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I suppose by 'exactly' you mean 'completely different'.

Apparantly it's "EASIER TO INSERT THAN AN ALIEN PROBE" though, according to the article.

I wonder if MXM comes with that feature? I'd hate to be part of Alienware's demographic.

-Adam

MXM looks exactly like AlienWares Do-It-Yourself Upgradeable Mobile Graphics Technology.

over here: clicky

An Alienware you mean?

I looked up their Linux info page and also found that the laptops they sell are the same exact laptops Sager laptops from Clevo that alienware sells. If you're looking into Alienware notebooks the Sager 17" is $2400 (with XP) and an Alienware 16" is $3800.

Something like Dell Dimension XPS? You get 3.2GHz PIV (with 800MHz FSB), 2GB RAM, 120GB SATA HDD, Gigabit Ethernet, SB Audigy 2 sound (with Firewire), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (which thrashes NV FX 5200) AND 17" TFT -- all for 50$ less than quoted Mac.

Now, let's add XP Professional instead of Home, Microsoft Digital Media Edition Plus! Pack (not even close to Apple's offer, but for the sake of comparision), 8x DVD+RW drive, 56K modem and we come to $2039.

But let's not even try to add all this options to Mac -- 2GB RAM alone costs $825! Plus 350$ for Radeon 9800 Pro and 699$ for 17" Studio Display and we get $3373!

Or, you want 64bit PC? Lets try with Alienware Aurora: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, NV FX5200 Ultra, 80GB SATA HDD, Plextor 8x DVD+-RW Drive, Audigy 2, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, Firewire: $1760

Sorry, but there is no way that Mac is cheaper (or even close) to comparable PC. And mind you, I chose two of the most expensive PC vendors.

They are upgradeable-- "Upgradeable Video Modules"

Yeah, because we all know that realgeeks never spend money on stuff they don't need

Yeah cause we all know that geeks never spend money stuff they don't need

Ok, so I specced out two computers with similar performance yet one will last longer than the other? Please explain other than it's too expensive to upgrade the Mac as much people do to PCs. The old PC stuff can hold up just as well as old Mac stuff.

That is just online multiplayer games that can be tracked (and during non-prime hours). It doesn't even include single player PC games or MMORPGs which would be considerably larger.

How else could NVIDIA and ATI afford to do the research and development on new GPUs every 6 months if the people that bought them (the PC gamers) were negligible when it comes to sales?

The number of PC gamers is in the millions, and they do make an impact on hardware sales.

Alienware comes to mind. Their machines are pretty cool. Lots of high-end equipment that is pretty to look at, but the prices are a touch high.

If you really want the uber game machine you probably want to build it yourself. Maximum performance doesn't ALWAYS have to cost you stability if you buy the right parts from the right vendors.

You're right about local stores, at least in my area, they are very delayed. I can usually order the latest online and get it in the mail before any local chains get it in stock. As far as I can tell, the local mom n' pop stores are always the most cautious to get the latest hardware. Try the gamer franchises, like EB Games. Best Buy, Circuit City, CrapUSA never have a good enough selection of products. (They might only sell PNY Nvidia cards, when you really want the Hercules.)

What's amusing is that people are encouraged to bring laptops, and are then expected to play games that way...

On a related note, I've never seen anyone on /. mention iBuyPower. Their prices are $1000 less than Alienware, and probably a few hundred less than a Sager or Clevo. They really are in a (price) class of their own.

Check out one of their laptops compared to an equivalent Alienware.

When you want a better video card in 2 years, then you have to go spend another $3k for a whole new laptop.

I'd love it if an OEM produced a standard form-factor laptop that could swap all (or most) of the components, even if it was bulkier/heavier. More people are using laptops as desktop replacements (or 2nd computer) and would like this (I've counted 10+ at our office who would buy something like this if it were available and somewhat reasonably priced).

Or you could buy a first-gen 17" Powerbook for about $2500, spend $100 and upgrade it to a gig of ram, and ignore the screen resolution since there isn't a mobile graphics card on the planet that can drive a display for a first-person shooter at either system's native resolution anyway.

(spit-take)

What what what??! You really have no idea what level of technology the rest of the world is actually using.

A mobile Radeon 9700 is more than powerful enough to play any fps at the native resolution of this laptop. I have a brand new laptop with a 2.4ghz non-Extreme P4 and the same res. screen as the XPS and I can play UT2K3 and Max Payne 2 at native resolution at around 60fps with a Radeon 9000. So your statement is clearly ignorant, and false.

