Alienware

Alienware Corporation is an American computer hardware company; 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 President, Alex Aguila.

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 Area 51 and MJ-12. 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 the high end game hardware was not widely distributed, the company's founders formed an OEM which sold personal computers with the highest performing hardware and settings according to benchmarks.

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. Alienware is a member of the Better Business Bureau of South Florida. 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.

Competitors

Alienware has traditionally competed with companies such as Falcon Northwest, Sin Systems Inc., SavRow, WidowPC, and Voodoo PC. You can also see customer reviews of Alienware at as well as [http://forums.alienwareniche.com/

Acquisition

On March 22, 2006, Dell Computer agreed to purchase AlienwareDell Press Release. 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. Alienware was a favorite among them while Dell supposedly caters to consumers and inexperienced computer users. However, Dell's acquisition seems to not have affected Alienware's quality. It is said that Alienware products will come out faster and cost less, by benefit of Dell . It was postulated by some that the Dell acquisition may lead to Alienware ceasing to use CPUs by AMD; however, with Dell recently announcing that it will begin to produce AMD-powered servers, it is believed that this will not come to pass.

Products

Desktops Intel Based

Area-51
Bot
S-4

AMD Based

Aurora

Intel/AMD Based

Digital Home Devices

DHS
CE-IV Digital Audio Player

Notebooks Intel Based

Sentia m3200
Area-51 m5500
Area-51 m5700
MJ-12 m5500i
MJ-12 m5700i
Area-51 7700 (discontinued)

AMD Based

New SLI Aurora m9700
New SLI ALXm
Aurora m7700
Aurora m9700
Aurora mALX

Servers

Hivemind

Workstations

MJ-12

Notes and references

External links

Computer hardware companies | Computer companies of the United States | Companies based in Florida | Computer companies | 1996 establishments