The Alienware Alpha is a abundant allotment of kit if you're in the bazaar for a PC masquerading as a console. Alienware jumped the gun aftermost year aback they appear their eyes for the active allowance PC: it looked like what a Beef Apparatus would be but, critically, it wasn't a Beef Machine. While it booted into Beef Big Account – via Alienware's own bare aback UI – it didn't run on SteamOS, nor did it address with a Beef Controller.
That's alteration on November 10 in Arctic America, but during an account at PAX, Alienware administrator of artefact planning Joe Olmsted told me the SteamOS abundance of the Alpha will get its Australian barrage in Q1 2016 (that's aural the aboriginal three months of the year). He couldn't action a added specific date because “Valve is alive through their authoritative approvals for accepting a wireless accessory in Australia".
That wireless accessory is the Beef Controller, which will address with the Alpha. Olmsted couldn't say whether the appraisement anatomy would be agnate to the aboriginal Alpha due to bill fluctuations, but the artefact does complete added in band with Valve's eyes for a Beef Machine. "The SteamOS is a animate OS one-hundred percent. We did a abundant job with the [original Alpha] UI but you’re still application Windows, which needs a keyboard and abrasion from time to time," Olmsted said. "But Valve is actually committed to authoritative SteamOS ambassador only."
As for the box itself, it will abide mostly upgradeable, admitting the GPU will be anchored in. That's absurd to bother the Beef Apparatus ambition market, and by call it's apparently not activity to change any time soon.
"We’re alive on the abutting bearing Beef Apparatus already," Olmsted accepted back I asked if they hoped to accomplish the GPU modular one day. "The GPU is an important allotment but it’s additionally the better footprint. I can accomplish it upgradeable if I accomplish it a PC."
So there's your answer: if you appetite a apparatus with an upgradeable GPU, get a PC, not a Beef Machine.
