with dual ATI graphics chips within the next two weeks.

This comes in the wake of a report that Dell will phase out its XPS game PC line in favor of Alienware systems.

The $1,699 system--cheap by game PC standards--will come with 4GB (DDR2 800MHz) memory, a quad-core 9550 (2.2GHz) Phenom X4 processor, and a 3870 X2 board with two ATI HD 3870 graphics chips, said Marc Diana, Alienware product marketing manager for desktops. The … Read more

Report: Dell phasing out XPS gaming systems

UPDATE: Dell Inc. will begin phasing out its line of XPS desktop game machines, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

(Note: Dell made a statement Tuesday night--after this article was posted--explaining how Dell's XPS line and Alienware systems will coexist.)

This will effectively leave Alienware as the sole high-end PC game offering from Dell which acquired the Miami-based game system maker in 2006.

Dell's XPS game PC line "ate into" Alienware sales, according to the report.

Alienware competes with brands such as Hewlett-Packard's Vodoo PC line and Falcon Northwest.

Alienware is also … Read more

This week in laptops

Regardless of whether you believe in the recession, you have to admit it's looking like lean times in laptop-land, with only a handful of products hitting the market this week.

But sometimes a handful is enough. Gamers will no doubt be satiated by news that the long-awaited Alienware Area-51 m17x is finally available for order, even if its starting price is a wallet-squeezing $2,199. Also for gamers, Asus dished the deets on its 17-inch G70 gaming laptop. Frequent travelers will be psyched that the Lenovo IdeaPad U110, a Best of CES Award winner, is officially available for purchase (… Read more

Alienware's revamped 17-inch megagaming rig finally takes flight

Way back in November of 2007, Alienware told us about its rebooted gaming laptop series: the 15-inch Area-51 m15x and the 17-inch Area-51 m17x. We first got our hands on the 15-inch version a month later in December, and it officially went on sale in February of this year, but in all that time we never heard another peep about the 17-inch model--a design that's the mainstay of any gaming laptop lineup (the only 17-inch choice was the older m9750 model).

We're pleased to say the long-awaited 17-inch Area-51 m17x is finally up and available to order on … Read more

This week in laptops

The X300 is here! The X300 is here! The last few days at CNET Laptop HQ have been consumed with Lenovo's latest ThinkPad, which first popped up last week. The verdict? It's the sleekest ThinkPad yet, and quite possibly the perfect balance between portability and usability. Check out our full review on the ThinkPad X300 page and, if you missed it, the photo slide show here on Crave.

Though the ThinkPad X300 is totally my new BFF favorite ultraportable, it's not the only alternative to the MacBook Air, as Dan Ackerman points out. Among his suggestions is … Read more

Penryn comes to Alienware and Gateway laptops

Dell updated its XPS line of laptops earlier this month with Penryn CPU offerings, and now it's sharing Intel's latest mobile processors with its wholly owned subsidiary, Alienware. The Area-51 m15x now offers three Penryn chips, the Core 2 Duo T9300 and the T9500 and the Core 2 Extreme X9000. Pricing starts at $2,149. If you're scoring at home, Dell's 13-inch and 17-inch XPS laptops have received a Penryn update, skipping over the XPS M1530. Meanwhile, Alienware's 15-inch laptop has the Penryn and its 17-inch model does not.

Elsewhere, Gateway has made its first … Read more