the website will be burning up soon

that would be awesome.....


How can one check...

Maybe godaddy? Btw I'm gonna try to see if I can get any of the surplus parts from hp for my envy, anyone need anything? This may be the last call!

killerwill wrote:Maybe godaddy? Btw I'm gonna try to see if I can get any of the surplus parts from hp for my envy, anyone need anything? This may be the last call!

Ask them if they would liquidate the parts on an auction site. If they have some previous OMEN cases that would be great!

I looked on godaddy since I have my two domains there and it says it is still taken, but we could get voodoopc.org or something like that if we just wanted too. .net, etc, etc. They have a service to buy domains like that, but not sure of cost.

I can't recall if I mentioned this, but Ravi (Rahul's brother) ended up with Apple following the sale to HP. For anyone who's interested . . .

Interesting; no one ever seems to talk about Ravi. He seems content to let Rahul have the spotlight.

Been emailing Ryan today! And I learned a lot! Well for one Voodoo will officially be off HPs books in November and officially you can't get any parts for the envy 133 unless you send it in for service which will also go away in November as well. So fellow 133 owners we are officially out totally In the cold! On side notes I did learn only that 2 new omens were sent out in the field! And Ryan says we may be able to get the rights to voodoopc.com!

That would rock, we will have to keep an eye out for it if it does.

killerwill wrote:Been emailing Ryan today! On side notes I did learn only that 2 new omens were sent out in the field!

Thanks for the info. Btw, when you say "2 new Omens were sent
out in the field" Does it mean that somebody already got a hold of it? Please excuse my mediocre reading comprehension.


Edit: If HP already relinquished the brand VoodooPC. Can we possibly contact Lian li case manufacturer and get the exact OEM design of the previous Voodoo omen chassis? and let them manufacture the case in bulk. Lets say 20 cases? If ever this would be a possible proposition. I think us voodoo fanatics especially to those who are salivating for the previous Omen case can chip-in in order to afford mass production.

It is very disappointing to wait for an Omen to pop out on eBay and only to find out that the chassis is so banged up and need to be repainted and source the lacking parts which is a total pain.

Or silverstone. Ultimately it would come down to if hp has an active patent/copyright on the design and if they are interested in renewing it.

The problem being lian li charges roughly 300 a case and for a custom design I am sure there is a minimum order quanity. So for 20 of them you would be looking at 6k before shipping. Not to mention their may be an additional charge on top of that 300 for the customizations.

I am sure the market for them will dry up really quick in this econimy @ 400+ a case. People only spend good money on them now because of the rarity. Try fooding the market with 10 of them and see how many you actually sell.

If I remember correctly raul also said he wanted to buy the rights to voodoo back from hp. Maybe he would be interested in re entering the market as a perpherals provider? Providing such things as cases hand picked/bundeled wc loops etc

Hard to say. There might be patents and other red tape to navigate. Even if Lian Li wanted to, they might not be able to fulfill such a request. It'd probably be easier to have them reissue the ATC-210 or 110, which would let you achieve that vintage Voodoo look. But then you'd need the CAD imagery to duplicate the laser cut-out for the window (not to mention a laser). And this is all assuming Lian Li is still set up to make the cases. I can't see them stopping a manufacturing run to change tools and templates to run an order of 20. If they did, the cost could be higher than it's worth.

Nevertheless, it doesn't cost anything to send off an email and inquire.

I used to coach Ravi's son, who was on the same soccer team as Seajunior. I think Rahul brought Ravi in to help run the business, as Rahul was more of the creative design and passion behind Voodoo. (Rahul started Voodoo straight out of high school; Ravi went on to university and business school). I don't want to opine, as I don't have all the facts, but I remember some of the staff at Voodoo mentioning that Ravi didn't necessarily bring a lot of the table. However, after talking to Ravi, it sounds like things weren't being run efficiently at Voodoo. Maybe the whole thing just wasn't a good fit. Of course, that's not a big revelation, as the truth is revealed somewhat with the demise of Voodoo. The sale to HP has been chalked up as being one of HP's worst business decisions, suggesting Voodoo's books weren't very good at the time of the buy-out and the value-add just wasn't there for a giant like HP. Heck, Rahul is no longer with HP. The whole Voodoo thing is just a memory.

