RSSDell denies it's phasing out its XPS systems early
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published May 14, 2008, 11:17 AM
While the enthusiast community was puzzling over how an entire product line that just replaced its flagship desktop only two weeks ago was being canceled, Dell found itself quelling yet another false rumor propagated by a major news source.
In a blog post yesterday evening inspired partly by BetaNews' inquiries yesterday, Dell spokesperson Anne Camden flatly dismissed as "incorrect" a Wall Street Journal story Tuesday that stated the company was making plans to phase out its premium XPS systems, beginning with four models next month.
"XPS gaming systems will remain an important part of our gaming product portfolio," Camden wrote. "We don't plan an early phase-out of these systems as the WSJ incorrectly stated, and in fact will continue to refresh them to keep them on the front edge of gaming." She then alerted BetaNews as to her official response at close to midnight last night.
Multiple blogs and technology news sources inaccurately interpreted the WSJ story to have said that Dell would be phasing out its XPS line altogether, to concentrate on Alienware instead. Surprisingly, it would appear Dell was never contacted for confirmation prior to those reports, and that Camden and her colleagues spent much of the day yesterday refuting what had by that time been widely propagated, and even praised in financial circles.
Dell is indeed reining in its Alienware development team, in a move which would make its gaming PC division more analogous to that of HP, which continues to enable its acquired VooDoo PC group to build and distribute its own lines of Envy notebooks and Omen desktops, while producing the Blackbird 002 under the HP brand.
But while older XPS systems will expire at the end of their market life as planned, Camden listed the XPS 1730 laptop -- dubbed "The Beast" -- the XPS 630 desktop, and the just-announced XPS 730 and 730 H2C, among several examples of high-end systems that will continue to bear the Dell brand.
"While closely associated with gaming, in the last year XPS has expanded well beyond a gaming brand," Camden continued. "Look at the XPS One, our first entry into the all-in-one market; the XPS M1330, an industry leading ultraportable; or the XPS 420 desktop, designed for multi-media activities. How the WSJ missed all this is a little beyond us."
Faced with having to explain away how their stories diverged so broadly from the facts, some technology blogs this morning reported that CEO Michael Dell stepped in at the "last minute" to save the XPS line from certain doom.
Does Dell still use the cheapest parts on the market at the time of building the laptop.. I will not buy Dell because accountants build the machines to make the most money..
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|Where are you getting your information?
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|The only cheap part Dell uses on many of their laptops is the thin film LCD display. It would nice if Dell would use an SPVA LCD display instead that can actually display the full 16.7 million colors that Windows XP and Vista normally use.
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|I have an XPS1730 and I love it but wouldn't recommend it for all purposes.
It isn't a laptop really rather than semi-portable desktop replacement but for it's spec it is very very fast.
I would definately agree the 'beast' monica it has attained.
The one big problem is the large house-brick size AC adapter and the life of the battery (sub 1 hour under a gaming load scenario).
The other thing is that Dell upped the spec pretty much as soon as mine was ordered and the new version of the 1730 is most likely faster for the same money.
I do strongly believe that if fundemental hardware specs change then a model should be rebranded with a new model number rather than call it an update to an existing model as it makes customers feel like they've rippd off their customers (are you listening Dell as I'd really like a rebate).
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|Allot of people buy Dell computers including myself and I have never once had a problem with a Dell. I have even recently upgraded it and it works perfectly. Perhaps if you learned how to use a computer you would not be so very rude and critical about others who do! being a computer tech myself, I can tell you Dell is a fine machine. No matter what you buy, there are always problems with some machines, this is NOT unique to Dell as so many would make you believe.
So calling people stupid for buying a Dell computer is more than moronic.
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|who buys a dell anyways? You'd have to be stupid to give them your money for what you get. Anyone with half a brain knows that.
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|Hey, Be nice! LOL!
What's wrong with paying top dollar for mediocre performance on a proprietary platform subject to planned obsolescence for which you lack a viable upgrade path?
;-)
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|Tell me then--how many computers do you buy annually for your company? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?
I admit I only buy in the tens usually, although it is possible this year we'll reach the 100 mark. I've used them all, and for all its flaws, Dell enterprise business support is the best. If you buy Dell through their Home/Small office division, I can't guarantee anything, but their enterprise support runs circles around most of their competitors.
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|Plenty of folks buy Dell computers. I have several friends who are very happy with theirs and those folks are fairly bright individuals; far from stupid.
You say that anyone with half a brain knows that but you don't give one shred of an example. Please enlighten us.
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|because they have no idea what a real computer is. case closed. (see "half a brain"...)
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|purchased 10,889 computers last year.
NONE were dell crap.
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|at least someone gets it.
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|At the time I bought my laptop Dell was the only company that offered a laptop for less than $1500 with a monitor that had a resolution of 1680x1050 or better. My laptop has discrete graphics suitable for gaming plus five hours of battery life with a single 9 cell battery too.
Apparently in your case a "real" computer is either one you've built yourself or one of the prebuilt high end $5,000 gaming computers.
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|And which mainline business pc's are not built to that spec? When you buy 1000's of PCs, you don't care about upgrade paths. They all are leased and they all get given away at the end of 3 years. The cost of maintaining the platform - the software - is the killer on Windows PC's.
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|"who buys a dell anyways?"
I do believe Dell is second-bestselling after HP.
Keeping in mind Dell's direct method of selling, and considering the number of outlets in which HP computers are sold (and therefore their exposure), a lot of people must make a point of buying Dell computers.
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