Alienware M17x

Alienware release another portable gaming beast we can't help but like.

We've just received the latest blinged out lappy from gaming machine maestros Alienware, and boy, is it something.

Now, you can say what you will about Alienware - overpriced, underspecced whatever - but as we've said before, you can't measure its machines by performance alone. These are objects of desire (quite possibly obscure for some people), pure and simple. They're like Italian sportscars - cool, fast though mighty impractical at times.

Or, as the more sour Dave Field put it, "For the kind of people who'd buy a Range Rover and then never take it out of the city."

But still, we can't hate them.

This model, the M17x, features dual core X9000 chip running at stock 2.8GHz, dual 8800M GTXs running in SLI with 1GB of memory between them and 500GB of storage across two 7,200rpm drives. The screen's a tasty 17in, and you even get a big bad Blu-ray drive matched up with some of the best laptop speakers we've heard.

And it'll set you back a cool seven grand... yikes!

For a full review, look to an upcoming issue of Atomic magazine.