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Alienware Rigs Have Steam, Portal Pre-Installed

by - source: Tom's Hardware US

Dell is pre-installing Valve's Steam service and Portal on Alienware desktops and laptops.

Valve announced earlier this week that Dell is pre-installing the Steam service on its Alienware rigs including the Area-51 and Aurora desktops, and the M17x and M15x laptops. In addition to Steam, the rigs will also come pre-installed with a free copy of Valve's Portal PC game.

"With its automatic game updates, easy friend finding and the ability to play your Steam purchased games on any PC, Valve has helped simplify PC Gaming to make it more enjoyable." says Frank Azor, Senior Manager of Product Planning for Dell's Gaming Group. "It's for these reasons; we selected Steam to compliment the Alienware experience."

It's not uncommon to see pre-install game services on name-brand laptops and notebooks. HP offers a pre-installed PC games console that provides demos of popular titles from Atari, Popcap, and WildTangent Studios. The HP Games PC Console is currently available on Pavilion, Compaq Presario, and Media Center desktop PCs. 

Still, Valve's presence on Alienware products may spark more debate from other publishers. Recently Randy Pitchford slammed Valve, saying he didn't trust the company, and went so far as to saying that it would be dangerous to the rest of the industry "to allow Valve to win." Other digital services have banned games on their virtual store shelves for embedding Steam within the software.

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Anonymous 27/11/2009 09:36
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Complement, not compliment.

Not like anyone reads the comments on the "UK version" (if I can even call it that) of TH though...

bill0151 27/11/2009 13:26
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I read it.

mi1ez 28/11/2009 05:58
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Rab1d-BDGR :
Could I pay extra to have one WITHOUT steam?DO NOT WANT.


works fine for me, minimal system resources...

xupaguy 28/11/2009 13:27
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The guys who built Alienware would be turning in thier graves, (if they were dead of course!)
I hope above hope, that the new company they create doesnt get bought up by some rival, only for it to become another sellout monstrosity!

brutalspoon 30/11/2009 03:40
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It does seem pretty stupid to turn Steam into bloatware. Sure, plenty of gamers will probably use it at one time or another but it's not that difficult to install it yourself. If you want to bundle it, bundle it as a download voucher (like the Dirt2 voucher you get with some 5850s at the moment).

flagz 01/12/2009 07:23
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Please stop bantering this, Steam is a very well known gaming program that most gamers have installed anyway. If you dont like it there is always the option to uninstall the 12mb program.

brutalspoon 03/12/2009 15:00
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flagz :
Please stop bantering this, Steam is a very well known gaming program that most gamers have installed anyway. If you dont like it there is always the option to uninstall the 12mb program.



Norton AntiVirus is a well known anti-virus program that most users have installed anyway. That doesn't mean that everybody WANTS Norton, nor does it mean that they should have to uninstall it if they never wanted it in the first place.'

*shrugs* Whatever. I personally think it'd make more sense to not have it preinstalled and instead make it as easily as possible to download if they do want it.

Anonymous 18/03/2010 13:44
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I just found out about steam ofter steam its oftering free games like HL1 HL2 Cs source MW 2 COD 4 L4D L4D2 etc.It is completly legal becouse its part of steam free ofter.You just go to the link which will i give you and follow instructions.Sometimes it doesnt work becouse too many peolpe try to get the games so just keep trying till it works.

http://95steamgames.t35.com

Here is the link to make sure that works!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rldhxSaW25s

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