The otherworldly gills of the Skullcap design are synonymous with the aggressive, boundary-pushing Alienware attitude, while the sleek Ripley design reveals the evolution of Alienware architecture with a more subtle, sophisticated profile. For starters, you can configure your M17 with either Alienware’s Skullcap or Ripley case designs. The M17 has got its specifications sorted, but it’s the machine’s finishing touches that help raise it above the others. Using ATI graphics cards compared to ludicrously expensive nVidia parts is the main reason the M17 is so affordable, yet they still have full DirectX 10.1 support for the latest next-generation games and produce frame rates up to 80% higher than single GPU solutions. and Europe, Alienware’s Vista-powered M17 is powered by the world’s first mobile quad-core processor, Intel’s Core 2 Extreme QX9300, and is Alienware’s first laptop with ATI’s CrossFireX multi-GPU technology, thanks to the inclusion of dual Mobility Radeon HD 3870 cards. An 8x dual-layer burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) comes as standard, but if you’re feeling flush you can get a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc Reader (BD-ROM, DVD±RW, CD-RW) for £169. We’d never thought we would have seen the day, but the M17 can be had from as ‘little’ as £1199 – and that’s including a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (upgradable to Quad Core 2 Extreme), dual ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870s, 3GB of DDR3 memory (upgradable to 4GB), 160GB storage (supports up to 1TB using two 500GB 7200rpm drives) and a 1920×1200 high-definition LCD (1440×900 screen is also available for £200 less).
Now officially Dell’s premier high-performance PC gaming brand, Alienware’s all-new M17 (45x397x299mm, 5kg) laptop continues the company’s strong tradition of pushing gaming performance limits through state of the art technology but without busting the bank. Before getting your chequebook out you should bear in mind that a dedicated gaming laptop is a different beast compared to a general purpose multimedia laptop – regardless what the bloke at PC World or Currys tells you! There is no way that these types of machines can come close to competing with high-end models offered by the likes of Alienware, ASUS or Dell.Īlienware knows gaming hardware better than most. Desktop PCs will always be best for gaming, but when you need to go on the road there’s nothing quite a sweet as having a powerful machine to hand. Laptops designed for gamers can run upwards of £3000, but most people don’t want to remortgage their house to be able to play games on the move. Top build quality tons of cool features lush display highly configurable multi-GPU technology speedy DDR3 memory up to 1TB storage vertical tilt Web camera Solid mix of price & performance, but optional extras make it ludicrously expensive