Dell buys Alienware, May 8, 2006

On May 8, 2006, corporate and straitlaced Dell completed its purchase of Alienware, a maker of edgy gaming computers. It was a long courtship. Dell considered buying Alienware for four years before making the deal. And the tie-up of this odd couple has worked. At the time of this writing, Dell has owned Alienware for 19 years, nearly twice as long as it didn’t own it.

Alienware’s history

Alienware was founded in 1996 by Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila. The name and styling of Alienware PCs was inspired by the hit TV show The X Files. Originally called Saikai of Miami, it changed its name to Alienware in 1997.

Alienware manufactures both laptops and desktops, with an emphasis on gaming. It goes after the enthusiast market, rather than the general consumer market or the corporate market.

After the purchase, Dell operated Alienware as a subsidiary, giving it greater purchasing power and economies of scale, but allowing Alienware to independently design and market its PCs.

The greatest example of this was with its CPUs. At the time of purchase, Dell exclusively used Intel CPUs. In spite of that, Alienware was still able to continue using AMD CPUs where it wanted to.

The press’ reaction to Dell buying Alienware

Alienware was a darling of the enthusiast press prior to 2006. The July 2006 issue of HWM magazine lamented the purchase. In a brief review of a new Alienware Sentia m3200 laptop, it said, “Alienware has been forced to become straight-laced after its acquisition… It’s sad to see the new owners Dell force Alienware to make machines that are against their philosphy. But such is life.”

Meanwhile, writing in the June 12, 2006 issue of Computerworld, Don Tennant issued a dire warning: “Unless you’re really into gaming, chances are you’ve never heard of Alienware Corp. But the Miami-based maker of high-performance PCs… definitely needs to be on your radar screen. Alienware is trying hard to infiltrate the corporate market, and you need to ensure that its products don’t land in your organization.” Tennant went on to blast the company, relating troubles his son had with his Alienware computer.

The April 24 issue of Infoworld had a more conciliatory attitude. Tom Yager called it a brilliant purchase, probably not life-changing, but a move in a game of high-stakes chess, a way to gain leverage with Intel, since Alienware did use AMD processors in some models, and an opportunity for Dell to learn from Alienware’s approach to building PCs.

Alienware computers in the corporate world?

So the press’ opinions were all over the place. The union seems to have mostly worked, and the Alienware invasion of the corporate market that Don Tennant feared didn’t get very far, at least in my experience. When I was working at EADS (now known as Airbus) circa 2006, one of our developers had an Alienware laptop that he used for writing code at work, and he was oddly fond of pointing that out. But that was the only time I encountered an Alienware product in a corporate setting.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.