There's nothing wrong with buying a 17" Powerbook if that's what you want, but you're fundamentally misunderstanding the market for the Dell XPS if that's what you'd think that audience would want. Mac people always say "or just buy a Mac" for pretty much every situation, as if their machines work best for everything. The simple fact is the XPS would be a far better gaming machine than a 17" Powerbook - it has a faster CPU and it has a faster graphics card (and it's upgradeable). The PC market is a specialized market, with a lot of different machines for different purposes. The whole point of a gaming laptop is to have a laptop that's good for playing games, not to have a laptop that's a catch-all device with gaming as merely one of the possible functions. This is not a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none... this is a master of one trade, and that's it.

That said, I wouldn't buy an XPS myself. It's fugly, for one thing. And heavy, and unnecessarily expensive. When I can play games like those I listed above at good frame rates at native res. on my $1,200 widescreen laptop that doesn't weight 9 pounds and also looks better than the XPS, what the heck am I spending $5,000 on? Which is not to say I think these things are silly for everyone, I am just not their target market. I do have a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none machine. If I really had some extra cash to waste, I'd at least go for something like this or even this. At least they're somewhat portable and don't look like they were designed in 1989.

Besides for that much, I'd go for something with better ruggedness, like a thinkpad, or a powerbook.

Did anyone see the notebook they're offering here? One of the color options is "conspiracy blue". ;-)

Alienware. Forgot the link...

Um, sorry dude, but I think you got the wrong computer to play games on. Sure, many games are now being ported to the Mac, but most are pretty old (relatively speaking), and don't represent a wide variety like the full spectrum of games you can get on a Windows PC. Sure there are a few new games for the Mac, but not many. Fortunately, the ones that were ported were pretty big, like NWN, Halo, Quake3, etc. However, for cutting edge gaming performance, look at an Alienware gaming rig or something like that. I know it's not cool to advocate Windows, but when it comes to hard core PC gaming, it's sort of a must.

Macworld isn't making the article available on their website, but you piqued my curiosity enough to go looking for it. Alienware, which makes the Athlon and P4 systems that Macworld apparently used for its testing, has made excerpts available here.

Who should I believe - Macworld, or some guy with bare feet? Hmmm............

Macworld isn't making the article available on their website, but you piqued my curiosity enough to go looking for it. Alienware, which makes the Athlon and P4 systems that Macworld apparently used for its testing, has made excerpts available here.

Who should I believe - Macworld, or some guy with bare feet? Hmmm............

Clients that require such features are a minimal market. Linux is better choice for 95% of the clients. Most clients would rather have a platform that has a future, not a past.

However, such clients are often willing to pay a premium for these features that are not always of interest to the 95% you mention. This cost makes up for the size of the market. In economics, it's called an "economy of scale", and it accounts for the seemingly more expensive cost of systems that are of interest to a small market segment.

Also, it's not just SUN. It's for the same "5% markets" that other OSes (e.g. VxWorks) exist. It's also why some p3 laptops cost $7000, when a top of the line Alienware costs half as much. It's that the market for laptops that can get shot by a 45 while getting pissed on by an elephant is small, and hence pays more for older technologies.

Supply and Demand - Behold the power of the maket!

Not the one I want to buy, which still costs $4,883.00 plus shipping, or 8,888.00 with the 30" monitor.

HP
IBM
Compaq
Alienware
Gateway
Build your own

We have choices, after all.

Useless graphs, over-emphasis on gaming, lots of flashy buzzwords and "benchmarks" that involve nothing more other then running the latest games... Did someone screw up the DNS records for extremetech.com and reroute all traffic to tomshardware.com? No? Damned!

Seriously, all of that is fun but laptops are usually sold for two reasons*, one being the size and the fact it's easy to hide then. ( really nice if you don't want a desktop case in the middle of your living room ) The second reason is that they are mobile ( really! ) and thus can be lugged around by business people who seem to value their email more then their own lives. What about important factors to people who want a laptop for those two reasons? What about size, weigth, heat during use, screen brightness, stability, etc etc? 98% of the people who buy a laptop care more about the damned thing being lightweigth instead of being able to cram out 0,2543 fps on Halo. If you're going to buy a laptop for gaming you're a bit dense to start with. You can buy a state-of-the-art laptop and before you left the story it's ancient already. Try upgrading the proc or graphics card of your shiny new laptop to run HL3 or Doom4. Try playing for more then six hours without the system stalling due to overheating. Try to install an extra HD or something.

There, simply put; laptops are nice but aren't made to be used for gaming. Hence why putting a bunch of laptops through a series of benchmarks, aimed at gaming and set up by some people who most likely consider this to be the most arousing thing on the internet, is very useless. At best.

