Dell will no longer make XPS computers(arstechnica.com) |
Dell will no longer make XPS computers(arstechnica.com) |
Nothing is less fun than cross-shopping products and there are a bunch of arbitrary brand differences. "Precisions are their portable workstations. Latitudes are their ultrabooks. Duh! XPS is their premium consumer laptop!".
Marketing departments tend to get addicted to the smell of their own farts. But I don't think consumers care about particular sub-brand names. We already saw this a decade ago in the automotive space where manufacturers ditched their unnecessary marquees (Pontiac, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Saturn). And I think we will see this trend continue into more industries (like hotel chains).
I was recently buying a Seasonic power supply. What is the difference between Prime, Vertex, Focus, or Core series? Then there is Prime TX, Prime PX, Prime GX. I have no idea what all this is. I ended up just picking something in the 800W range with the modular power outputs that I needed.
Product Lines: Core (Budget) < Focus (Mid) < Vertex (Mid-High) < Prime (High), in terms of quality and features.
80Plus Efficiency: GX (Gold) < PX (Platinum) < TX (Titanium)
This is true across all of their product lines.
Why should they? Every company has different priorities, and it's on you as a consumer to get familiar with each company's product line before making a purchase.
Would you prefer it if all products were named "<company name> <thing>"? So in your PSU example, "Seasonic PSU"? Of course not, you would like to have more detail than that. So how about "Seasonic PSU 800W modular"? OK, that's better, but what if other consumers are interested in different product criteria? Should we just cram them all in the product name like sellers on Amazon do? That wouldn't be right either. So the best approach then is to segment your product line according to some criteria, and give different segments arbitrary names. This way customers can know what to expect, and which segment to focus on. It's important to keep this consistent, otherwise it leads to confusion, but in general it works fine IMO. I would rather have to choose between Seasonic Prime TX, Prime PX, etc., than Seasonic Pro, Pro Max, etc.
Customers prefer segmentation by end result rather than by implementation details, and so corporate marketing divisions sometimes try that and group products by features it offers, but that often drive-by ruins product quality.
Bosch WGG244ZANL
Which btw is a Series 6 machine (note the missing 6 in the type name)!
Marketing departments tend to get addicted to the
smell of their own farts.
Pontiac, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Saturn
To a casual, who doesn't know or care that six of those brands are just GM nameplates, they just see seven options for a sedan. And if I'm GM, I certainly like the odds that they'll pick a GM even though I'm essentially just designing one or two sedans and then advertising them six different ways.
A simpler example (that somebody else mentioned down below) is toothpaste. There are like, ten different varieties of Colgate on the shelf. The point isn't that they expect me the consumer to know or care about the differences, or that they are so "addicted to the smell of their own farts" that they think there's a meaningful difference between brands of Colgate.
The point is that they want to consume shelf space, crowd other brands out, and send the message that they are the default, safe choice for toothpaste. We can say that's dumb, but I suspect the sales figures would tell us they're having some success with that.
Sure, but I find this branding even more confusing.
"Dude, you're getting a Dell!"
"Oh, neat! Is it a PC or laptop?"
"It's a Dell Pro... laptop."
"..."
At least with XPS, Latitude, etc., consumers were able to easily distinguish between models, after getting familiar with the product line. Naming all products "<company name> [Pro,Pro Max]" will always be clear as mud. Not to mention that "Pro Max Premium Plus Ultra" is dumb, in that Apple way. Apple is notorious for naming all their products the same, so consumers have to use launch years to distinguish them.
Here are all of the 2024 models available: Latitude 9450, Latitude 7350, Latitude 7350 Ultralight, Latitude 7350 Detachable, Latitude 7455, Latitude 7450, Latitude 7450 Ultralight, Latitude 7650, Latitude 5550, Latitude 5455, Latitude 5450, Latitude 5350, Latitude 3450, Latitude 3550.
You have to memorize what you are looking at - the first digit is the model line, the second digit is a reference to the screen size, and the last set of digits a reference to the model year.
