Alienware makes Skylake laptop upgrade pledge to new buyers

[HEXUS]

Your shiny new Haswell / Broadwell laptop will get upgraded if new CPUs arrive within 30 days.

Read more.

[chrestomanci]

Hmm, colour me cynical, but I think that the CEO of Alenware (part of Dell) is privy to Intel's release schedule. In other words, he would only have made this promise if he knew it would not cost anything.

We can expect this promise to be quietly dropped at some point in the next month or two, and then new Skylake mobile CPUs are announced just over 30 days later.

[devBunny]

I guess I'll have to colour you cynical then. ;-)

If a company has "always found pride in offering the latest and best components within our systems" and tells a hardware site "that it has a 'high confidence' that the relevant Skylake processors will show up by late September" then by what logic does it make sense to try and pull a fast one with an empty promise, the disappointment of which will cause a backlash of negative publicity and the loss of goodwill?

Far more effective is for Intel's date to slip past the 30 days (but not by too much) and for Alienware to *still* honour the promise. Taking them on their word, they've already committed to the cost, so it would earn them heaps of goodwill to do the right thing by their customers.

[GoNz0]

Dell knows when they will be released, and within that 30 days they will suspend shipments quoting delays.

[stevie lee]

hang on, hang on.

I thought the skylake CPUs required a new motherboard or chipset? so how can you just 'drop it in' to an old board?
they'll have to replace the whole laptop wont they? new chipset, new MB layout, new places for fan vents and cooling and so on..

unless I've missed something. which is possible.

[devBunny]

Dell knows when they will be released, and within that 30 days they will suspend shipments quoting delays.

Lol. I'll colour you cynical as well and maybe add a tin foil hat to the picture. ;-)

Look at the text in the image and wonder which part of a promise defined on "ordered between" dates can be got around by delays in shipment. The only use for delays in shipment would be to hold those orders in-house and upgrade them before shipment rather than send them out and have to have them returned.

[GoNz0]

hang on, hang on.

I thought the skylake CPUs required a new motherboard or chipset? so how can you just 'drop it in' to an old board?
they'll have to replace the whole laptop wont they? new chipset, new MB layout, new places for fan vents and cooling and so on..

unless I've missed something. which is possible.

hence them pulling a fast one to get sales now before running out of stock a month before the new CPU's are released.

[azrael-]

"We're sitting on a huge stockpile of notebooks using slightly obsolete components. If you buy one & a new CPU launches within the next 30 days, we'll pretend you get a free upgrade, but due to 'unforeseen difficulties' we won't actually honour this promise. Badass."

[gabswiss]

Ordered mine Sept 3rd and it is in pre-production stage (=waiting for parts) with Skylake i7-6820HK listed as the CPU in my order status even though it was listed with Haswell on their website.They probably won't ship any system until then, they just can't list them with Skylake since not officially released.(thus the "wink" in Frank Azors tweet)

[CalumH93]

This is one of these ones that seems to good to be true. I wouldn't buy one relying on this offer.

[Lucio]

More likely they've got an end of quarter sales target to meet, alongside a requirement to purchase / sell so many Intel processors to qualify for a rebate tier and want to count the same sales twice.