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Dell will no longer make XPS computers

erek

erek

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"On the other hand, Dell’s XPS lines, as well as its business lines, have become popular go-tos for consumer and business users seeking reliable performance and pricing. For the unaffiliated, it may not have been immediately obvious why one should buy an XPS over a Latitude. But after a small amount of research and years of Dell pushing these differentiated lines, many technologists had become well accustomed to Dell's branding, what each line broadly represented, and the type of users each line targeted.

The new product line names are also pretty similar to one another and to the naming of the sub-tiers. Moving to Standard, Pro, and Pro Max branding with Base, Plus, and Premium sub-tiers may not immediately convey which products are for consumers versus businesses, creative professionals, budget shoppers, or big spenders.

It’s also hard to immediately see how this new branding would help clarify the AI capabilities of computers. Simultaneously, people remain skeptical about the need for AI features in their computers at all. For example, a survey of 6,000 people in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom that Intel conducted in November found that 44 percent of respondents see AI PCs “as a gimmick or futuristic technology," and 53 percent believe that AI PCs "are only for creatives or technical professionals.” New, less imaginative branding is unlikely to clear those doubts."

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Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-dell-will-no-longer-make-xps-computers/
 
XPS was always in a weird place and I am glad it's gone, next do Vostro... oh looks like the did that too.
XPS was prosumer but paired with consumer support, Vostro was small business paired with consumer support, both were OK products priced to something slightly higher than the average user but skimped on the support that made the business products good.
So honestly from a business stand point neither XPS nor Vostro are easy to recommend products because the support for them just wasn't there.
Dell's PC market doesn't need 15 different products all with the same guts packed into a slightly different case.
 
Lakados said:
Dell's PC market doesn't need 15 different products all with the same guts packed into a slightly different case.
Click to expand...
I was going to say with how smaller this market get and how similar the buyers of a desktop must be becoming.... you can have a simple stack.

AS for the article:
Moving to Standard, Pro, and Pro Max branding with Base, Plus, and Premium sub-tiers may not immediately convey which products are for consumers versus businesses, creative professionals, budget shoppers, or big spenders.

If only pro was for profesionnal premium-max for big spender and standard-base for budget...
 
LukeTbk said:
I was going to say with how smaller this market get and how similar the buyers of a desktop must be becoming.... you can have a simple stack.

AS for the article:
Moving to Standard, Pro, and Pro Max branding with Base, Plus, and Premium sub-tiers may not immediately convey which products are for consumers versus businesses, creative professionals, budget shoppers, or big spenders.

If only pro was for profesionnal premium-max for big spender and standard-base for budget...
Click to expand...
Honestly they don't need all that crap either, they could boil it down to 3 lineups.
Inspiron, which they could target towards creators at a couple of different price points, beefed up GPU options paired with different track pads and touch screens and those things.
Optiplex, which would go towards productivity, just base stuff use it for pushing O365 subscriptions and such as their tie ins, keep them as basic as possible.
Alienware, which goes towards their gaming end.

Keep those 3 and just hit the needed price brackets within each of them and Dells set.
 
"as a gimmick or futuristic technology"

Those two things are on pretty different ends of the spectrum. Someone got some statistics they didn't like and they got creative.
 
I'm sure there are lots of algorithms that will put money into any AI bullshit. All it ever needs is to produce is a quick profit for the shareholders.

It's like SEO but for hedge funds.
 
LukeTbk said:
I was going to say with how smaller this market get and how similar the buyers of a desktop must be becoming.... you can have a simple stack.

AS for the article:
Moving to Standard, Pro, and Pro Max branding with Base, Plus, and Premium sub-tiers may not immediately convey which products are for consumers versus businesses, creative professionals, budget shoppers, or big spenders.

If only pro was for profesionnal premium-max for big spender and standard-base for budget...
Click to expand...
I think Apple proved that you don't need an incredibly hyper-complicated trans-dimensional product stack, and I think Dell and HP both could use a simplification of their naming schemes and stacks.

But "Dell Pro" is just a parody-level silicon-valley-douche minimalism that even Apple doesn't stoop to. at least have a damned product name, then copying Apple's Pro and Pro Max? REALLY? So 'poser' was a term we had in highschool of people who tried to wear the clothes and act like the cool kids but you could tell they were anxiously trying so hard to be cool which made them ultimately not cool at all. They would copy the cool kids' slang and try to talk about the same music and TV that the cool kids talked about. These Posers were often WAY more cringe-worthy than the normal autistic rejects who didn't try to be cool.

In other words, forcing and unnaturally imitating something hip and popular has the opposite effect and can make you look WAY less appealing than doing nothing.
 
erek said:
"On the other hand, Dell’s XPS lines, as well as its business lines, have become popular go-tos for consumer and business users seeking reliable performance and pricing. For the unaffiliated, it may not have been immediately obvious why one should buy an XPS over a Latitude. But after a small amount of research and years of Dell pushing these differentiated lines, many technologists had become well accustomed to Dell's branding, what each line broadly represented, and the type of users each line targeted.

