Cnet's Rich Brown tracked Falcon Northwest CEO Kelt Reeves down during his Hawaiian vacation to ask him a few questions about the recent buy-out of Voodoo PC and not so recent buy-out of Alienware.

Now that his two biggest competitors have been absorbed, some PC enthusiasts, like me, don't consider them boutique PC makers anymore. Reeves says he, and likely everyone else on the planet, was surprised by the Voodoo/HP deal, but that he hopes the purchase, and Alienware's purchase, will help streamline the process of getting enthusiast hardware to the mainstream gamer.

We found that as Alienware grew, they strayed further from the enthusiast/custom/boutique market. The Dell deal seems to have clinched that. It works out well for us because essentially we're serving two different markets. Alienware may be sleeping on a big bed of money these days, but it hasn't seemed to come at our expense...the net effect on us is neither Dell nor Alienware seems to be on our turf anymore, and strangely, their combined impact on us is less than it used to be with Alienware alone.

HP's aquisition of Voodoo PC seems to be structured much more effectively, and if it works, it could keep the rest of the boutique market on its toes. It appears HP understands that a boutique's real value isn't from volume, but as a proving ground for showing off new technologies and getting real-time enthusiast feedback. And most importantly, filtering enthusiast PC ideas to mainstream products quickly. Another Web site likened it to HP buying a Formula 1 team. In that sense, they could be very valuable to all of us enthusiasts by bringing enthusiast PC thinking to more mainstream customers.

The good news is that Reeves says that he doesn't seen Falcon getting bought up anytime soon. They've passed on a number of "opportunities" because they want to keep Falcon NW boutique. Brian Crecente

Interview: Falcon Northwest CEO Kelt Reeves on the HP-Voodoo PC deal [Alpha]