Perhaps I am unfairly lumping Alienware in with some of the other Steam Machines, which very much did look almost identical to their manufacturer’s other PCs at the time.
As someone who at the time was VERY into buying the “console-like” PC gaming experience that Valve was seemingly selling, I remember being pretty disappointed not just by the SteamOS delays, but also how much most of the Steam Machines still basically looked, to me as an uninformed buyer, at least, to basically just be a different SKU of their regular lines rather than the true “Steam experience” that I was hoping for (and which the Steam Deck eventually delivered).
As someone who at the time was VERY into buying the “console-like” PC gaming experience that Valve was seemingly selling, I remember being pretty disappointed not just by the SteamOS delays, but also how much most of the Steam Machines still basically looked, to me as an uninformed buyer, at least, to basically just be a different SKU of their regular lines rather than the true “Steam experience” that I was hoping for (and which the Steam Deck eventually delivered).