Call in the Reinforcements! Hands-on with the Alienware M17x

We recently had a chance to go hands on with the Alienware M17x, or as we affectionately like to call it, the Hog. This new gaming beast is the most powerful gaming notebook on the market today and it follows a few similar models, namely the former Area-51 M17x and the smaller  15-inch Area-51 M15x. We had a chance to frag a bit in Crysis: Warhead using one of Alienware’s 48-inch 2880 x 900 resolution curved gaming displays without a hitch during our jungle firefight. It’s no surprise considering the kind of beef under the hood. Aside from a Quad-Core Intel Core 2 duo processor, there are two of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 280M graphics processors running in SLI (together). That alone is over twice the firepower of the killer Sager NP8662 gaming notebook we recently reviewed. You can configure the system with up to two 500GB 7,200rpm hard drives in RAID 0 or RAID 1 array, and up to 8GB of RAM, which is what our test system had. Read on for a gallery and more specs. Stay tuned for a full review as soon as we get one of these wrangled. Like prior Alienware systems, it has custom keyboard and grill lighting, too, and a new futuristic design that looks more automobile-esque than laptop. At 16 x 12.6 x 2.1 inches and at a weight of 11.7 pounds, this is certainly not a system you want to be toting around in anything less than a shopping cart, but unlike desktop systems that pack similar hardware, you can at least move it from LAN party to LAN party without blowing out your back.