Dell, Alienware and Voodoo

I must commend Rahul Sood, he must be one of the best buisnessmen since Michael Dell himself. Ever since launching his blog, his market share has surely gone up considerably. Inciting speculations such as the Dell and Alienware deal (no I will not dignify it with his title) and the Dell and AMD deal has brought incredible attention to a otherwise unknown person and moderately known company. Everyone from CNet to Anand has picked up every bit of nonsense and thrown it out like fact.

I think this whole mess is pretty silly, and I've never bought into any of it. There's a common thread in all of Rahul's predictions, and that is his competition. In one scenario, I see Rahul sitting on his bed late at night a few weeks ago thinking "How can I get more money? I know, I'll start passing around rumors about Dell to get my market share up." His first step was to jump into a fairly well known rumor that's been passing around for years, the Dell-AMD deal. Honestly, I believe that Dell should have jumped on board with AMD a long time ago. Now that Intel has showcased the Core architecture, why bother breaking up their deals with Intel? Dell will have the performance crown again and will still have their exclusivity deals that don't exist.

Now that we're waiting for September for the bunny suit to come out, Rahul needed something else to keep everyone on his blog. Who's next in line behind Dell? Why, that would be Alienware. Most of us in the channel know that AW has had a pretty bad time of it recently, and so why not incite a little more trouble and start this Dell-Alienware thing. Sure, Dell has never bought anyone, but what's stopping them from "waking up?" I'll tell you what's stopping them: a ridiculous ego. Dell has never believed there is anyone they can't just wipe out, and they aren't going to change that now. Long before Dell would even think about buying out Alienware, they would have a huge media blitz with their XPS systems. They would simply out-advertise everyone.

 The question I have is: "Why would Dell want that part of the market?" It's obvious that they do, but it is much more obvious that they aren't putting forth the effort to develop the technology to finish the deal. They were the first partner to show off Quad-SLI, however once nVidia actually launched the tech, they are the last ones to integrate it into a platform. Dell is going to need to step up to the plate if they are going to compete. Maybe this month will be their month to start a media blitz, and maybe it would be a good time. Only time will tell.

So Rahul, what's next? You can aparently say anything and have the world take it for fact. You even got the Alienware employees excited about it. I call that impressive. I personally would love to see you make some better bets though, like maybe for the next one you would have to drop a 24k Omen from a 20 story building and publish the photos in CPU Mag. Naw, even though I disagree with your business practices, you guys do mod up a pretty case.