* = Working in computer retail business, ( kill me please ) so I unfortunately know what I'm talking about here.

If we assume that 'personal computer' can include systems aimed at gamers (and since we're talking about high-performance PC's I feel this is a reasonable inclusion), then the existence of the Alienware Roswell range appears to provide compelling evidence that it is possible to buy an off-the-shelf dual-processor desktop systems intended for domestic use. This is just one company which I happen to be aware of - I'd be astonished if they have this market segment to themselves.

I didn't know that "buy it at a mall" was part of the definition of desktop, but you can certainly get them via mailorder. The machines that were tested were stock machines from harware OEMs that can buy exactly as tested. The Alienware Aurora, that beat the single-CPU G5 on all tests, and the dual on all but 2 tests (the photoshop ones), can be found here. $3200.

Well ok it is a fast machine but what is the price performance marks for this vs the fastest alienware box. I am willing to bet that the alienware box smokes the pant's off of it for price vs performance. Not only that but the alienware box looks even cooler.For myself I would go for the amd64 alienware box which has a rather attractive case and price.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems wrong for a geek's preferred computer vendor to be Dell (or to even consider walking into a Best Buy).

Being a geek myself, I'd never consider getting a name brand computer (unless the name is Alien Ware (shamelessly copied from a previous article).

Having said that, some of the choices for tech are cool (like the Yamaha musicast).

If this is a paper launch, Alienware is selling some interesting paper.

Now wait, Apple's are niche products so comparing them to Dell or IBM is the wrong way to go, why don't you compare them to an Alienware laptop. That would be a better comparison. Alienware makes their own "Ultra-Portable" laptops now, because who really wants to carry around a 10 pound beast. And if you try and configure one to closely match the specs of a new 15 inch Powerbook the prices are about the same, but I found that I still get a better deal with the Powerbook (which I'm typing on right now). The Alienware has integrated graphics and only a 14.1 inch screen and comes in at 5.5 pounds. Now my Powerbook on the other had has a 15.2 inch widescreen display, a Radeon 9600, and loads of other goodies, and it only weighs 5.6 pounds. Yes I would rather have paid less then 1K for my new laptop but for the features that I get, and the quality the Powerbook was the better deal in my opinion.

True, but Alienware gets the new stuff 1st. Check out the new Area-51m Sentia. 14" with more than XGA screen res! $1904 for decent configuration.

Besides, we all know the blue looks better than the green!

alienware laptop $3100

powernotebook laptop $1800
And the powernotebook laptop has a 17" wide screen formated LCD !!!
Hell, with some of the awesome case-mod painting tutorials, i'll be able to do the alienware pretty paint job myself!

The much-hyped Alienware laptops are actually made by a compny (can't remember the name) that are also sold as Sager's for much less, and the Sager's can be bought without an OS. However, they don't come in fruity colors like the Alienware.

Sager laptop

Alienware

Cnet user reviews (an funny mix of people pointing out that you can get the Sager for cheaper, and Alienware fans who can't seem to understand that)

except for the Alienware case in the picture. Those things are massive ripoffs. No way I'd buy one when I can build almost the same thing for less.

With all the big names flying around, have you considered an Alienware machine? They're not the lightest in the world but they look to be fairly high quality.

They bill for games, but performance is performance.

Being one who has always bought OEM and never had (too) much of a problem with OEM hardware, this doesn't bother me too much. In short, if you go the extra distance and pay the extra money for a retail CPU, you are being told basically "use this fan/heatsink combo, 'cause it does what we want it to do and meets the (minimum) standards we set for our product."

Not too much of a concern for most people who build custom boxes for home personal use - You get a computer that you want, so you upgrade the crap out of it.

At most, I feel that this is more of a problem for companies like Alien Ware or Zenatek. The ones that have the most to lose because they use AMD products in their products (custom comptuers).

IANAL, but Hey, I'm also in CA, which protects my butt too.

You should have seen what I used to have: the same TV and receiver and an old Thinkpad running XMMS with a patch cable going from the headphone jack to the aux speaker-in on the receiver. We didn't save video; we had to remember when to be home. :-)

I haven't tried Tivo personally. With the money I spent I could have, I'm sure, but hey, I'm a project kinda guy.

Yeah, I hear ya. I'm the same way. Problem is, I have more projects than I can reasonably be expected to finish in my lifetime. It was time to cut down. And the wife wanted a PVR-type thing. So TiVo it was.

I think I failed to mention that I painted it gloss black with silver metallic highlights. crappy paint job, but oh well.

