I dunno, are these high-end gaming companies doing well? Most enthusiasts seem to make their own systems. It's like only the well-off businessmen can afford this stuff and don't have the time to build their own cutting-edge system.

At least, that's the one guy I know who got a... Northwest? Falcon? He was a VP at some finance firm. My place of work got some Alienware laptops because we thought it'd be cool, but not only is the performance disappointing (can't decode even 720p trailers?), but for the price they didn't even include DVD writers, just CD-RW/DVD-ROM. I'm sure it was a mistake on our end in ordering, but it just boggles the mind that they'd even have offered a system with that type of drive. Another pal from a long time ago used to work at Alienware assembling their systems and said he'd never, EVER buy one after knowing how they are put together.

But it doesn't seem like these companies have a bad reputation or anything.

Would any regular reader of TR actually buy one of these systems or care about the companies involved?

HP's branding hasn't made any sense to me for quite a while.

They have parallel Compaq and HP brands, with no discernible difference between them. It's a bit like GM: identical models with just minor cosmetic differences, built in the same factories and sold to the same customers, but somehow worthy of having different names. And like GM, the result is inefficiency and consumer confusion.

When HP bought Compaq, I expected them to either bury the name completely or use it to differentiate different lines -- Compaq for home PCs, say, and HP for business (a la Dell's Inspiron and Latitude). Instead they seemed to have muddled along as if the two companies were still completely separate and competing with each other.

Voodoo at least has a well-defined niche and branding; integrating the back end of the business should save costs but if ends up as just another brand name without a distinct identity then they're just compounding their ongoing marketing failure.

In other news, Dell got the better deal...

Most consumers don't read TR and don't know that hp owns compaq now. It might make sense to keep the Compaq name alive for those who USED to prefer compaq pc's and dont want to be forced out of the comfort zone, its almost a garanteed sale for hp. The same thing would happen if they killed Voodoo or if Dell killed Alienware. The folks that don't know a whole lot about pc's (the ones buying Voodoo and Alienware) are interested in the sweet name and case paint jobs. If you kill the names the consumer would be forced to goto drastic measures and either switch brands or... learn to build their own computer. But I digress, I know nothing of economics sooo maybe my theory is full of crapola.

I really wish HP would drop all references to Compaq already. The buyout of Compaq happened in what 2001; just kill the name and start using HP.