Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop

Psychor writes "Dell has released a high specification new laptop complete with World of Warcraft branding (Horde and Alliance versions available). With a starting price of $4,499 it's not cheap, but does feature SLI graphics and AGEIA PhysX technology (a laptop first). RAID and solid state storage are also options." Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

Comments

Is this really needed?

[RogueyWon]

Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with? I know that Burning Crusade was a little harder on systems than the original game and that Lich King is likely to be slightly more so, but we're still not talking about a game on the cutting edge of technology here. Even cheap, off-the-peg PCs bought in the last two or three years should be able to run it just fine. World of Warcraft relies more on design than technology for its visual appeal.

Crysis? Sure, I can see that people could need an expensive upgrade to play that (I know I would - although after playing the first 2 hours, I'm not convinced the game is worth it)... but not World of Warcraft.

That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.

Re:Is this really needed?

[SatanicPuppy]

Would the Alliance laptop not be able to boot unless it outnumbered the Horde laptops 2 to 1? ;)

Re:Is this really needed?

[antifoidulus]

So you can watch the resale value of it plummet as it is superseded both by new technologies and new trends in MMOs?

Re:Is this really needed?

[SevenHands]

Exactly my thought. Would SLI make that much of a difference to this game?

Re:Is this really needed?

[Fizzl]

Who resells computers anyway?
I have like of box full of shit from last two decades in my attic. My upgrade cycle used to go like:
1. Upgrade PC
2. Demote old parts to the bedroom PC
3. Demote old parts to the file server
4. Demote old parts to that box in the attic

When you get to the step 4, the parts are of no worth to anyone. And for some reason I cannot get myself to just trash them :)

Nowadays I only buy laptops thou. The last one I sold, because it took so long in Acer warranty service that I had to buy a new one while waiting, and I don't need two.

I wonder what kind of task awaits my current laptop when I will upgrade...

Re:Is this really needed?

[Fozzyuw]

Exactly my thought. Would SLI make that much of a difference to this game?

Yes. At least, when I stopped playing almost a year ago, when I bought my new Dell XPS system and played WoW with all the settings nearly maxed (I STILL couldn't max out all settings on a Duel-core system with GForce 7800 GTX and 2GB ram) the graphics quality was night and day from playing on my old P3 Inspiron notebook.

Sure, WoW can be played on low-end systems, but it's infinitely more beautiful on high-end systems. Moon/Sun reflections on water and roads. Much better water effects. Better shadowing and anti-aliasing. Longer view-distances. etc.

SLI will be fine as it will allow you to crank up the settings to max without suffering from poor framerates. So, is this laptop worth it? No. Is it a wet-dream? Yes and if you have the money to burn, go for it. It'll probably be a great laptop that lasts you a good 5+ years running high-end games. But do you want the "theme" skins? Dell owns Alienware. If you're going to drop $4.5k, you might just want to get one of those, it's going to have the same stuff (eventually) and it will have a universally cool case.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Is this really needed?

[shadowrat]

While World of Warcraft is not that demanding on hardware, there are plenty of other games that are.

There isn't any stipulation that WoW is the only game you can play on this. It's simply a high end gaming laptop that happens to be WoW themed.

Or maybe some people just want to play WoW on a laptop that can also handle Vista Aero :P

Re:Is this really needed?

[3chuck3]

Ie, NO. WoW runs just fine on my Del D400 ultra-portable lappy, Intel Intergrated graphics, 1.5GHz P-Moble, 1.5GHz Ram.

they are right on about not being able to login on Tues Morning or sometimes not at all.

Re:Is this really needed?

[RedACE7500]

The Alliance laptop would need a higher level laptop to help it boot up.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.

A $100 copy of Windows XP on any computer will do that just fine.

Re:Is this really needed?

[RedACE7500]

Is your 1.5 GHz Ram running a 1.21 Jigawatts?

Re:Is this really needed?

[rucs_hack]

When you get to the step 4, the parts are of no worth to anyone.

I disagree, they have a use. For example, I've still got my old ZX Spectrum. I showed it to my son last year, and he asked me in all seriousness where the dvd's went in. Then I mentioned the memory capacity (oh how awesome 48k was back then..) and he looked at me like it was time for me to visit the 'special' home.

Ok so the use was to make me feel old and look silly, but it's still a use..

Re:Is this really needed?

[flitty]

Comments like these make me wish I hadn't spent all my mod points.

Re:Is this really needed?

[sathran]

You do realize that it isn't an arcade, right?
You can play whatever game you want regardless of the theme they apply to it.

Re:Is this really needed?

[RogueyWon]

Yes, of course I know this, but read the blurb that goes with it. They're talking about "the ultimate World of Warcraft gaming experience". Strikes me as a somewhat dubious claim to make, given you could almost certainly get an identical experience on a machine costing less than a quarter of the price.

