New Alienware notebook looks to appease gamers
Alienware's new Area 51 m15x gaming notebook will hopefully provide some balance in today's notebook news, offering graphical processing power over a small profile.
The 15.4-inch notebook can come with either an Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme mobile processor, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT or 8800M GTX GPU. Alienware also includes its own BinaryGFX technology, which allows for switching between the built-in and high performance graphics processors according to the user's demands.
The m15x also comes with a "Smart Bay" -- a hot-swappable optical drive that may be replaced with a second hard drive that would increase capacity to 640GB, or a second battery that would extend the life to about 4 hours unplugged.
Chassis design of the m15x is decidedly more subdued than the last Area 51 release from Alienware, the m9750, but it is by no means conservative. AlienFX lighting allows six discrete backlit sections of the chassis to be set with one of a variety of colors and effects.
It is now available in two configurations for $2,099 and $2,699 USD. A $1,499 USD model is expected soon, which will feature a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and a GeForce 8600M GS GPU.
Alienware may see some unlikely competition from Gateway later this year. That company garnered a "Best of CES 2008" award with its P-171 FX gaming notebook line. In one configuration, Gateway also offers a Core 2 Extreme processor and NVIDIA 8800 GPU.
