Manufacturer: Dell

Colors: Black, Red

MSRP: $1,799 (factory standard)

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Ever since I was young, I always wanted a PC that could run the latest games. Who would have known that today would be that day? The M17x is one of the most powerful gaming laptops (or laptops) available on the market. Alienware has always strived to provide the highest-tech and smoothest-running systems to date. This is well worth the $1800, so let’s get started from the beginning.

Out of the Box

GPU: 1GB ATI RADEON Mobility HD 5870

CPU: Intel Core i5 @ 540M 2.53 GHz (3.06 in Turbo Mode)

Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

HDD: 250GB SATA II

When you get the box, it’s about the size of a desktop PC. This sucker isn’t light. Inside the box is another box with some collectibles such as a baseball cap, sticker, a leather-bound manual, the restore CD, and a resource CD, as well as a mousepad and the charger. The mousepad is very sturdy and wonderful to use, and the leather-bound manual is a nice touch.

Once you get that out of the way, the laptop has a nice soft cloth over the monitor, and when you pick it up, you almost drop it. This sucker is by no means portable, and you almost need a wagon to tow it behind you. Is it worth it? Yes, by all means, yes.

The laptop has a ton of ports, such as USB 2.0, Firewire, HDMI, VGA, ExpressCard, SD, and a ton more. There is something here for everyone, so you have tons of options for display purposes and peripherals.

Starting Up

Once you flip up the lid and look at the 17″ crystal-clear LCD display, you will notice the brilliant lights. Everything on the keyboard lights up, as well as the alien emblem on the top lid and above the keyboard. The whole thing feels sturdy, and the touchpad even feels nice to use. The keys feel great, and they are nice and big as well as quiet. There is a media panel at the touch to eject the disc, volume control, internet connection, Alienware control center, etc. The alien head emblem above the keyboard is actually the power button, and the eyes blink as the HDD light. The emblem on the lid will glow when the computer is in sleep mode, so you know what’s up. The emblem above the keyboard will glow in different colors to indicate that the laptop is charging as well. These are the slickest laptops I have ever seen.

Windows 7

I liked Vista, but 7 tops it all. With a faster GUI and a slicker design, Windows 7 is the ultimate gamers’ OS. You can now switch everything on the fly, such as taskbar management, theme switching, and pretty much everything. There are a lot of bugs and kinks worked out in Vista, and so far I’m happy with it.

The Alienware Control Center is very slick, with the coolest of all being the Alien FX. This allows you to change anything that lights up to the color you want. You can even have the keyboard cascade in different colors! There is an advanced editor that allows you to customize what the LED lights do, such as morphing into different colors (adding actions and looping is infinite), and there’s even an option to have the theme change when you open a certain program! Of course, the editor could have been more robust, but it’s exclusive to Alienware and will make all your friends cringe with envy. Alien Fusion allows you to deeply customize your power settings, and Alien Touch lets you customize your touchpad. Alien Sense is the facial recognition technology when logging in, and this can make you feel like a spy!

64-bit has a few issues, such as running some games, but it’s usually the game’s fault and not the OS. Coupled with the amazing processor speed, 7 runs like butter (or diarrhea?) without any slowdowns or hitches. I can have a game installed, play a game, then decide to minimize the game and check my email without much slowdown. Windows 7 Home Premium is amazing and the best Microsoft OS to date.

Games

Let’s get down to it. How do the games run? This laptop can trump any game you throw at it, even Crysis on Ultra settings. Every high-tech game out there can be played on the highest settings and range from 20 to 80 FPS, and that’s a triumph. The laptop runs really well under such stress and doesn’t really get too hot. The fans can be a bit loud, but it’s expected with this kind of setup.

The game sounds amazing with 5.1 capabilities, and even the laptop speakers will blow your hair off. I just wish there were some located near the monitor as well, since your arms can block the sound sometimes. The games also look super crisp with the HD monitor, so you’re in for one hell of a time.

There are a few games out there that just don’t support ATI hardware very well, like Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s handcrafted for NVidia cards, so it didn’t run the smoothest on my machine. Dreamkiller just didn’t want to work at all, thanks to some sort of bug that kept me from playing. The first installation gave me white textures, and the second gave me frame rate pauses. A lot of other games run smoothly, and it just feels great to have a computer that can run these high-tech games.

The whole point of this beast is for gaming, and it does it well and goes above and beyond the call of duty to bring you a perfect gaming experience. Are there any flaws? Sure, as of right now, there is a nasty display driver glitch that makes you have to hard boot your computer every so often. The laptop should have come with a mouse, and there’s a lot of room below the keyboard, but this can be utilized for a mouse area and arm room. There is some fuzziness on the screen during certain games. The computer is great to look at and use, and it’s just so sleek and silky smooth. Is it worth $1,850? It’s worth more to me. I would probably pay over $3,000 for this baby.