| Dell has been on a roller coaster ride. Early on, their main thrust was business PCs. They can thank Gateway for the inspiration to penetrate the home user market. Their old business rigs were uber-duty units designed to be running all day without missing a hitch. To compete with Gateway, they had to cheapen things up and that did lead to some early reliability issues. Since then, Dell has seen a slow, steady increase in reliability culminating with the aforementioned XPS boxes.
I do find it a little hard to believe there's been no cross-pollination between Dell and Alienware. It would be poor business for something like that to NOT share engineering to make both names a better ~and~ more profitable product. I can be pretty sure of this from what I see in every different industry out there, be it food products, auto manufacturers, etc. HP is a great example as well. They bought VooDoo and what was next? Their HP Blackbird PC which will go toe to toe with Alienware, XPS, Falcon Northwest, or about any other hardcore gaming rig made. It's obvious they was some trading of crib notes.
All this combines with what I see as a bright future for PC gaming. There's lots of doom cryers who say that consoles are going to push the PC gamers into extinction, but if that were so, Dell, HP, and others wouldn't be spending big bucks to get into the gaming rig market.
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