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Dell Inc. confirmed Thursday that it had acquired boutique PC vendor Alienware, a move that will add some zing to the company’s image.

Although Dell’s acquisition was widely anticipated, Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For consumers, the purchase will mean that Alienware will now access Dell’s well-known supply-chain efficiencies, ideally reducing wait times for new PCs that Alienware executives said have swelled to as much as a month or more. Interestingly, the deal also means that a PC containing a processor from Advanced Micro Devices will finally contribute to Dell’s bottom line.

Gonzalez said that to expand Alienware’s product line with more, highly-tuned boutique products, the company needed more resources. Although the company sells its PCs to customers in Japan, Korea, and Asia, Alienware didn’t have the cash to fund the worldwide expansion it needed, he added.

The Dell-Alienware deal was first "reported" by a blogger and rival, VoodooPC chief Raul Sood, who predicted that a then-rumored deal would make sense. "Why the potential for a Dellienware and not another? Alienware is widely considered to be the volume leader in gaming, they have scale," Sood wrote.

Somewhat ironically, Dell announced the Alienware acqusition on the same day as it released the Dimension XPS Renegade, its own boutique PC sporting a ramped-up design, four graphics chips, an overclocked CPU, even a physics accelerator – and a price tag above $9,000, aimed at the well-to-do enthusiast that Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and its competitors covet. Unsurprisingly, Alienware PCs will also use the Ageia physics chip.

via pcmag. 

South Park has exacted revenge on its former star Isaac Hayes by turning his character Chef into a paedophile and seemingly killing him off.

The opening episode of the 10th series, screened in the US on Wednesday, appeared to be a satire on Scientology.

Hayes, a Scientologist, quit the animated comedy after a different episode ridiculed the religion.

In the new show, Chef is brainwashed by the "Super Adventure Club" - thought to be a veiled reference to Scientology. The other characters are angry at "that fruity little club for scrambling his brains".

Patched together

Hayes did not participate in the episode but his lines were apparently patched together from previous recordings.

Chef arrives after travelling the world with the Super Adventure Club and repeatedly tells the children he wants to "make sweet love" to them.

The children take him to a psychiatrist and then a strip club, where he remembers his love for women and is cured.

But he is brainwashed by the Super Adventure Club again - before falling off a bridge and being burned, stabbed and mauled by a lion and a grizzly bear.

via BBC News.