So "Dell Latitude 5450" conveys all the same information as "2024 Dell Pro 14" Plus". I'm not sure what's controversial about that change.
I don't think I could ever remember which of the Inspiron or Latitude lines were supposed to be higher end without looking at the magazine and seeing the prices. I just kind of assumed "Precision" meant their high-end workstations. And I'm someone who fawned over computers and gadgets my whole life.
The worst I saw was single-use coffee packets for the hotel room coffee machine that comes in regular and decaf (with brown or green color stripes to distinguish them)... except the green is regular and brown is decaf.
Having loads of random product numbers is really no better than named ranges.
If you only have 3 product lines then people will learn the names and can understand the differences when shopping.
I wouldn't have thought that such a recognizable brand as the XPS line would fade for "AI PC" BS but heh
Personally, I'm OK with these computer manufacturers cleaning up their product line.
I am a Lenovo guy myself, however I like what they are trying to do. If they actually do a good separation, that would be great. If they only do 9 level of computers, that would be a good change.
Kinda ThinkPad T, X, P. But more clear. And again, I only use ThinkPads T, P, or Xs.
Hell yeah, Lenovo ThinkPad for life.
I still have it. It was a good machine.
Most things worked correctly out of the box but occasionally WIFI didn't wake from sleep properly and the battery life was always a bit rubbish compared to any MacBook Pro.
I think that Dell have had too many models forever. Simplifying their line up is a good idea.
It's all just smushing a bunch of words for "really good" together and pretending like it means something different or unique. If something is maximum, it is the maximum - A maximum grade exceeds a "professional grade" the way an "enterprise subscription" is larger than "team subscription".
In an ideal scenario, it would simply be: "Basic, Advanced, and Maximum". I get the issue though. Sales want to be able to move products, and its an issue if people don't want to feel poor by buying the "basic" one, but can't afford the higher models. Fine! If the want to use more market-y terms, why not something like: "Quality, Premium, and Luxury"?
I would also presume that that would be specific to consumer grade. A business-grade line would be much easier. Keep the model names clear and obvious for Purchasing & Logistics people: "Basic, Performance, Executive". Basic is for grunt work who need internet access for a WebApp, but not much else. Performance is for finance, or whoever deals with a lot of wear and tear. Executive is thinner and fancier looking, but about as weak as basic model but can open Excel and PowerPoint.
Their consumer laptops are all garbage IMO, mainly cause I find they try to max out specs so it looks good on paper and skimp on really basic things like the hinges, batteries, etc.
Their professional laptops are much better, my parents just got rid of a Dell Latitude that I passed down to them after college, and when I bought it for college it was already 5-6 years old so all in all it had a service life of more than a decade. Specs might be down compared to the consumer line but everything else IMO is much better built (chassis, battery, hinges, etc)
The base model XPS laptop was ~$999 at the time (vs $1299 for a 2023 model). Which sadly doesn't feel all that expensive today even though I would absolutely still call a $1000 laptop expensive.
Pretty neat trick. The only thing is that something about the way the video framebuffer was set up when you hit the MediaDirect button made the GRUB interface laggy. After that, the kernel resets everything and all is well!
This particular laptop was part of the infamous batch of bad G84 series of Nvidia graphics chips. The BGA soldering on the GPUs would crack under thermal stress, but you could reflow it with a heat gun or using the oven (crazy for a semi-plastic device!). In my case, it happened early enough that XPS support replaced my motherboard a few times. They actually met me wherever I was with the part to replace the board and the tech would do it for me at home. Overall, that was the finest customer support experience I ever had. I'm a fickle guy, though. It wasn't enough to keep me with the brand and I eventually ended up with a Macbook.
It's funny. After posting this I googled my name and XPS M1330 and found a post where I was trying to boot off the SD card. I was fascinated by this idea back then that I could just carry my OS on an SD card and then people couldn't see any of my stuff unless they had that specific SD card: https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/laptops-gene... . Sadly the XPS M1330 didn't work for that, but I think I did it with a USB stick (which is unfortunately more noticeable - back then they were bulky!).
0: https://web.archive.org/web/20150811070526/https://arjie.com...
