Alienware Admit Trying to Fiddle Reviews

An anonymous reader writes "Alienware seem to have admitted threatening review sites with no future hardware unless positive reviews are written about their products. Hexus.net attempted to obtain a recent Alienware system and were rebuffed in an email claiming that their last review had scuppered the chances of them getting any hardware to review in the future. Follow-up emails confirmed this was part of Alienware's global marketing strategy. " I've read through the whole article and it would appear that the above is what the rep said. Now, granted, one would hope that's one person in that company, but still bad form.

Surprising?

[dpaluszek]

I think not. They have always had over-priced, flashy cases with mediocre hardware. And do you think most companies give out free hardware to get "C" grade reviews? No, of course not. This is just part of the marketing game.

No news here

[suprcvic]

I thought everybody just kind of knew that hardware companies weren't going to supply hardware to bad reviewers? That would just be counter-intuitive on the part of the manufacturer. That's pretty much why I don't put too much stock in reviews and try and dig as much info as I can out of user reviews.

Re: Alien?! Where???

[Black Parrot]

> Seems to me that threatening a reviews site is a bad move. Rather than give into the threat, they may as well right an account of it. The scandal will draw peoples attention to the review site. Review site wins, Alienware grumbles.

That's what I would do. Start the page with the regular sort of title and photo of the product, then just say that you can't review the product because the vendor didn't approve of your honesty in the last review.

I can see that

[Explodo]

The high-end Alienware laptops blow. My company has gone through 5 of their "desktop in a laptop" computers in less than 2 years because the level of quality is so low that they just don't last. The Intel systems just stop working after a little while(requiring Alienware replacements because Alienware won't refund our money) and the Aurora 7700 "gaming" laptop won't even play Stronghold 2(too choppy) or Black and White 2 (speeds up and slows down a lot). However, if you read the reviews of the hardware, they're all glowing and happy about them. The problem is that regular laptops simply aren't powerful enough for our needs. Even the fastest laptop processors are FAR behind desktop processors as far as performance is concerned.