Well now you're talking. :-)

I had this idea for using one of those Shuttle XPC form factor mini PCs as the basis for an entertainment center, and then Alienware came out with one. It runs XP Media Center Edition, which is a deal breaker in and of itself (never mind the cost; those XPC cases are like $150 so I have no idea how they can get away with selling their low-end unit for $1,700). It's just as well since my wife would have niether waited for me to get off my ass and build something or wanted me to spend the money for an Alienware box.

Another idea I had for a project was an in-dash audio player that would stream MP3s to my truck's stereo. It would be based on a Linux PC (the guts out of a laptop), aand have 802.11b connectivity. I was going to write scripts that would detect when the truck was in range of my home network and then rsync all the music files it didn't have and go on standby. I was going to use an old palm pilot as the display/remote. Then I saw that these guys made a unit called an Empeg that did almost exactly what I wanted. I shelved my projet and decided to buy an Empeg. Except the soon-to-be-released Wersion 2 was going to have a PCMCIA slot (which meant an Orinoco card could slide right in there) so I waited. Then SONICblue, those no-talent assmonkeys, bought Empeg out and killed the in-dash unit. I've since given away the laptop which was the basis for my original idea.

I don't know what the moral of those two stories is. Carpe Diem? Scratch your itches? Do what makes you happy? Dunno...

-B

Alienware seems to have a good model, looks nice too. Apple needs to bring back the Cube for this very purpose...

Alienware seems to have a good model, looks nice too. Apple needs to bring back the Cube for this very purpose...

I still prefer the Area-51 laptops by Alienware. A little more pricey, but damn, they put a lot of horsepower in there; perfect for LAN parties. And they are colorful as hell :).

Review is also very nice, though it is off of their own site. Customize your own here.

Suhit

I still prefer the Area-51 laptops by Alienware. A little more pricey, but damn, they put a lot of horsepower in there; perfect for LAN parties. And they are colorful as hell :).

Review is also very nice, though it is off of their own site. Customize your own here.

Suhit

I still prefer the Area-51 laptops by Alienware. A little more pricey, but damn, they put a lot of horsepower in there; perfect for LAN parties. And they are colorful as hell :).

Review is also very nice, though it is off of their own site. Customize your own here.

Suhit

I still prefer the Area-51 laptops by Alienware. A little more pricey, but damn, they put a lot of horsepower in there; perfect for LAN parties. And they are colorful as hell :).

Review is also very nice, though it is off of their own site. Customize your own here.

Suhit

Many high-end laptops can be purchased with a UXGA 15" LCD. Dell ships one (branded UltraSharp) and IBM ships one (branded FlexView). I think the panels are made by Sharp and Hitachi. You can find some info on Alienware's Website.

Perhaps someone needs to make a Linux for Gamers distribution. Include all the free games, all the demo games, and make it stupid easy. Include a stupid easy email client and Mozilla ... and XMMS. It needs nothing else. Sell the idea to people like Blizzard, Sierra, and EA. It could be like console systems, with upgradable hardware. It could have software that checks for driver updates for their hardware, and has an overclocker app.

Shit, you could even do the hardware route. I bet AlienWare would pick it up if it were good enough. They're doing the MS Media Center thing as it is.

Regardless, if I'm not in the mood to build a box I think I'd trust Alienware for a gaming machine over anyone else out there.

Regardless, if I'm not in the mood to build a box I think I'd trust Alienware for a gaming machine over anyone else out there.

Regardless, if I'm not in the mood to build a box I think I'd trust Alienware for a gaming machine over anyone else out there.

yes, this is pricey, but if your looking for a media PC, this will do the trick, and you shouldn't have trouble hooking up your ipod or any other media device to it. Alien Ware Media Center PC

That Alienware box looks suspiciously like the Shuttle barebone PCs which you can buy at newegg.com for less than $400. Do-it-yourselfers could save more than a few bucks making these into an equivalent media PC.

First, don't bash anything untill you read about it and understand it.

Second, and yes, this is pricey, but if your looking for a media PC, this will do the trick, and you shouldn't have trouble hooking up your ipod or any other media device to it.

Alien Ware Media Center PC

Third, You didn't mention it but others did, this is extremely hardware limited, ATI can't even get on because their cards don't do all the encoding in hardware. You also must have a remote so the lazy people can operate this from their couch.

Finally, I know anytime MS is mentioned, it will get torn apart. And i know this has DRM in it, but it will only be months before that is broken. In all honesty, XP is alot better than their previous efforts, RIAA and MPAA ass kissing aside. So lets drop the nothing from MS will ever be good enough, because we all know that the majority of people that use Slashdot are browsing from IE.