On the old Mutha Boards there was a retired computer tech who IIRC said that he "had worked on the big iron" and went by the name of Omen. Might you be that same person?

I see that, but I also see HP not embracing voodoo like Dell did Alienware. They Just wanted to stick "Voodoo DNA" or some other stickers on a plastic part and call it a day. Guess the reason I like the Voodoo's is the same reason I like classic cars. They have a style to them. I just think it could of went better than it did.

Well if anybody is serious I am willing to take measurements of my v1.

The whole Voodoo thing is just a memory.

and for some, a lighter wallet.

Which I guess proves that you are never to old to play the role of a fool.

Hey! I haven't heard anything back from Ryan yet on my questions. But would anyone like to see if we can get the full rights to voodoo and its associated trademarks and patents? Hp will likely fully write them off. so there's a slight possibility we could make something of it from these forums. I know for a fact that silver stone can't produce the new omen case because hp owns the rights to the design..... We could get those rights And start a marketing campaign and see what comes from it.

Or just start ground work on the next generation OMEN

The value as I see it is all in the Voodoo name trademark and legacy behind the name

ADOR wrote:I see that, but I also see HP not embracing voodoo like Dell did Alienware. They Just wanted to stick "Voodoo DNA" or some other stickers on a plastic part and call it a day. Guess the reason I like the Voodoo's is the same reason I like classic cars. They have a style to them. I just think it could of went better than it did.

That's just it. For Voodoo to survive, they needed to be left as a boutique (much like Falcon). Alienware, I'd argue, had already moved beyond being boutique, so they fit Dell's model better. Essentially, Dell gave Alienware their front-end ordering software and likely streamlined the production process, but otherwise left Alienware to build machines that are considered part of the high-end performance market. But the overall model was the same: Dell builds computers to spec, as does Alienware.

HP didn't follow that model, preferring to sell pre-built computers that are available through big-box stores. The attempt to integrate Voodoo by incorporating Voodoo dna didn't really target either core HP customers or Voodoo customers (the former weren't interested in the price premium and the latter weren't interested in something mass produced). For a while, they found a new market, but I think the market was probably too small and so the idea was dropped. I think the only thing left from Voodoo is the Envy name attached to some HP laptops.

The interesting bit is that the purchase still went ahead. HP probably saw it as a strategic move and a way to compete with Dell (who had just purchased Alienware). Voodoo saw it as a sound financial move. The question is, would Voodoo have done just fine if left alone or where they in dire straits? We'll never know unless someone reveals that story or financial statements from the sale are made public. I doubt we'll see either.

Yes, Voodoo had style and many of us bought into that. Iago would say we were sold on the bling. Ethelred had a rough time on the quality side and so it wasn't a good experience for him. My experience fell in the middle. And, to be honest, it wasn't the machines that got me so much as the Voodoo community. I met (virtually) some pretty cool people and many of the Voodoo staff were very cool. The experience I had with the community was worth the entry fee.

My experience was largely positive, though I can see exactly how and why ethelred's was not. However, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the community quickly became the main attraction.

Alienware had a similar community until August 2009 when dell fully assumed it. They closed off all the legacy alienware stuff... Forums downloads, etc... I would be voodoo would still be around if it hasn't been bought by hp. They were still larger than falcon, so they could more than likely weathered most economic situations.

The community definitely became the main attraction. Once the Mutha Boards was shut down, the Next Bench didn't have it for me anymore. Maybe I was all "talked out" by then. Who knows.

I don't think Voodoo had a prayer in hell of surviving as an independent company. For those of you who have heard this before you can turn me off, but here it goes. Growing, young companies need a strong cash flow to survive. This can come from outside investors, bank loans, owner reinvestment, or sale of products. If product sales are great enough, loans can be paid off and there is money left over to purchase inventory for future sales, expand the business facilities to handle the growth, and to invest in new products. In the computer industry it is particularly important to have a source of funds to use for developing new products because of the constantly changing state-of-the-art. This is even more accute in the boutique computer industry where the clientel are looking for the next greatest thing. (Remember the young kids on the Mutha Boards looking for a hot new gaming rig?)