Re:Is this really needed?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

1.21 Jigawatts?!? What were you thinking?

Re:Is this really needed?

[bluie-]

I've recently found out just how little demand WoW puts on your graphics card. My x800xt plat died, so I had to revert to my ultra-stable 9800 pro. With just a couple settings turned down I'm still getting well above 30 frames in even the worst of overloaded spots. My processor is an fx-55, which is still plenty fast, and I think I saw one for sale on newegg for $130ish. Ridiculous!

Re:Is this really needed?

[disckitty]

Blizzard has done a fantastic job at being able to support many systems. I have a Tablet PC with an Intel Integrated Graphics card (aka: modern-day piece-of-crap graphics card), and it still has no problems. I might not have the best settings (they're not all min'd out either), but I get extremely smooth game play.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Knara]

You couldn't max out the settings? I've got a C2D-6600 and a X1950XT. Every time I play I feel like I overspent because it so easily handles the max detail levels (in WoW, that is).

Re:Is this really needed?

[heinousjay]

No you couldn't. But feel free to prove me wrong and list the parts and prices.

Re:Is this really needed?

[uhhhhhhhhhhDuh]

Is this really needed? well, will it make them any money?

Re:Is this really needed?

[mgblst]

One of the reasons I keep my son locked in the basement until he can learn to program 6510 chip. Maybe in a couple of years I will let him on to the 386 (come on, I am not heartless, no 286 for him).

Re:Is this really needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how its insanely overpriced and not top of the line..

Though, maybe it will offer other services that WoW players don't get on a regular basis? *nudge*

Re:Is this really needed?

[billcopc]

Crysis is worth it for the eye-candy alone, but it's definitely a short experience. Going back to "decent" games like COD4 is kind of depressing because Crysis raises the visual bar so damned high, you start to see all the flaws in lesser graphics.

Anyway back to WoW... I don't get why they're promoting the everloving crap out of a game that's been out for 3 years, especially after a huge chunk of people have jumped ship in favor of LoTRO. Warcraft stagnated, the expansion was interesting at first but quickly turned into a long uber-slow rep grind that would make even old-school EQ players reach for the anti-depressants.

WoW is dead. Wake me when WoW 2 comes out.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

All Horde laptops come with a button that instantly crashes all Alliance laptops whose users are in the same zone/realm as the Horde laptop.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Reapman]

First off I agree, not worth it, but I also don't play WoW.. however from what I read on another site (hey this is /., did'nt rtfa but I'm assuming it includes the same info) this also includes stuff like Beta Keys for all future content, backpack, figurine of your own online character etc... assuming that's true that's pretty cool. Not $4500 or w/e it costs cool, but still kinda cool.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Garridan]

My first question was, "Is this really worthwhile?" I mean, Xtreme Notebooks has quad core laptops for about half the price of this -- and for that much money, you can get just as good of a video card, 4GB ram, and some beastly hard-drives, too. So what are they charging for? A fancy case-mod?

Re:Is this really needed?

[Machtyn]

Does the laptop come preloaded with Vista? Then, yes, it does need that much power to run Wow at an acceptable speed comparable to your P4 2.0GHz WinXP machine!

Re:Is this really needed?

[ubrgeek]

No, but to buy it you have to deal with Auction House lag ;)

Re:Is this really needed?

[HUADPE]

Maybe not a quarter of the price, but a desktop would have equivalent performance well under the price point of this laptop.

Re:Is this really needed?

[pabens]

WoW doesnt even support SLI...
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1610471297&postId=16099064527&sid=1

Re:Is this really needed?

[Fozzyuw]

You couldn't max out the settings?

Well.. I *could* but the framerate was below 15fps. I think I had to turn off one of the anti-aliasing settings or something. Then again, I was having driver issues at the time. Every time I tried to update to the latest NForce driver it would fail to give proper widescreen monitor resolutions and my desktop would go to the dump. So, I was using a pretty old video driver which might have been causing issues. I also don't have SLI. Maybe it'll run well now that I've managed to update my video driver (finally).

But I have little interest in WoW until the next xPac comes out. I'll at least be able to advance my character again without having to schedule 4-hour gaming sessions to raid on Fri./Sat. nights (not something I'm willing to do anymore). That and I've been having a blast with Lego Star Wars, Mario Galaxies, and Resident Evil on the Wii along with Hellgate: London, Sam and Max episode 1 (it was free), Oblivion, FF VII and the Baulder's Gate series (yeah, I'm behind the times on some PC games ;p).

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Is this really needed?

