Power and Portability: Hands-on with the Alienware M15x

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Alienware M15x with Core i7If you're interested in gaming, I bet you're already reading about Intel's latest technology. You might have seen some of the buzz about new products from Alienware. Today, the Alienware M15x has landed for customers in the United States and many countries around the world. I wanted to spend a few minutes going over some of the details behind it and to share my thoughts about it after I’ve had some quality time with it over the last few days…. In the spirit of the M17x that John blogged about a while back, I give you the Alienware M15x.

When a statement is made about being the most powerful 15-inch gaming laptop in the universe, you better have the goods to prove it. After testing out the M17x I knew when the M15x was announced it would continue Alienware’s mobile domination, but I still had to see and experience it for myself.

First things first, when I held this laptop in my hands, I could feel the strength in the design. Not only is it the sturdiest laptop I have held in my hands, but one of the sleekest. With its thermal management system even when I was multitasking to the max, it kept cool and quiet.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, the M15x can be configured with the Intel Core i7 920XM. This means from start-up to shut-down you have the best Intel has to offer for mobile units. Let me tell you, it makes all the difference when working on 3D animation or Hi-definition audio and video editing.

Now for the gamers like myself, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M 1GB video card delivers the lighting-fast frames per second in old standbys like World of Warcraft to more demanding games like Crysis. It makes all the difference when you can crank up the details to max and still rock high FPS. It doesnt matter if you are a leisure gamer or a twitch monkey, you need to see everything as clear and clean as possible and with this video card and the HD widescreen the M15x has, you get both in spades.

If you download quite a few things, it supports up to 500GB hard drive space. As for sound, when I turned up some tunes, the built-in speakers pumped out crisp clear audio that made me want to retire my headphones. And don't forget some of the features. This rig comes with the Alienware Command Center which is an all exclusive software package that gives you access to AlienFX, AlienTouch, AlienSense, Facial Recognition and AlienFusion power management. With a slot-loading dual layer Blu-ray optical drive combo, up to 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, an 8-in-1 Media card reader and express card slot and a starting weight of 9lbs, you have everything you need in a powerful portable package.

The bottom line is even with what I knew about the M15x getting my hands on it and trying it out impressed me. Sure wish I didn’t have to give it back.

About the Author: Jose Laraque

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