Dell is the company building the most interesting computers right now. Dell is making computers interesting again,
period. Who would have thought?
Feast your eyes on the gorgeous tablet in the picture above. Then take a
peek at the sleek laptop below. Those barely-there bezels. That premium
ultrathin construction. They came from Dell.
They're not all looks, either:
the new XPS 13 laptop and Venue 8 7000 tablet
are among the best we've ever reviewed. And not just that. The laptop
starts at $800. The tablet is $400. Two premium products that you could
actually afford to take home.
It's one hell of an achievement, but one that's actually not so far from this:
Remember those ads? The ones where a scruffy dude charmed adults into buying computers by acting like a maniac and
spouting ridiculous marketing bullshit? Still,
it was hard to argue with what the Dell dude was selling in the early
2000s: Cheap, complete computers that punched above their weight. Dell
was cool because you could afford one without having to settle for some
half-assed PC.
I bought my dream computer from Dell in 2002, the Inspiron 8200.
It had everything I needed: a high-def 1600 x 1200 screen, a powerful
Pentium 4 processor, modular batteries for (car) camping, and discrete
ATI graphics just good enough to get by at LAN parties. I was
able to afford it with wages I'd saved up from a part-time job, and it
made me the envy of my friends for at least a short time. Yep, Dell was
cool, and it made me cool.
Dell
never really stopped building bang-for-the-buck products like my
Inspiron 8200. But fandom faded as Dell became just one of many PC
companies racing to the bottom with price on traditional PCs... and
pushing out half-baked tablets, smartphones, and stylish ultrathin
laptops in an attempt to keep pace with the growing popularity of Apple.
And then, of course, there was that unfortunate business with the Dell dude.
But it's
not like Dell is all about cheap computers, you know. The new Dell XPS
13 is hardly the company's first attempt to build a stunning notebook.
It's just the first stunning Dell notebook in recent memory that you'd actually want to buy.
Get a load of this incredible Dell Adamo, circa 2009.
We called it "the MacBook Air designed by Batman."
It's made of beautiful brushed aluminum, with a pane of tempered glass
around back. It also cost over $2,000, weighed a ridiculous four pounds,
was dreadfully underpowered, and had under three hours of battery life.
And then there's the Dell Adamo XPS,
from later that year. See that keyboard? It folds right up into the
computer's impossibly thin chassis. Blow up the picture below and take a
good look at that USB port and remember this computer is from 2009. But again, $1,800 for a seriously weak computer that reviewers ultimately called disappointing.
Until today—in my mind, anyhow—the closest Dell ever got to a blend of
"a computer you'd actually want to buy" and "a computer you'd like to be
seen using" was the Dell XPS M1330 in 2007. It still started at $1,300,
with configs ranging up to $3,000. But it set a record for skinny
notebooks at just under an inch thick, could come with discrete graphics
(which sadly burnt out
and sparked a major class-aciton lawsuit), and it looked pretty damn cool for the time.
So how is Dell suddenly building stylish computers that cost hundreds of dollars less than you'd expect? Dell, now a private company,
doesn't have to answer to investors who want to make a quick buck.
Dell's now focused on long-term growth—which means the company doesn't
have to push out half-baked products to look like they're doing
something important.
Dell can take risks now.
"Dell
used to discontinue a product if it didn't sell well in 90 days," PC
industry analyst Pat Moorhead tells me. "That drove a culture of low or
no risk takers and you can't succeed in the PC market with this
attitude." Importantly, Moorhead also says that Dell's current executive
team now intuitively understands the importance of design.
So I
chatted with one of those execs: Frank Azor, who runs the XPS and
Alienware businesses for Dell. That lovely carbon fiber and aluminum in
the Dell XPS 13? Azor says Dell's been improving yields on those
materials for three years now, which naturally brought down the cost.
But that wasn't the only factor in making the machine affordable. Dell
made a conscious decision to not only make a great laptop, but also make
some waves by hitting that unheard-of $800 price.
"We have been bringing to market some amazing products for years now that most people can't afford," admits Azor. "Quite simply it
was just a matter of challenging ourselves, applying all the knowledge
we gained from building this class of products for several years now and
focusing on the improved goal."
"We have proven a top-quality 13-inch notebook doesn't have to cost a fortune."
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