Why Apple’s NoteBook Team Could Take Lessons From Alienware
by Charles W. Moore
A couple of weeks ago, OSReviews' Norman Shutler posted an op-ed entitled "MIA: MacBook Options," in which he declared that "Apple's iPods are the best MP3s in the business, bar none. The company's left nothing to chance and virtually nothing to want for, as a result their iPods sell like hitchhikes to lumberjacks on a cold winter's morn. But good golly Miss Molly, when it comes to options for their MacBooks - which are like maple syrup and country fresh butter to pancakes, making them utterly irresistible - compared to Alienware's amazing banquet of optional enhancements, Apple's slim pick'ns look like those being offered by a money-strapped, startup company, with Mister Magoo heading up the MacBook department."
Ouch! - that’s pretty harsh!
Norman continued:
“Hello Apple! Where’s the choice in performance hardware that will transform MacBooks, most especially MacBook Pros, into every customer’s dream machine? Nowhere, that’s where. The inescapable fact is, compared to the abundant cornucopia of power options being offered for Alienware’s laptops, Apple’s scant selection is reminiscent of the The Emperor’s New Clothes... uninspiring to say the least, as there are virtually none to be seen.....
“Given Apple’s pioneering spirit and farsighted leadership, its internationally renowned genius for design and next-generation inventiveness - not to mention its inspirational marketing brilliance, and oh yes, let’s not forget that its outstanding offerings have singlehandedly created the most ardently loyal and enduring following of any products in the history of the industry - then it’s not only mind-blowingly paradoxical but dumbfoundingly ironic that currently it’s Alienware who is doing for laptops what Apple did for MP3s.....”
OK, I have to concede that Alienware, although I had heard of them, was pretty much off my radar screens. I don’t attempt to stay exhaustively well-informed on what’s happening on the PC side. One can only cognate and process so much information, and the Apple orbit keeps me pretty busy.
However, Norman’s Philippic essay had me intrigued. I have been smitten by the exoticar-themed PC laptops from Acer and Asus (Ferrari and Lamborghini) respectively, and have even written columns fantasizing about Apple building an exoticar-cobranded notebook (memo to Steve: Bugatti is still available), although not with any really lively hope of them doing so. Some PC boxes have their allure, so I had to check out these Alienware machines that Norman was going on about to evaluate for myself if Apple is really being left behind that badly.
Coming from another angle, Low End Mac's Adam Robert Guha weighed in last week with a column asking rhetorically, "The $900 Notebook: Where Is Apple?" explaining why he just bought an Acer notebook instead of a MacBook. Adam notes that while his new Acer "isn't the absolute latest in terms of technology... it does have a large hard drive and a fair bit of RAM, the processor is the Intel Core Duo, not the newer, cooler running, more energy efficient Core 2 Duo. But for $900, this doesn't really matter."
“Can Apple learn from this?”, Adam asks. “Yes, they say they don’t like to make ‘cheap’ computers, but it’s unquestionable that it’s these ‘cheap’ models that are drawing consumers in to look at a computer from a particular manufacturer. Who isn’t interested in hearing about a $479 notebook, regardless of the manufacturer?”
And it turns out that Alienware has the sub-$900 notebook category nicely covered as well.
Established relatively recently in 1996, Florida-based Alienware manufactures desktop, notebook, media center, and professional computer systems. Operating under the affirmed philosophy of ‘build it as if it were your own,’ Alienware has earned numerous awards for excellence and has become a respected brand name worldwide with systems available direct within the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Alienware has been recognized by INC 500, won the Shoppers’ Choice Award as the Best Performance Desktop by Computer Shopper’s reader survey, had its Alienware Area-51 ranked among “The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time” by PC World and also received PC Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Award in its 18th Annual Reader Survey.
Alienware has even posted a “Vision, Mission, and Core Values” statement in its website, some highlights of which include:
¥ It’s not just chance that our computers are the most highly recommended for gaming and high-end performance. If you want proof that we’re gamers just ask our execs while they are ripping through the virtual battlefield with their avatars.
¥ Every Alienware system that ships out is perfect in our eyes and we know you’ll feel the same way when you power on the computer for the first time. And as your needs change, so should your computer. Alienware uses non proprietary hardware so you can tinker and tweak your system when that time comes.
Alienware’s top-of-the-line offering is the Aurora mALX which has a whopping big 19” display, something Apple has never offered in a notebook computer. The price of entry isn’t cheap, starting at $4,499 - nearly two grand more than the most expensive MacBook Pro. The Aurora mALX is powered by AMD Turion 64 Processors, with a NVIDIA SLI Dual 7900GTX GPUs, and 400Mhz DDR RAM , a Blu-ray Optical Drive, and up to 800GB of hard drive capacity with available with dual HD’s of 400GB capacities (200 GB max with the MacBook Pro ). Pretty impressive specs. indeed.
To go with all the internal power, the Aurora mALX features color-shifting chameleon paint - “exotically stylish, airbrushed custom paint artwork that boldly implies power and strength, while shifting color through light refraction”
The Aurora mALX uses dual graphics cards and SLI technology that assigns each card half the screen so your characters and world render with twice as much power according to Alienware. With dual 512MB GeForce Go 7900 GTX, the first notebook to deliver 1GB of dedicated graphics memory (the most you can get with a MacBook Pro is 256MB).
It’s obvious that Apple has nothing remotely in the Aurora mALX’s ballpark, although don’t doubt that they could build an awesome ‘Book at the $4,500 price point if they chose to.
A more direct competitor for the 17” MacBook Pro in Alienware’s Aurora M9700 17”, which is where the pricing gets really interesting. the M9700 starts at $1,599, only a hundred bucks more than the high-end MacBook, and $1,200 less than the 17” MacBook Pro.
