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Alienware is to gamers what Ferrari or Lamborghini is to car lovers. This is THE brand of gaming hardware to buy and I suspect that every gamer will have one Alienware computer on his/her wishlist. I, for sure, would want to be the proud owner of a set of Alienware Area-51 range of gaming computers, like the m15x gaming notebook.

Alienware is a premium brand of computer hardware and peripherals from the United States and is now a subsidiary of Dell Inc. Alienware is trusted all over the world by gamers of every game genre. You can be assured of an Alienware computer’s quality and performance, as it is recognized to be one of the best on the planet.

Laptops are not known to be reliable and appropriate for high-end, intensive gaming purposes. The reasons being, firstly, laptops are mainly used for work because of the mobility factor, thus graphics processing units included are not top-notch. Secondly, memory size and processing speeds are capped as they are deemed superfluous to working requirements. However, with all the rage that gaming has become over the past 5 years, laptops are increasing seen as a gaming platform. It is portable, making it a good choice to bring over to gaming parties and so on. This point was clearly thought of by Alienware, so they rolled out their impressive gaming laptops.

With the signature Alien head, this laptop is one of the sleekest and sophisticated-looking rigs on the market. Like all Alienware computers, the designers and creators of this beauty take pride in not only the performance of laptop, but also the aesthetic and ergonomic feel as well. The m15x is equipped with a Core2Duo 2.4GHz processing unit, nVidia GeForce 8600GT and 2GB RAM memory. This ensures that gaming will go without a hitch. The two Intel processors running in parallel simultaneously, with the 2GB of memory, effectively eliminate any possible lag or slowdown in the machine’s performance during gameplay. There is an option to upgrade this to Intel Core2Extreme, which is the souped-up version of the Core2Duo, and this promises that extra notch of processor performance for intensity gaming or video editing. The GeForce graphics cards is one of the better gaming cards in the 8-series, however, this may still not be sufficient to play newer games like Crysis and Bioshock.

As with any other Alienware computer, the m15x is guaranteed to be engineered to near perfection. My favourite feature is that Alienware allows you to fully customize the computer, be it m15x or others. For the m15x, you can choose the colour, processor type and speeds, additional cache memory, sound cards, optical drives and even the keyboard! The m15x boasts an exclusive Alienware Illuminated Keyboard that is useful for low-light conditions.

Having raved about it for much of the review, the m15x Gaming Laptop is not the perfect 5-star gaming machine. No matter how advanced, this is still a notebook. For me, 15-inch screens defeats the purpose of the high-end graphics that the GeForce card can produce. Video-editiong and gaming does not seem that much enjoyable on such a confined space. Furthermore, the m15x loses to its desktop Area-51 counterparts, as they run SLI GeForce 8800 Ultra or Crossfire HD 3870 setup. This means that two graphic processing units are run in parallel set-up (similar to Core2Duo), boasting almost twice the performance. This set-up is impossible to implement in a notebook due to heat issues and space constraints.

This gadget is what many would like to lay their hands on. However, in a more practical sense, this device does not fully justify the exorbitant price tag (starts from approximately US$1,499). For majority of the purposes like gaming and video/photo-editing, the m15x cannot be considered portable as the battery drains horribly fast while executing graphic-intensive programs. At the end of the day, a power source is still required.

The Alienware Area-51 m15x is definitely a swanky toy for the affluent, but not a pragmatic choice for the masses.

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