Alienware is an American computer hardware company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, Inc. It mainly produces desktops and laptops specialized for video editing, audio editing, and gaming. Alienware is also a producer of computer peripherals, such as headsets and keyboards. In the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a prototype was presented of what is being described as a "giant 'curved' widescreen", i.e. a display which sizewise would be equivalent to two, slightly bent 24-inch LCD screens glued together Alienware was founded in 1996 by its CEO, Nelson Gonzalez, and COO, Alex Aguila. Alienware's corporate headquarters is located in Kendall, Florida, an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County west of the city of Miami.

History

Established in 1996, Alienware manufactures desktop, notebook, media center, and enterprise systems. According to employees, the Alienware name was chosen because of the founders' fondness for the hit television series The X-Files , hence the theme to their products, with names such as Area-51 and Aurora.

Alienware was originally established to tap a niche in the high performance game market, which back then was not on the radar of the major PC manufacturers such as Dell. Since high-end game hardware was not widely distributed, the company's founders formed an OEM which sold personal computers with the highest performing hardware and settings according to benchmarks.The company products are not only famous for their outstanding hardware configurations but also for their spectacular designs.

Operations

Alienware established its EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) headquarters in Athlone, Ireland in October 2002. As of FY 2005, Alienware brought in upwards of $170 million USD in annual sales, while undertaking an international expansion initiative launched in 2003 to maintain a presence in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Costa Rica. Alienware has had a call center in Costa Rica to handle all sales and support calls for a number of years. Additionally, Alienware allows you to send in old computer hardware in exchange for credit towards new hardware.

Competitors

Alienware has conventionally competed with companies such as Falcon Northwest, Velocity Micro, and VoodooPC (which is now part of Dell's largest competitor, Hewlett-Packard). Before being acquired by Dell, Alienware also competed against Dell XPS gaming systems.

Alienware in Media

Alienware computers were featured in the movie Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0 in the UK), being used by all of the computer hackers and by the terrorists.

Alienware laptops were featured prominently in the 2006 movie, Stay Alive.

The character Gus from the television program Psych can be seen with an Alienware laptop in season one.

Alienware laptops and Desktops can be seen throughout the game "Blacksite: Area 51"

Alienware laptops can are seen and interacted with in the game F.E.A.R."

The TV Series 24 features Alienware laptops used by the terrorists as well as in the agency.

The character Archie Simpson from the television program Degrassi: The Next Generation owned an Alienware laptop, which was later stolen from him in the season 3 episode "Gangsta Gangsta"

Alienware desktops can be seen throughout the TV series Smallville

An Alienware laptop can be seen in the television show "UFO Hunters"

In the third episode of "The Big Bang Theory" the character Howard Wolowitz uses an Alienware Laptop covered with stickers.

In Scooby-Doo 2 Daphne has a purple Alienware laptop

Acquisition

On March 22, 2006, Dell agreed to purchase Alienware. Alienware continues to operate under its own brand name. Dell had been considering buying Alienware since the year 2002, but did not make any action of purchase until March of 2006.