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20150811065240/https://arjie.com...
Shopping for a laptop recently has left me, ironically, running for Mac. The experience on most windows laptop vendor sites is awful:
- Dell's sales page focuses on proprietary names like "ExpressCharge TM", "Stealth Mode", "ComfortView TM", "Cryo-Tech TM", etc, that mean nothing to me [0]. It also gave me a pop-up when I went to a specific laptop's page.
- HP has way too many categories on the landing page [1]. I mistook "Elitebook Ultra" for their top-of-the-line, but then discovered they're $3000 lightweight notebooks with Snapdragon chips and Qualcomm GPUs. The first and second laptops shown appear to have identical specs, but differ in price by $2000 [2]. Trying my luck elsewhere, going to "ProBook" gives me no less than 53 options to read and sort through [3].
- Lenovo is actually decent [4]! The product lines are named well and properly explained. The UI isn't as pretty as HP's, but it's a lot more functional.
- Asus overall [5] isn't great (more proprietary names like "SmartHinge" and aesthetic-focused product descriptions). However, the Asus ProArt site is done fairly well [6].
Almost every windows laptop feels like it's trying to sell me on everything that isn't specs. "SmartHinge". "Stealth Mode". "Youthful" aesthetics. Weird proprietary bloatware and extended warranties.
And, even on the sites that don't give me confusing marketing, I'm left to figure out whether I need Windows "Pro" or "Home", what the hell Copilot+ is (a $20/mo upsell [7] that I'm guessing the laptop will forever beg me to add, like OneDrive used to), and if I a guide to get rid of spyware, bloatware, ads, auto-installed candycrush, and other anti-consumer jabs once I actually buy the thing (like I did with Windows 10 when it first released). And then fight every month or two when it inexplicably can't find the license for Office I pay monthly, for and locks me out of all of my documents.
With a Macbook, contrarily, I know I can actually research the silicon, figure out the specs, and actually get what I ordered / expected. I also know I won't have to fight the OS nearly as much, even if Apple has its own upsell attempts, anti-consumer warranty/repair problems, etc. I never would've expected to feel that way. Especially not 10-15 years ago.
But maybe Dell's rebrand helps them move back in that direction a little.
[0]: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/scr/laptops
[1]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cat/laptops
[2]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mdp/hp-elitebook-ultra-3074457...
[3]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/vwa/laptops/brand=ProBook
[4]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/
[6]: https://www.asus.com/us/proart/laptops-home/
[7]: https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/what-is-microsoft-copilot
Should I get the "Dell Pro Max ", the "Dell Pro Max Plus", "Dell Pro Plus", or the "Dell Premium"?
I understand cleaning up the model lineup, but jeez.
1980 Koga Miyata Pro https://www.speedbicycles.ch/velo/193/koga_miyata_pro_racer_...
1978 Centurion Pro Tour https://vintagecenturion.com/models/touring/protour.shtml
1969 Brooks Professional Saddle https://www.brooksengland.com/en_us/standard-professional.ht...
As for "rip-offs," the design language of every aluminum Macbook has basically been Leica rangefinder.
https://www.rustmag.com/gear/2020/12/16/4-reasons-to-buy-a-l...
Which is a double "rip-off," as the IBM Thinkpad goes back a lot farther and it was intentionally made black-with-red-accents to pay homage to Nikon while having the form factor of a bento box.
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/htmls/m...
I thought you were joking, but these do seem to be options in the new, simpler branding!
This is probably good evidence that they needed to simplify their branding. Having their halo consumer product compete for market mindshare against their professional products is counterproductive. Especially when everyone wants to cross shop against MacBooks.
In contrast, ThinkPad's X1 shares almost nothing with the rest of the Thinkpad's professional line, but it sits there adding prestige to the brand.
Even got a lucky BSOD 2 years ago that nuked windows and somehow got me admin access!
I switched to a new M1 MacBook Air and it was like going from a Cessna 150 to an F-15. Everything on the M1 MBA was decades ahead of the XPS.
