Alienware
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| Alienware Corporation | |
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| Type | Wholly-Owned Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida, USA |
| Key people | Nelson Gonzalez, CEO Alex Aguila, President |
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Products | Desktops Servers Laptops Peripherals |
| Revenue | Sales in excess of $170,000,000 USD as of 2005 |
| Employees | 750 worldwide |
| Parent | Dell, Inc. |
| Website | www.alienware.com |
Alienware is an American computer hardware company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell Computer Corporation. It has a reputation for offering the latest technologies for desktops and laptops that are specialized for video editing, audio editing, and especially gaming. The company is based in Miami, Florida, and was founded in 1996 by its current CEO, Nelson Gonzalez, and COO, Alex Aguila.
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[edit] History
According to employees, the Alienware name was chosen because of the founders' fondness for the hit television series The X-Files, hence the theme to their products, with names such as Grey and Area-51. Alienware was originally established to tap a niche in the high performance game market, which back then was not on the radar of the major PC manufacturers such as Dell. Since high-end game hardware was not widely distributed, the company's founders formed an OEM that sold personal computers with the highest performing hardware and settings according to benchmarks.
[edit] Operations
As of FY 2005, Alienware brought in upwards of $170 million USD in annual sales, while minimizing expenses to aid an international expansion initiative launched in 2003 to maintain a presence in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and Costa Rica. In 2002, Alienware distributed their systems through Best Buy and CompUSA at retail locations. Because of complications with that method of distribution, Alienware decided to better service the customer via direct sales and have since eschewed such an indirect retail presence. Alienware has had a call center in Costa Rica to handle all sales and support calls for a number of years.
[edit] Competitors
Alienware has traditionally competed with companies such as Falcon Northwest, Velocity Micro and VoodooPC which is now part of Dell's biggest competitor, Hewlett-Packard. Alienware also formerly competed against Dell XPS gaming systems which they considered their biggest rival before their acquisition.
[edit] Acquisition
On March 22, 2006, Dell agreed to purchase Alienware[1]. Alienware will continue to operate under its own brand name. This is noticeable in many regards including the similar looking homepages. This has caused a lot of controversy with gamers as Alienware was a favorite among them while Dell supposedly caters to general computer users. However, Dell's acquisition seems to have had little effect on Alienware's reputation.
[edit] AlienGUIse
Alienware computers come with a set of Stardock compatible desktop themes preinstalled called AlienGUIse Desktop Manager. This is not currently compatible with Windows Vista. It can also be downloaded from the Alienware website for use without the need for an Alienware system.
[edit] Products
[edit] Desktops
[edit] AMD Based
- Aurora
- 7500
- ALX
[edit] Intel Based
- Area-51
- 7500
- 7500-SLI
- ALX
[edit] Workstations
[edit] AMD Based
- MJ-12 7550a
[edit] Intel Based
- MJ-12 8550i
[edit] Notebooks
[edit] AMD Based
- Aurora
- m9700
- mALX
[edit] Intel Based
- Area-51 series
- m5550
- m5790
- Superman Returns Edition
- m9750
- Sentia
- m3450
[edit] Digital Home Devices
- MP3 Player
- CE-IV 512MB
- CE-IV 1GB
- Headphones
- Ozma 5
- Ozma 7
[edit] Notes and references
[edit] See Also
[edit] External links
- Alienware Website
- AlienwarePictures.com Alienware System Pictures & Reviews
- Reseller Ratings Store Ratings
- BBB Listing
