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 20 years, 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, allowing Alienware to independently design and market its PCs while giving it access to Dell’s greater purchasing power and economies of scale.
The greatest example of this was with its CPUs. At the time Dell purchased Alienware, Dell exclusively used Intel CPUs. In spite of that, Alienware was still able to continue using AMD Athlon 64 CPUs where it wanted to. Dell eventually relented and started using AMD64 CPUs itself. Perhaps it was Alienware’s influence?
The press’ reaction to Dell buying Alienware
Alienware was a darling of the enthusiast press prior to 2006. And the press wasn’t happy to see Alienware become part of Dell, generally speaking.
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 philosophy. 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. I don’t remember his name anymore, but I can recall the sound of his voice and how he’d casually slip in a mention of his Alienware laptop during our daily standup calls.
But that was the only time I encountered an Alienware product in a corporate setting. That developer’s devotion to Alienware rivaled or probably exceeded my devotion to Amiga, but since an Alienware is just a fancy PC, it hasn’t been easy for Alienware to invade the corporate market. Apple has had more success invading the corporate market than Alienware, in my experience.
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.
since grey aliens is in public domain couldn’t anyone sell a pc case with an image of an alien as its logo
With the caveat that I’m not a lawyer, I think Dell could sue for confusion. I have a blog post here about a company selling train accessories in blue and orange boxes in the 1950s. Lionel sued. The colors are public domain but the boxes looked enough like Lionel’s boxes that the court ruled in Lionel’s favor.
But even without that, I don’t think anyone wants to risk Dell suing. Dell could sue and lose in court and still win, by dragging it out until the other party ran out of money.
okay
what about an image of an alien as its logo to sell say coffee and burger or android phone