The new product line names are also pretty similar to one another and to the naming of the sub-tiers. Moving to Standard, Pro, and Pro Max branding with Base, Plus, and Premium sub-tiers may not immediately convey which products are for consumers versus businesses, creative professionals, budget shoppers, or big spenders.

It’s also hard to immediately see how this new branding would help clarify the AI capabilities of computers. Simultaneously, people remain skeptical about the need for AI features in their computers at all. For example, a survey of 6,000 people in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom that Intel conducted in November found that 44 percent of respondents see AI PCs “as a gimmick or futuristic technology," and 53 percent believe that AI PCs "are only for creatives or technical professionals.” New, less imaginative branding is unlikely to clear those doubts."

View attachment 702176

Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-dell-will-no-longer-make-xps-computers/
Click to expand...

The doubts don't need to be cleared. The doubters are the ones who are right.

It is the AI believers who need their CMOS reset.
 
LukeTbk said:
I was going to say with how smaller this market get and how similar the buyers of a desktop must be becoming.... you can have a simple stack.
Click to expand...

That was my first thought.

You can barely give away a used Dell desktop on the likes of marketplace, even if it is only a year or two old. Demand has plummeted for these things, so how long could they justify keeping them around?

Then I remembered that XPS Laptops also exist.

I don't know man. I have such little interest in pre-built machines that I don't even bother following them anymore.

I build my own desktops and servers. I have two aging pre-"ultrabook" era laptops (Latitudes from ~2012-2013) I keep around in case I ever need them, but I almost never use them.
 
chameleoneel said:
Personally, I always thought it was weird to keep the XPS line, after they bought Alienware.
Click to expand...

On the laptop side XPS used to be well differentiated as the thin and light option when everything else was still an inch thick slab with an optical drive.

I never paid much attention to their desktops, but imagine their biggest differentiator was a more minimalist style; Alienware was extremely garish even before unicorn puke became the default gaming aesthetic.
 
I worked there for 10 years, and despite enjoying it, I would never buy one of their computers. This ain't [.S}oft Forum...
 
Dell missed the point, I'd say — it's not the naming system as such that's the issue, it's the arbitrarily complex product lineup.

Steve Jobs' best decision upon returning to Apple, besides greenlighting the iMac, was to cut the model line down to four systems. That exact move wouldn't quite work today, but the core of it is still a good idea: every computer should have a clear reason to exist. And Dell's renaming campaign still leaves a lot of "who is this for?" machines in the range.
 
DanNeely said:
On the laptop side XPS used to be well differentiated as the thin and light option when everything else was still an inch thick slab with an optical drive.

I never paid much attention to their desktops, but imagine their biggest differentiator was a more minimalist style; Alienware was extremely garish even before unicorn puke became the default gaming aesthetic.
Click to expand...

I used to think of Dells Laptop linueup as follows:

Inspiron: Bargain basement junk sold at big box stores that will be obsolete or fall apart before you can even blink.
XPS: Pro-sumer. Tries to look fancy. May even have a non-intel GPU!
Latitude: Enterprise. Easy to work on. Just works.
 
Honestly I feel like they could consolidate down to 4 named end user lines without causing any real harm; but these just aren't it. Did Dell recently hire a new VP of Branding who felt the need to make his mark on the company by burning down everything their predecessors did over the last 25+ years?

Entry level: Pick either Inspiron or Vosotro; neither have much real value IMO, they're both cheap junk models. Just offer business class support as a $100-200 option and call it a day.

Mainstream: I lean towards Latitude over XPS; mostly because I suspect enterprise sales are a lot larger than consumer ones.

High end: Keep both Alienware and Precision. They've put too much into the Alienware brand for giving it up to make sense and the aesthetics desired by the stereotypical gamers buying Alienware gaming systems and stereotypical IT managers buying Precision workstations are too generally* different to merge into a single set of external chassis anyway. Using identical PCB layouts for the internals is fine.

I'm clueless on Dell's server branding; and also skeptical that it really matters what they call them anyway.

* While exceptions do exist - the company I worked for 10-20 years ago bought Alienware laptops for anyone doing 3d virtual environment work on Unity, for what I was told were about a thou$and valid reasons per laptop - they're far too garish for many suits to consider.
 
Lakados said:
Honestly they don't need all that crap either, they could boil it down to 3 lineups.
Inspiron, which they could target towards creators at a couple of different price points, beefed up GPU options paired with different track pads and touch screens and those things.
Optiplex, which would go towards productivity, just base stuff use it for pushing O365 subscriptions and such as their tie ins, keep them as basic as possible.
Alienware, which goes towards their gaming end.

Keep those 3 and just hit the needed price brackets within each of them and Dells set.
Click to expand...
Agreed with everything except replace Inspiron with Precision and Mobile Precision.
Those workstations are pretty solid, are pretty customization depending on the tasks, and get the job done.

revenant said:
View attachment 702190

I loved those old XPS cases... Probably not fun to build in, but they look cool af.
Click to expand...
I forgot about all of the marketing for Dell systems in F.E.A.R. 1 and 2 - seeing laptops, desktops, servers, and monitors.
The first game came out in 2005, 20 years ago, and is set in the year 2025...

tenor.gif
 
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