alienware

We've just finished testing and reviewing Alienware's flagship 17-inch gaming laptop, the Area-51 m17x. We'll just come right out and say the m17x is about as powerful as a laptop gets, at least if it's as tricked-out as our $6,000-plus review unit was. How powerful? How about around 120 frames per second in Unreal Tournament III at a 1,920x1,200 resolution?

Sure there are more modest Area-51 m17x builds available for as little as $1,999, but at that level, you might as well save up your pennies for a few more years, or … Read more

There is an ungreen revolution taking place in enthusiast game PC circles.

The eye-opening graphics possible on today's game PCs come at a cost: light-dimming power consumption. The trend, rooted in the perennial quest for more speed, bucks the overall greening of the PC industry.

Green PC designs have become more than just practical; they're cool. Power-sipping Netbooks are in, as are small desktops like the Dell Studio Hybrid and Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Slimline.

This is not the case for high-end gaming PCs, where bigger is better. How far this trend can go isn't clear, but a seminal … Read more

Solid-state drives, if not yet ubiquitous, have arrived. You can find them in laptops big and small and as a high-octane storage option for gaming PCs.

SSDs made their mark by appearing in the trendiest ultraportables like the Apple MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC--typically as stratospherically priced options, fashion statements rarely seen in the real world.

These drives are now coming off their rarefied shelf space and appearing across a wider range of laptops and ultraportable computers.

Any new, lightweight enterprise laptop worth its salt comes with a large-capacity solid-state drive option now. Hewlett-Packard recently introduced the 3-pound EliteBook … Read more

We've just crowned Gateway's P-7811FXthe favorite $1,000-plus system in our Back-to-School roundup of laptops available on retail store shelves. Its particularly strong showing reminds us that every once in a while, a new product comes along that forces you to reconsider the conventional wisdom about what computer hardware should cost. (A prime example being how the new netbook category has redefined small, low-power laptops from $2,000-plus executive toys to sub-$500 impulse purchases.)

PC gaming, despite the lack of action on the software side lately, has been the one reliable area where manufacturers could get away … Read more

Update on August 10 at 11:00 p.m. with official Intel pricing:

Existing Q9550 drops from $530 to $316. Pricing for new processors: Q9650 priced at $530, Q9400 at $266, E8600 at $266, and E7300 at $133.

The Xeon X3660 is reduced from $530 to $316.

Intel says it plans to roll out a bevy of midrange processors, all built on its new 45-nanometer manufacturing process, on Monday. Game computer vendors, among others, are expected to follow suit with new machines.

The Core 2 Quad Q9650 heads the list of updated chips, according to Intel. It has a core … Read more

Is four processing cores inside a laptop overkill? Probably not for gamers. Intel is expected to meet this insatiable need for speed when it rolls out it first mobile quad-core processor.

An Intel executive is on the record stating an August roll-out.

And this may happen sooner in August than later. System vendors may go public with information about the quad-core mobile processor as soon as August 11, according to sources. This is when other processors, such as the Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3GHz), are expected to go public.

Many of the details of the quad-core mobile processor are public … Read more

This post was updated at 1:50 p.m. PDT with new information about availability.

Dell is adding a little more flash to its notebook lines this week.

The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker is offering a 128GB solid-state drive as an option on its Latitude, XPS, Alienware, and Precision laptop models beginning Tuesday. Though Dell isn't usually the first to jump into the fray when it comes to tech trends, the company says it's planning to further push innovation in the next couple of months.

Though solid state isn't new technology, it isn't exactly mainstream … Read more

The Area 51 m15x is one of the most powerful notebook computers TechRepublic's crew has had the pleasure of reviewing. So naturally, they couldn't resist cracking that puppy open.

Join TechRepublic's Mark Kaelin for a close encounter with Alienware's m15x as he dissects the boutique manufacturer's shiny, sleek notebook in this News.com gallery: Photos: Cracking open the Alienware Area 51 m15x

Dell is taking steps to promote Alienware PCs on its Web site as the PC maker tries to collaborate more--rather than compete outright--with its Alienware unit.

Dell has added the Area-51 m9750 to its gaming laptop Web site, according to a Dell company blog.

"The Alien invasion has continued, with the addition of the Area-51 m9750 to the Dell gaming laptop Web site lineup," according to the post. The 17-inch notebook offers two 512MB GeForce 8700m GT cards as an option.

The blog also notes: "It was never really in the cards to do away with the … Read more