[Brian Gordon]

If you enjoyed S&M ep1, install Steam. Episode 4 is also free.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Blakey Rat]

"Is it needed?" - that's a really stupid question about any article in the video games topic.

No, it's not needed. It's designed to play a video game. Duh. And for the record, you're right, the hardware in this laptop isn't needed to play the current version of World of Warcraft effectively.

However, if you read the article, it also comes with a lot of WOW-related merchandise and swag and for many people I think it'll be worth the cost. Hell, you have WOW players who'll spend $4500 on monopoly money, why not on beefy hardware? (Remember economics: the product is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Dell's going to sell a lot of these for $4500 a pop, therefore it's worth $4500.)

One of the pieces of swag is a custom action figure designed around your in-game character... maybe it shows what a geek I am, but I'd actually be interested in finding out how much that costs. (The article mentions Figureprint, but that a Google search doesn't bring up anything that seems relevant... does anybody know where/how to order one of those?)

Re:Is this really needed?

[flitty]

Yes, but the comedy is in the fact that this is like the PS3 coming in a "Gran Turismo 3 Edition" that costs double what it should.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Blakey Rat]

Sorry to reply to my own post... the site for making a custom action figure of your character is actually just http://www.figureprints.com/ , natch. It has a huge banner that says "open Dec. 11" with no other links, so there's no way at the moment to find out how much it costs... oh well, I'll come back in a couple weeks and check.

Will be interesting to find out how well if it works for equipment with hovering bits.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Blakey Rat]

The real point of this is the extras that come with the laptop, not necessarily the laptop itself. Take a closer look at the feature list, it includes entry into all the WOW-related betas, a custom action figure designed after your in-game character, all of the special pets/bonuses in the game from the various pre-order programs, full copies of all previous Warcraft games, strategy guides for all of those, backpack to put it all in, etc.

Re:Is this really needed?

[corifornia2]

It comes with a Golden Ticket to get a FigurePrint of your character, a WoW backpack, novels, trading cards, an LCD stat screen(!!!) and a little guillotine to castrate yourself with to ensure you never get laid!!!

Re:Is this really needed?

[Like2Byte]

Yeah, that base price is pretty wild. ~$4500 (US)

I clicked through and selected the upgrades to the laptop itself *with* all the warrenties I could locate and it came to ~$8200 (US).

I can't see anyone paying this except for the recluse who sits in his/her mother's basement.

To me, this seems like nothing more than DELL feeding off of someone's addiction.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Maaras]

From the FAQ on your linked site: "How much do they cost? $99.95 plus $14.95 Shipping and Handling to any address in the US and Canada"

Re:Is this really needed?

[twistedsymphony]

I know how you feel... "but... I spent $500 on that 4meg hard drive!"

Maybe us /. posters should pool all our old equipment together and open a chain of computer museums.

Re:Is this really needed?

[RogueyWon]

Given your history of trolling me, I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply.

Read my original post. WoW ran acceptably on my old P4 2.0ghz. It ran perfectly, with all extra prettiness turned on, on the P4 3.2ghz that replaced it. There is no discernable performance difference between how it ran on that or how it runs on my current Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz, 2gigs RAM, GF7950 or, indeed, my Core 2 Duo, 2ghz, 2 gigs RAM, crappy intel graphics laptop, which cost around a quarter the price of the laptop under discussion here.

On both my current systems, as well as my previous desktop, the fps is locked above 60fps at all times, in full detail at the highest resolution my monitor will support. There would be absolutely no benefit in WoW terms from moving to the laptop under discussion.

Re:Is this really needed?

[epedersen]

The reason to "spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with" is because I can. I don't need so spend half as much on computers as I do.

Re:Is this really needed?

[xENoLocO]

Welcome to ye olde hardewares, may I take your order?

There were no DVDRs and bluetooth in ye olde times, hence there are no DVDRS or bluetooth at ye olde hardewares.

Re:Is this really needed?

[MMWally]

Dell is just targeting the people that think "hey, I can impress people buy spending thousands on a machine". Reality is, Dell is trying to sucker people into their financing so they can screw the customers. A 500 dollar laptop can run WoW, its not that graphic intensive as Blizzard (or Dell) leads to believe.

Re:Is this really needed?

[itchy92]

"They were no DVD-Rs or Bluetooth, but there were LCD screens?"

"Dude, I got a lot of tables..."

Re:Is this really needed?

[Spartan_girl]

First, if I was going to pay almost $5,000 for a computer I would make sure that it would not only play World of Warcraft, but games like Gears of War, Bioshock, The Witcher, and other high graphic games. Also, I would like the laptop to have diamonds encrusted around the outside cover every couple of inches or so give you something worth your money :op

Re:Is this really needed?