Everyone and their brother now sells a much better product than XPS, and often for nearly half the cash. I picked up an Asus Vivo last year. Very nice product, half the cost of the XPS they had on offer, but with the same specs and screen.
It feels like it was engineered as a unit, much like the MBA. The XPS in comparison is a parts bin special.
I dont think XPS is a business / professional line? But I think I have heard similar complains from Thinkpad user as well. The only good PC hardware surprisingly came from Microsoft their Surface line. But most business dont use it.
As for AI PC - unfortunately Microsoft has forced this on everyone. They used their influence and power to force Intel to agree to this branding and the conditions for it to be met (things like having a Microsoft specific “Copilot” button). And all the OEMs have to come along or face repercussions for these partnerships. It’s just another example of big tech having too much market share, capital, etc.
OEMs have had 30 years to sell Windows alternatives based on GNU/Linux or BSD, after the monopoly lawsuit, they caved in quickly after XP license became grátis, and nowadays rather sell Chromebooks and Android tablets than proper Windows alternatives.
If all you want is a thinkpad maybe. But then you click the thinkpad link and have to figure out whether you want a T, P, L, E, C or X thinkpad (they don't make Ws anymore, right?) Oh and some also have "s" suffix. And they differ from non-s quite a bit
For a time Microsoft had a relatively clean Surface lineup, but a quick check reveals that it's significantly more difficult to shop than it was.
Whereas, with a Dell or HP, I would have to figure out which models are going to be built with cheaper materials that will wear out or have a higher chance of breaking.
When I quit the job, I immediately bought an identical ThinkPad. It's nearly 8 years old but I still use it regularly use it as a pub trivia host as it can take a beating and have beers poured on it and still run like a trooper.
You have a washing machine, energy efficient, from 2021, model 24, 1200rpm spin speed, from the Netherlands.
https://splaitor.com/bosch-washing-machine-model-number-deco...
That doesn’t help compare it to other manufacturers, but it’s easy to compare to other Bosch washing machines.
The marketing vocabulary includes Pro, Max, Sport, Comp, Light, Elite, XT, GT, Super, and Extra.
SuperMax Pro. Sportmax GT. Sportmax Elite GT. Comp Extra. Etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProMax
People on a budget don't want to be presented with the option of the Dell Basic, the Dell Standard, and the Dell Premium.
Dell bought Alienware in 2006 though so they took their sweet time before cleaning up the product lines.
But bigger numbers don't always indicate better performance. A Dell Latitude 6420 (a Sandy Bridge) is much slower than a 5420. Same with a 7320 versus a 5440.
Its one thing to have say a Seasonic 800M versus just the Seasonic 800 and know the "m" means its modular. What does it even mean for it to be PRIME TX versus a FOCUS GX or GM or then suddenly dropping the noun part and going straight to G12 and B12.
There are 8 different PRIME models with 25 SKUs in the PRIME model family looking at their site right now. And that's just one family of power supplies for one brand! There's another 11 Vertex SKUs, 33 FOCUS SKUs, 15 CORE SKUs. Why on earth would I care to get decoder rings for several different brands to cross shop?
Because products usually can't be compared spec-to-spec anyway. So even if you had to choose between Seasonic 800M and Corsair 800M, which might coincide on these specific criteria, how one company describes their product doesn't translate to how another company does. None of it would tell you which is the better product for you, which is ultimately what you want to know.
Consider CPU clock speeds, for example. The industry moved on from advertising MHz and GHz since they're not good indicators of performance. Consumers should also be aware of core count and types, cache size, power consumption, etc. Yet even if manufacturers embedded all of this information in their product names, CPUs from different manufacturers still wouldn't be comparable. So companies do their best to identify product lines internally, and give them somewhat consistent names.
I'm not saying that companies do a good job at this—most, in fact, make a mess out of it—, but I find that preferable to having obscure names like "Pro", "Plus", "Max", etc. with claims that it's simpler, when it's actually even more confusing than before.
