“Cut price tin marketer Dell has started to flog what it is calling a luxury range of PCs aimed at high end businesses,” Nick Farrell writes for The Inquirer.
“The new XPS brand will start at $2,700 for the laptop and $1,100 for entry-priced units… Dell spinners said that the real feeling of luxury will come from its customer service. Buyers of the XPS laptops will be connected with a customer service representative within five minutes. That is about half the time that regular Dell customers wait. Only with Dell is reasonable customer service considered a luxury.”
Farrell writes, “The rest of the cash seems to have gone into the look of the hardware. For example the cover of the laptop is made of a magnesium alloy that gives the product a brushed gunmetal look.”
Full article here.
“‘Looking at their consumer strategy, they don’t have the brand name that Apple and Sony (SNE) have,’ said Shaw Wu, of American Technology Research,” Rex Crum reports for Dow Jones News. “Wu points to last week’s release of Dell’s new DJ Ditty music player as an example of the challenges the company is up against in the consumer market. The $99 device can hold 220 songs and is being marketed as an alternative to Apple’s iPod Shuffle. But Apple’s dominant market position and ubiquitous iPod marketing campaign will force Dell to play catch-up. ‘They released it without much fanfare,’ said Wu, who rates Dell shares a ‘buy.’ ‘They’re trying to hit the iPod Shuffle, but Apple is already so strong there.'”
Crum reports, “Another of Dell’s strengths is its direct-sales model, which lowers manufacturing costs and allows the company to build machines that cost less than similar ones made by its competitors. But high-end customers, who tend to be more technology-savvy, are less focused on price and more concerned about what their gear can do, said Mark Stahlman, an analyst with Caris & Co.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Besides looking like prop rejects from the original Battlestar Galactica TV series (1978), these things also do not come with a ‘luxury’ operating system: Dell XPS PCs ship with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition. Of note: the big one (middle of top picture) called the “XPS 600” offers a “customizable backlit shield with seven color choices.”
“the real feeling of luxury will come from its customer service. Buyers of the XPS laptops will be connected with a customer service representative within five minutes”
No, the real feeling of luxury is not having to connect to customer service in the first place.
Oh, man! Professional comedy writers couldn’t come up with material this good! So the luxury bit is that you only have to wait FIVE minutes on the phone when the computer fscks up instead of TEN? Do I even need to come up with a joke?
Dell as a luxury brand, that’s choke-on-your-lunch funny. “Introducing the Belgrade, a luxury car made as only Yugo can…”
they look like crap.
If you go to their website and click on the XPS line, one of the the blurbs goes something like “15 months of virus and spyware protection included”
MDN Daily word: tell
as in, “Tell me how you’re even going to go 15 DAYS without getting some kind of virus/spyware on that pos!”
The sad truth about this ‘new’ product line is that it’s not new at all. Dell debuted the refreshed ‘design’ a few months ago.
The only difference is some new names for the same products, a higher price tag, one full year of support standard and Windows Media Center Edition standard.
For anyone who ever says Apple is gouging the customer and/or Apple is expensive can finally shut up and stop complaining. Dell just took the price gouge crown.
In the end, I find this announcement from Dell highly disappointing. I was expecting something higher-end, but oh well…that’s what I get for expecting anything different from Dell.
Amazingly, they charge the same price as the top of the line 15″ PowerBook for a machine that has a vastly inferior OS, is 1/2″ thicker, 3 pounds heavier, and does NOT come with a “SuperDrive” equivalent built in. Granted it has more RAM, but to support the inefficient OS, it’ll be needed. The way I see it, it’s just another weapon to use in my Mac vs. PC conversations: “Look at these two ‘comparable’ systems and notice the price difference. Mac is cheaper in so many ways…”
Ah, the harder they try, the more obviously they fail.
Not only are they hideous, but each one’s hideous in a different way. There’s no consistency of design from one model to another. The only common design element is the nasty little round “Dell” badge.
I’d be more impressed if they’d come up with a unified design aesthetic that at least made the different models look related. At least then they’d be consistently awful. As it is, it looks like they shopped for off-the-shelf cases at three different suppliers and just painted them all the same color.
Come on give it a chance. It’s almost as pricey as a mac so it’s gotta be good. Right?
No it actually hasn’t
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I just used the laptop version of the xps… there are actually blue lights coming out of every corner of it, not to mention xps lit up on the back of the display (kinda like the apple on our /(power|i)books/) only in a “look at me! i’ve got the most lit up and most lowclass laptop on this lanparty” kind of way.
The graphicscard (geforce6800 ultra) and a 1920×1200 display kicks my pb15″ back to the stoneage though 🙁
Apple really needs to put some better displays into the powerbooks, if friggin dell can do it, apple should be able to pull it off as well!
Just a note about the luxury… there is actually a whole lot of plastic on it… plastic != luxury to me
ppl the only reason all u hate dell is b/c u never had one, and if u did u would c that is the same metal box w/ the same exact motherboards than any other alien computer on the market, i know b/c i have one and i can play any game the industry decides to make on it w/ out any problem at all.