Dell XPS

[Jonny M]

Seems that Dell are going after the enthusiast market with the re-introduction of the XPS range of PCs, although now it seems to be reserved for the high-end rather than a description for the home desktop systems (I had an XPS D300 way back in 98).

At first glances the systems look very nice, they are different but manage to appeal to most people, look well designed (Dell seem to custom design cases beyond the standard ATX spec which Alienware seem unable to do) so the cooling should be good whilst maintaining a low operating volume.

You get a pretty decent warranty as standard, but as expected for brand new PCI express stuff, they cost a ton of cash, so £1300 only gets you a 3.2 P4, 512MB RAM, 160GB HDD, and a shabby Radeon X300 SE. No DVD or CD-RW either, just a DVD-ROM.

They look promising, but they have to work on the pricing because at the moment it's far too high.

Be interesting to get one in for a proper look though.

[BenW]

especially as you can't just decide one day to pop a new mobo in there

[Lurkah]

It's not got anything to do with Alienware being 'unable' to build a custom chassis but people who buy Alienware machines tend to be clued up and want to buy something they can upgrade.

[BUFF]

Dell has volumes that Alienware can only dream of.
If they want something they get it whereas I suspect Alienware cases are built around an existing or planned design of their supplier.