So how does a company like Voodoo get into cash flow problems? As Seamaster indicated we will probably never know exactly, but the signs of a problem were plentiful if we had only wanted to see them. Long customer lead times. Not only did customers wait for new machines, but they also waited for the parts to repair machines they sent back. Long lead times meant that there was no money to buy parts until more sales were made. Some customers even mentioned that it was funny how Voodoo wanted all their money up front before they would start an order.

Machines or parts mysteriously showed up when we were being told not to expect them yet. Most likely these came from cancelled orders or a sudden unexpected influx of money from new sales that allowed Voodoo to pay some bill and get the parts.

Well spent research. A company wants to sell enough of a new product to be able to recover the costs of development and make money beyond that. Because of the short shelf life of computer products (they quickly become outdated), a lot of a product has to be sold in a short time to recover the cost of development. Even if the machine is essentially an off the shelf model from Clevo, there are still marketing costs for that product that are distinct for it alone that need to be recovered. The more modifications Voodoo made to produce a product with distinct DNA the greater the costs the company would incurr, thus requiring greater sales to recover the costs. If these sales did not materialize, precious cash was wasted. I know longer remember the names of the small format desk tops, but it seemed to me, that based on the chatter on the Mutha Boards, those products did not recover their development costs.

Quality problems. This was probably the nail in the coffin. In order for a new company to succeed all the pieces have to come together without a hitch. If a company incurrs quality problems and has little or no cash reserves to honor the warranties, these problems can cause it to fold. Even before the hinge problem on laptops and the burned up video cards on computers like mine, the business model for handling customer problems screamed of poor cash flow: A customer having a problem would contact customer service and at that point customer service would proceed to stall off resolving the problem as long as possible. It would have been much better for Voodoo if they could have just repaired the machine under the terms of the warranty, but it was clear that they did not have the cash flow to do so. When the customer finally became so irrate that he was near speechless, Rahul would "ride in like the white knight and save the day." And this was exactly how it was preceived by the Mutha Board members. Good ol' Rahul coming in and sticking up for his customer. If he had really wanted to provide good customer service why didn't he just have his employees take care of the customer's problem in the first place. No money, that's why.

So that's the Voodoo saga from my perspective, a dream that just didn't get all the breaks it needed to succeed.

I think ethelred's analysis is likely accurate. I was hinting a little at that sort of thing without getting into the details, but I think Voodoo had to sell. And I'm guessing (much to the Soods' benefit) that the company valuation was inflated. Perhaps HP tried to hedge the risk by signing Rahul to a three-year contract (hoping he'd bring innovative ideas and provide HP contacts with industry bests for other synergy opportunities). Perhaps due diligence wasn't done at the point of sale, but it seems like HP quickly abandoned the Voodoo name and image. I'm guessing there wasn't a whole lot there from an intellectual property (IP) standpoint beyond case designs and fancy cabling. Even the cutting-edge liquid cooling system Rahul had on the side would have been quickly dated.

It took me six months to get my computer fixed properly, with it gone for up to a month at a time to replace a motherboard. What ethelred describes regarding customer service is true. A new system that doesn't work within 30 days of purchase and the company I bought it from wouldn't fix it right away or replace it? I can't think of many purchases where customers would put up with that sort of thing. Most stores would offer an apology and a replacement.

Seamaster and elthered you have given me alot more perspective on Voodoo... It explains why Dell (after talking with Rahul) did not purcahse Voodoo.... and why Rahul had to scramble to get HP to buy Voodoo. He need someone to come in and save it otherwise it was spriling towards its own end.

And for HP it was a stupid investment from the start... Why would a PC manufacture buy another PC manufacture that used another PC manufacture to build its laptops... Not much sense in reality.

I fully believe both of you, I was late in the game in getting a voodoo. Time I go two divorces out of the way, kids older where I had some play money it was all over.