Toronto Thumbs

GEAR REVIEW
M17 Laptop from Alienware

I’ll assume we’re all familiar with, or have heard of, Alienware products. After all, the company has made a name for itself delivering over-the-top PC gaming products for years, with design conventions laughing in the face of the Apple design aesthetic that other pre-built computer manufacturers have tried so desperately to ape. If you’re looking for sleek, minimalist sensibilities, Alienware computers are not for you.

Recently the company lent us a laptop to check out, put through the paces, and otherwise enjoy. The M17 is a bit of an older model now. In fact, in the PC gaming world, things get outdated ridiculously fast. Still, the not-so-little laptop was capable of some cool stuff, and I am somewhat sad to have to admit it is the nicest computer I’ve ever used. Really – my desktop clunker is a nigh-ancient five years old now.

Considering this, it was great to get to check out some more recent PC games to see what I had been missing all these years. I installed some good standby titles, albeit much older ones, to get things started. Both Battlefront II and Defcon played very nicely with the added bonus that Defcon gets you great looks when played on public transit, especially when played on a giant-ass laptop with glowing keys and its own subwoofer.

A screenshot from Defcon

Unfortunately Defcon was the only game I managed to play while in transit, though not from lack of trying other games. The mouse and keyboard is a great combination for first person shooters, but the touch pad and keyboard combo isn’t nearly as great (although the M17’s touch pad is quite nice in other respects). Without an additional mouse peripheral, which on the go would make for a cumbersome experience, I was unable to frag some noobs in Left 4 Dead while on the commuter train. Defcon, however, raised a few eyebrows due to it being an excellent end-of-the-world exercise in nuclear war tactics. While the game isn’t obviously a graphics hog, there were enough settings to be fiddled with that the M17 had to have some toned down a bit.

One of the reasons people buy laptops is for the portability aspect. With a 17-inch screen, the M17 is one of the least portable laptops around, but it does fit the required specs, folding up nicely and still managing to fit well into my standard Samsung laptop bag. The obvious downside is that for portable gaming, and with the necessity of a mouse for certain games, you’ll need more room around you. In library or lecture hall situations, this isn’t much of an issue, and it’s here that I’d imagine much clandestine gaming occurs. In fact, it’s students that would probably get the most benefit from having an Alienware laptop.

While I did tote it around quite a bit, most of the time I spent on the M17 was from home. Left 4 Dead ran decently, but with some of the more graphically needy options turned on, the system did slow down significantly. Still, the gaming action on it was pretty decent – but those wishing for top-of-the-line performance will do better to check out more recent models. Another trapping of the laptop design is that traditionally components designed for gaming have been very large, therefore needing a lot of space to accommodate both them and the necessary ventilation for them. Considering everything somehow fits within the smaller laptop framework, it’s understandable that concessions had to be made. As much as I joke about the laptop being a beast in terms of size, what is crammed into it is a hell of a lot of guts. And let’s face it: Despite it being a gaming system, it’s also a PC, meaning it can be used for more than just games.

During E3, we used the M17 for a variety of general computer tasks. It seemed a little beneath the behemoth to use it as a liveblogging machine, but its crisp 1920×1200 display made organizing coverage between Toronto Thumbs and 4 Color Rebellion fairly easy. Usually I’d have had to resort to using two screens, but with so much pixel real estate it wasn’t necessary. We also used the laptop to record and produce episodes three, four, and five of this season’s Toronto Thumbs Podcast.

Shiny, glowing keys

In terms of raw guts, the system we were sent had a CrossFireX-enabled Dual 512mb ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 video card, a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 P8400 processor, 3 gigs of Dual Channel RAM, and a 160 GB HDD. Additional technical specs can be found on Alienware’s site, so I won’t go into too many nerdy details. Besides, the system is configurable within certain specs, anyway. I will, however, mention that the laptop also has a built-in webcam which it uses as part of a facial-recognition login system. You have to teach it who you are the first few times, but after that it works so well it’s creepy.

I mentioned earlier that Alienware’s design aesthetics contradict those established by Apple, but this doesn’t mean I don’t find the company’s case design ugly. Given the name, the design is actually quite appropriate. The case of the M17 is no exception – it looks like something from out of a sci-fi flick, complete with obnoxious LED lights behind the alien head on backside of the screen and behind the keys on the keyboard. In fact, and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit this, I had a lot of fun just changing the colour behind the keys from blue to red to green to blue repeatedly.

The M17 has a starting price point of about $1772 CDN, and obviously this price is affected by whatever components are added to the order. I’d personally prefer a desktop unit for gaming purposes because they’re easier to upgrade. Still, it’s hard to deny that the M17 is one of the more appealing laptops on the market. It isn’t able to play the latest games at 100% graphical output (which is a higher resolution than HD, mind you), but it’s still quite impressive given the fact that I nearly bought a $1500 non-gaming laptop last holiday season.

Posted in Gear Reviews, PC |