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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
The hottest home PC on the market today is...

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, June 13, 2003
TalkBack!Add your opinion
You may have noticed that I don't often review PC hardware in this column. That's partly because so much of it has become a commodity, with one machine barely distinguishable from another. The other reason, at least lately: It's depressing to talk to perfectly good companies about their ongoing economic woes.

But I just got off the phone with one guy who is jumping-up-and-down thrilled to be in the PC hardware business--in part because his revenues are almost doubling every year, but also because he and his partner are having the time of their lives.

The Alienware alternatives
Alienware sells home PCs without apologies: The Media Center Navigator Pro, the game-centric Area-51, and the mobile Area-51m. Click below to read the ZDNet reviews.

  •    Alienware Navigator Pro

  •    Alienware Area-51

  •    Alienware Area-51m

IN 1996, childhood pals Alex Aguila and Nelson Gonzalez each chipped in $5,000 and started a company called Alienware (the name was Nelson's idea). Their goal: to build the high-powered PCs necessary to fuel their hard-core gaming habit.

The first year they brought in $80,000 in revenue. This year they expect to do $90 million. And the company is still owned, lock stock and call center, by the two original partners. They have facilities overseas, provide all their own tech support (free, toll-free, 24/7/365), and employ about 300 people worldwide.

For the past few months, I've been testing Alienware's Navigator, a Windows Media Center Edition machine that hasn't been a hit with the company's heat-seeking gamer customers. That's not surprising, but I am a bit sad that more "normal" people haven't found it. For $1,699, less monitor, it is a very, very nice machine.

All Alienware machines are assembled by hand, using mostly standard components, and then tweaked for maximum performance. This means making subtle changes in the BIOS and selecting the right components--including things like cooling systems--to make every CPU cycle work to the fullest.



At the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, AnchorDesk's Pat Houston checks out a new high-end gamer PC designed by Alienware.
 Watch now
Each machine comes with a personalized owner's manual, which includes measured benchmarks for the performance of that particular machine. Alex told me customers can see that the machines they purchase perform every bit as well as those tested in published reviews, something he says isn't always the case with certain (unnamed) competitors.

IN ADDITION TO a 2.7GHz Pentium 4, a 120GB hard drive, and a 64MB Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 graphics card, the Navigator I've been testing also comes with a DVD burner and a multislot memory card adapter, all in a case about half the size of a standard desktop. Everyone who's seen it says the machine looks really cool. It also sports a complete front panel: Besides the on/off switch, there's a reset button, two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and digital audio, headphone, and microphone jacks. Why more companies don't have front panels like that, I don't know.

The company's best seller, the Area-51, comes in a case that looks a bit like the company's Alien mascot, or maybe Darth Vader's mask. While the Navigator is tricked out as a Media Center, the Area-51 is an all-out gamer dream machine that sells for between $2,000 and $2,600.

In a $2,323 configuration, for example, you'll get an Area-51 with: a 3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4; a gigabyte of DDR SDRAM; a fast 120GB hard drive; both a 16/48x DVD-ROM drive and a 48/24/48A CD-RW; an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP graphics board; a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card; integrated Gigabit Ethernet; and Windows XP Home Edition. That's all backed by a one-year warranty featuring that 24/7 phone support.

Most people don't need a 3GHz machine with a gig of fast RAM, two optical drives, and the high-end Radeon graphics card. Most of us could settle happily for two-thirds the performance at a significant discount. But if you're a hard-core gamer, you can doubtless find upgrades and add-ons that would make this machine cost well over $3,000.

Alienware also sells the Area-51m, a mobile gaming machine intended for use at LAN parties, where gamers gather and connect for multiplayer games. Though it looks like a standard laptop, it's the heaviest portable I've hefted in many years--I think it weighs about 14 pounds. Alex told me it's a hot seller with gamers who'd otherwise haul a desktop to the parties.

DELL RECENTLY introduced its own line of gamer machines, at prices comparable to Alienware's. (Though, because Alienware doesn't charge sales tax except in Florida, the final delivered price could be a couple hundred dollars less than Dell's.) But for my money, I'd rather own the Alienware box.

Why? As a customer I'm much more important to a small company like Alienware than to a megalith like Dell. (It should be noted I said the same things about Dell when the company was headquartered in an Austin warehouse.)

If you think high performance is just for gamers, you are mostly right. But Alienware also configures machines for use as audio and video production workstations. There's nothing stopping anyone who needs high-performance graphics and processor speed for their business apps from buying the company's hardware.

Me, I like the idea of dealing with a smallish vendor that will build whatever I want and sell it to me for less than it'd cost me to build it myself. Maybe I long for those thrilling days of yesteryear, but free, talk-to-a-human tech support that's run by employees of the company is attractive to me.

I'm not sure I'd outfit everyone in the office with an Alienware box. But when friends ask me for a recommendation for a new home machine, I'll at least point them in Alex's direction. Alienware seems to have a lot going for it, even if--like me--you never touch a computer game.

What do you think? Would you buy an Alienware PC? What do you need most in a home machine? TalkBack to me! 

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