However the Aurora M9700 is no slouch, equipped with a widescreen 17” Clearview display, AMD Turion 64 Processors, twin NVIDIA 512MB Go 7900 GS graphics processor units, 400Mhz DDR memory, and Blu-ray Optical Drive, and up to 400GB of hard drive capacity - twice what’s available optionally in the MacBook Pro, and built-in 1.3 megapixel tilting video camera.
The Aurora m9700 is the first and only 17” laptop with a dual-graphics card system, giving you up to a 100% increase in graphics performance over single graphics card systems. A full 1GB of graphics memory (a first-ever availability in a notebook) is optionally available, as are dual hard drives.
Alienware is the first manufacturer to offer notebooks with up to 400GB of hard drive space with the Aurora mALX and Aurora m9700, either of which can be configured with single or dual 200GB hard drives on systems first 17” mobile system to deliver 1GB of graphics memory.
The Aurora m9700 also is equipped with Airgo True MIMO wireless technology, which delivers coverage for your whole home by using multiple signals, and claims up to twice the range of typical Wi-Fi networks with speeds up to 240Mpbs.
On the outside, the m9700 is available in Conspiracy Blue or Cyborg Green or Saucer Silver color options.
The m9700 is extremely powerful at an amazing price of entry, but Alienware can put you in a 17” laptop for even less cash, $1,299 to be specific, which is the price tag of the middle-model 2.0 GHz MacBook.
Alienware’s Area-51 m5790 Special Edition 17” notebook comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz processor (33 GHz faster than the 17” MacBook Pro), an ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 GPU with 256MB of dedicated video memory, a Blu-ray Optical Drive, Up to 400GB of dual hard drive capacity and Saucer Silver livery.
Other Area-51 m5790 Special Edition features include Alienware’s proprietary Battery Control Technology, enabling longer battery life at the touch of a button, an Integrated touchpad on/off button, empowering the user to disable or enable the touchpad on the fly Integrated media card reader, for facilitating easy transfer of images and videos
Moving along, Alienware’s Area51 M5550 doesn’t quite make it under Adam Guha’s $900 laptop threshold, but it comes close at a base price of $949.00, and it has a 15’4” widescreen display, which is only available for more than twice that figure in Apple’s $1,999.00 15” MacBook Pro.
The M5550 also has a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which you don;t get in any Apple notebook under $2,499.00, up to 2GB of 667Mhz memory, an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 GPU with 256 MB of VRAM, an 8X Dual Layer DVD±R/W optical drive, and up to 200GB hard drive capacity, and comes liveried in Saucer Silver.
The Alienware Sentia m3450 does slide under the $900.00 bar with an $849.00 base price, and gives you a 14.1” widescreen display and a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor, but shares the Apple MacBook’s mediocre video support with Intel GMA 950 Extreme “vampire video” graphics that bleeds off up to 84 MB of system RAM in lieu of dedicated VRAM. Back in the plus column are an 8X Dual Layer DVD±R/W optical drive and up to 200GB of hard drive capacity.
The Xeno Grey m3450 weighs a reasonable 5.5 lb. for a 14” laptop and measuring less than an inch in thickness, so it’s thinner than a MacBook.
The Sentia m3450 features an Intel PRO/Wireless Network Connection.
For more information, visit:
http://www.alienware.com/
or
http://www.alienware.com/product_pages/notebook_all_default.aspx
Based on a price/power/features equation, it’s undeniable that Alienware is offering more performance, features and value specification-wise per dollar than Apple, and by a substantial margin, and well as doing it with machines that have creative style and flair. Alienware’s aesthetic motif will not be to everyone’s taste (I’m still smitten with the Ferrari and Lamborghini-inspired styling of the aforementioned Acer and Asus machines), and nobody has yet challenged Apple’s notebooks for classy, understated elegance.
So is Moore being seduced by the Dark Side? Not at all. As nice as they are, the PC notebooks that I find attractive and value-packed still have a serious flaw, namely that they can’t run the Mac OS, which for me is the substance and essence of the Macintosh computing experience.
I finally got an opportunity last week to play with with Vista a bit on an Acer Aspire desktop tower with a 2.4 GHz dual-core Athlon processor. Mercy, the Vista interface is even more hideous than XP. All those garish colors were making me queasy. The responsiveness didn’t knock my socks off either. Respectable, I guess, but opening applications and even pulling down menus was surprisingly sluggish, and but I’m not sure it was better in Finder performance than my 2004-vintage 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 running Tiger. Then there were the boring screen fonts and general Windows design clunkiness. I kept thinking, “this is what all the hoopla is about??!”
However, if Apple was inclined to license OS X to PC makers, it would be time for some sober second thought, which is of course why they won’t. I absolutely love this 17” PowerBook G4 that I’m typing these words on, and I would like the replace it in the fullness of time with a 17” MacIntel machine, but right now that will cost me $2,799.00, or a still substantial $2,299.00 for an Apple Certified Refurbished unit, when I could have an Alienware Area-51 m5790 Special Edition 17” notebook with a faster Core 2 Duo brand new for a thousand dollars less than the Apple refurb.
However, not everyone shares my aversion to Windows (which goes far beyond Finder design and an ugly interface. I simply would not tolerate the malware siege on the Windows side so long as there is any alternative, I utterly loath Microsoft’s nattering and meddlesome wizards, and the obsessive product activation requirements rub me the wrong way, to name just a few more issues from a log list), and if one is willing to put up with all that grief, then it’s hard to make a compelling case for spending so much more for an Apple product.
Presumably Alienware is able to turn a profit while offering so much at such reasonable prices. Now that Apple is using the same chips and motherboard architecture, the question is begged as to why they can’t compete more closely in price while offering similar specifications.
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