The Ultimate Laptop - Comments Page 2

Yes! and I did. I ordered one of those behemoths last week. Have been looking at (and currently own) an ASUS but, they don't have the 18.4 screen. Mine will be configured about the same way as described in the article but, with a pair of ATIs and the 512 Solid state plus a 500 GB HDD @ 7200 rpm. There is just so much more you can do with this kind of power. Not just for gaming but, video editing and it is blazing fast. I must stress that these are for desktop replacements and not for travel. As for price well, it's only once in a while that I splurge on something I really want. A friend of mine has one and that was what turned the tables on ASUS. BTW, ASUS is a Very good make of notebooks. We own two, one new (U36J) and the G73JW (going on two years) are just wonderful to work and play with.

You've convinced me Bob! Seriously. Now it's time for some kind of contest giveaway, with one of those as the prize.

Once I wanted to buy this model but when I heard fan is noisy I did not buy. No doubt this could be good computer.

High speed, huge memory, boosted graphics, fast networking - aren't they those goals that we are striving for, when it comes to the computer development. And of course I'm willing to spend lots of money for a good laptop rather than desktop

Well Bob,
Thats a lot of money to spend for a laptop even for a gaming high-end, I would prefer custom ordered specs. for a lot less.

This is one of the reasons I've never been a computer gamer. Trying to keep up with processors, video cards, fans, etc. Are the graphics better? Sure. But not enough to negate the fact that when I buy an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 game, I know it's going to work on the Xbox or Playstation.

Wow--
No way I would spend any $$$ on a Laptop that heavy!
My idea of an ultimate laptop is a MacBook Air!

Well, yes - as long as I had a little money left for Save The Children and maybe a bottle of cigarettes and a pack of whiskey...

A nomadic nuclear physicist. (Can't stop laughing at that. Thanks, Bob!)

A quick correction. This laptop (and lots of other gaming rigs, desktops included) is available with RAID 0. RAID 0 does not provide "extra protection from a single point of hard drive failure" and you will not be able to keep shooting the bad guys if a drive fails. In fact it could be argued that the recoverability of a RAID 0 configuration is lower than that of conventional drive failures (but the mechanism of failure is important). RAID 0 is about increasing performance by enabling parallel read/write operations.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I should know better, I've written about RAID here. (See http://askbobrankin.com/what_is_raid.html) I must have been thinking of RAID1, which does offer redundancy.

I have had M18x for about 6 months now and I love it. This is my second Alienware laptop but this time I got all the bells and whistles. As for noisy fans, I only hear the fans when I have used it a while on high performance (like games)and they cool down the laptop and stop. They are not really that noisy. I have a Vostro laptop, Lenevo laptop, Toshiba laptop, Precision Laptop. None compare to either Alienware I have used. The battery life is short (about three hours) but then again it is loaded. There is definitely extra weight, but I do travel with the M18x and I am not a young person (close to 60 years old) and have no problems lugging it around in my backpack. To me, I do not see a down side to Alienware. Even with all the testing of software products I do with the laptop, I never had to redo the laptop. The price may be high but the performance and reliability is high. For me, it was worth it.