THERE COMES A time in every reviewer's life when he must scrape his jaw off the floor and wipe the drool with a mop. My object of affection? The Alienware M17x, arguably the most powerful laptop in the world, hell, the universe.

The Alienware brand is attached to high performance gaming hardware with dollops of style and oomph. The M17X is no exception. The laptop is built like a tank from the 31st century with a sharp angled front. The front also includes speakers with a metallic grill which resemble exhaust intakes. The lid, like the rest of the notebook is made up of solid aluminum which brings a lot of weight into the picture (the M17x weighs in at almost six kilos) but also accords solidity to the build quality. There is virtually no flex in the laptop and everything from the hinges, to the keyboard, to the touchpad feels very solid. To add to the visual oomph, the M17x comes with AlienFX a tool that lets you change the color of the lights on the keyboard, the Gray Alien mascot and the brand-name.

Name: 28-alienware-in1.jpg Views: 495 Size: 29.3 KB

For a laptop that costs as much as the M17x (Rs. 1,40,000), it has to come totally 'specced' out so that the user is not left wanting for more. Fortunately, in this aspect the Alienware scores high. It is powered by a QuadCore Intel Core 2 Extreme processor clocked at 2.5GHz, comes with 4GB of RAM, two 1GB Nvidia GTX280Ms in SLI-mode, an integrated 9400m graphics adapter and two 500GB 7200RPM HDDs. Now the M17x might be good looking and featurerich but performance is its meat and potatoes. And boy does it give exhilarating performance. In Crysis, we set the resolution to 1400 x 960 with all settings at Very High and 8xAA. The laptop was able to give 25.91 frames per second (fps), which would be very good performance even from a desktop. In Far Cry 2, at 1440x900 with 8xAA and all other settings maxed, the laptop managed 48fps. Similarly in Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Company of Heroes and World in Conflict, even at maximum settings the laptop posted high frame rates.

Moving on to the system benchmarks; in World Bench 6, the laptop scored 105. In comparison the second most powerful laptop we have tested- the Asus G50V had managed less than 100 points in the same test. In Cine bench, which tests the processor and graphics performance, it scored 7,904 points; in comparison the Asus managed 4,947 points. These tests prove conclusively that the cliche "powerhouse" can be used to aptly define the M17x.

Thereafter, we sat down to do some 'real-world' gaming on the machine. First up, you might take some time to adjust to controls (especially if you use the 'WSAD' keys) since unlike a regular keyboard, your palm is at the same level as the keys. Also, you don't need us to tell you this, but buy a mouse since using the touch pad to game is virtually impossible. It's strange that Dell didn't package a mouse along with the bundle. The laptop sports an integrated Nvidia HD sound adapter which does justice to the games.

The Alienware M17x might be priced very high but for the gamer who can afford it, it's a product that should top holiday shopping lists.