Alienware to offer terabyte PCs

High-end PC manufacturer Alienware, and its parent company Dell, are offering a new line of PCs that contain 1TB hard drives manufactured by Hitachi. 

The PCs are targeted at serious gamers and home users with large amounts of digital media.

One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes. Dell estimates that a 1TB hard drive could hold over a million digital photos or roughly 16 days of DVD video.

The company hopes that the drives will appeal to "packrat" users who record and collect large amounts of digital media.

"Digital content is exploding in the consumer market. With this 1TB hard drive, a lifetime of memories, music and other information can be made, stored and shared with others," said Neil Hand, vice president of worldwide consumer marketing at Dell's consumer product group.

As part of a promotion for the new drives, Dell has launched StudioDell which allows users to view and upload videos of how they use technology.

The site will accept submissions through to the end of the year, when the videos will be stored on one of the 1TB drives and sealed into a time capsule at Dell's Texas headquarters for 50 years.

The drives are currently available as custom add-ons for Dell's XPS and Alienware's Aurora and Area-51 desktop systems (except for the basic 7500 model.)

While the 1TB machines are relatively inexpensive by gaming PC standards, the prices are well above those of Dell's consumer desktops.

The basic XPS model with a 1TB drive costs US$2,239. The 1TB hard disc adds US$540 to the system price.

Alienware systems equipped with the 1TB hard drives start at US$2,229 (a US$500 option.)

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