You're focusing on the micro ("WTF is each one of these ridiculous micro variations?") and not on the macro (Colgate is absolutely dominating that aisle, and fully 75% of the toothpaste choices are Colgate while Crest and Aquafresh fight over the scraps)
It's frustrating and unnecessarily complicated.
Of course some people will rebel, and say "screw Colgate" and pick some other brand, and some people will just literally pick the cheapest option no matter what.
But again, if I'm Colgate or whatever their parent company? I absolutely love the way that toothpaste aisle looks. 75% of it is Colgate Red and I bet the sales figures hew pretty closely to that.
It's called Tyranny of Choice - https://longevity.stanford.edu/the-tyranny-of-choice/
> Too many options can decrease the likelihood of making any decision at all
(Although ironically, toothpaste shopping is quite easy once you know the correct answer is "the cheapest brand at the store that has fluoride in it")
Whenever I find marketing copy like this, I use it to filter out the whole company's product lines. This heuristic never fails, because I don't even know what I am missing out on.
I try not to buy big brand / mega corporate products. No Colgate or Crest and both own a number of the less known brands, those are out. This leads to only one or two options to choose from.
This is why I look at products manufacture not just their name.
I would really like website like https://isitbigbeer.com/ to help filter out all products and brands that hide behind multi-naming schemas.
You have to dig into hidden "gen number" to find out which iPad is the one you bought 3 years ago.
This was the Apple way for long. I personally always liked that way. They messed it up with iPhone 3G tho.
It makes sense but it’s not obvious
In the past I'd agree but these days it's better aligned.
Latitude 6420
Latitude 5540
Inspiron 5555
2011 Dell Pro 14"
2024 Dell Pro 15"
2024 Dell Pro Max 15"
Which ones are the recent bigger laptops? Which is the older smaller laptop? Which is better, Inspiron or Latitude? Which is better, the Dell Pro or the Dell Pro Max? Which naming scheme makes these things way more obvious?
So should all of these be part of the product name as well, just to please me? Probably not.
Yet if the manufacturer segmented their product by arbitrary brand names (which could also be "Base", "Pro", "Max", etc. mind you; I just think these are overloaded terms, and custom terms like XPS, Latitude, etc. would be clearer), and then subdivided these with sensible model names that encoded this information, this would make more sense. Given that I as a consumer get familiar with it, which one might want to do before deciding to spend thousands on a product.
Again, I'm not saying that Dell has done a good job at this, but potentially it _can_ be done well. For example, I think MikroTik does a decent job at this[1]. It does lead to product names that are difficult to parse/pronounce like "CSS326-24G-2S+RM", but once you're familiar with the scheme, it's easy to know which product has which specs, and to compare them.
Anyway, it's fine if we disagree. I think we both made our case.
When it comes to selling to the mass market for a single big consumer electronic good like a laptop or phone or game console or whatever, it seems to me to be way simpler to just have a few decent SKUs. Having someone try and remember "Bill said I should get the CSS326-24G-2S+RM, or was that the 3326, wait is this the one with +RM or not, hmm this is complicated I guess I'll just get something else" is a lot more challenging than having someone remember "Bill said I should get at least the Pro version; oh, that's the listing for the 2023 model I want the newer one, there we go."
You'll really burn a customer when they get confused by the naming scheme and think they're getting one thing but then when they get it home it doesn't work like their friend's because their friend is rocking the 7730-G3-M-QQ-7i gizmowidget as opposed to the 7730-G3-N-QQ-7i gizmowidget.
Neither. The precision lines are workstations addressed at a very different audience. So for the average customer the "better" ranking is non-pro, then pro and only in exceptional cases pro max. The actual differentiator is the blank, plus, premium afterwards.
Bonus questions: which models have ECC ram and quadro cards available? Which ones have the best displays? My guess would be pro max premium and non-pro premium, but that is far from obvious.
For manufacturing, yes, absolutely not for marketing.
"Dell 2024 Super Max Pro Ultra Plus New Premium" is objectively better for confusing customers and tricking them into purchasing products sold at higher price and worse value proposition.
Like I said, this middle ground to me are standard product line names with some meaningful product identifier, so this change by Dell seems like a regression.