[shadowrat]

I was under the impression that this is just an XPS 1730. The top of the line package starts at $4,431. Yeah, you pay some for the wow branding, but it's an expensive piece of hardware without it.

It seems more like a Gran Turismo Ps3 that costs the same as an 80 gig ps3. It's an 80 gig ps3, but maybe someone will buy it based on how much they liked a game on the ps2.

Re:Is this really needed?

[MaximvsG]

The Sword of a Thousand Truths must look pretty sweet on that box!

Re:Is this really needed?

[geminidomino]

I'll at least be able to advance my character again without having to schedule 4-hour gaming sessions to raid on Fri./Sat. nights (not something I'm willing to do anymore). That and I've been having a blast with Lego Star Wars, Mario Galaxies, and Resident Evil on the Wii along with Hellgate: London, Sam and Max episode 1 (it was free), Oblivion, FF VII and the Baulder's Gate series (yeah, I'm behind the times on some PC games ;p). Nothing was quite as heartbreaking as when I found out that I couldn't play FF VIII on the PC anymore. Apparently buying a new Nvidia card was the WORST thing I could do, since they'd removed some legacy support from the drivers, and the drivers old enough to still have it were too old for the card...

If I hadn't just build a new PC to use a PCI/E video card, I would have ut the old AGP back in...

Re:Is this really needed?

[bigstrat2003]

Your comments on WoW convince me that you haven't actually given the expansion any serious play time. Huge chunks of players have not jumped ship, for starters. For another, if you call heroic keying "long, uber-slow rep grinds", you have the worst gaming ADD I've ever seen. Granted, my character is human, but it took me a scant couple of weeks after hitting 70 to be heroic keyed for ALL instances. Plus, it's gotten even EASIER in the last patch, as heroic keying requires honored, not revered, now. The expansion has things you can complain about reasonably, but rep grinds absolutely are not one of them.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Kris_J]

It's a little glitchy, but it does mostly work. Mostly.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Knara]

Yeah, Hellgate (and Assassin's Creed) have taken up most of my gaming time lately. Hellgate has had its own share of video-driver stupidity.

Re:Is this really needed?

[jo42]

Yes, but your old P4 doesn't have The Bling Factor (c)(tm) that carrying around this statement of your place in society does. I fully expect Paris Hilton to be dragging one of these around real soon now.

Re:Is this really needed?

[AnotherUsername]

Do you really think that getting all these slashdotters together in the real world is healthy? I mean, online is one thing...but think of the children...

Re:Is this really needed?

[DurendalMac]

When was the last time you played?? You'd get shit framerates without dropping the details close to the minimum, and even then you'd lag like crazy in areas like Shattrath and on raids.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Fozzyuw]

Hellgate has had its own share of video-driver stupidity.

*had*? Did they fix it? I haven't played in 2-weeks (been busy) and I'm on the final push to the Hellgate, but I cannot play for 1-hour without the game locking up on me. It would be nice if they fixed that.

Then, when I'm done with Lego Star Wars, maybe I'll go back and finish that. It got pretty annoying that I had to stop. Though, I've never grouped up with anyone yet. Is that any good?

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Is this really needed?

[TempeTerra]

I don't usually indulge in... err... my computer is smaller than yours contests, but there's a lesson here: I started playing WoW the weekend it opened on my Athlon 800mHz with 512MB RAM and Windows 98SE - I dialled down all the eye candy, but it was entirely adequate to experience the game.

The important point is that it was the same computer I had run Warcraft III on. Even though the hardware was sub-par at the time (I think the RAM was the only thing that didn't suck) Blizzard had made the choice to target their shiny new game at the hardware that all the fans of their shiny old game already had. I hope whoever it was that argued for low system requirements got a promotion.

Re:Is this really needed?

[pushing-robot]

For once it's nice to see a site that breaks if you don't use NoScript :)

Re:Is this really needed?

[Akaihiryuu]

The AEGIA thing is what made me laugh. Granted, I know this is a general gaming laptop, but WOW is obviously the focus...and WOW doesn't support that chip. So it'd just be "dead weight" if you were actually playing WOW.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Lissajous]

I can't see anyone paying this except for the recluse who sits in his/her mother's basement.

Hence the WoW branding.

Re:Is this really needed?

[ockegheim]

...but it's quite easy to speed hack.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean $1?

Re:Is this really needed?

[Fizzl]

Just got reminded of something. Couple of years back I was looking for an acoustic coupler to toy with. The normal PC stores wouldn't even know what it is, even after I explained the purpose and how it looks like. Then I remember a store in Vaasa, who has a huge cache of old crap in his store. I drove 200km to there, and here's how the dialogue unfurled.

Me: Hi, do you have any old acoustic couplers back there?
Him: Sure do! *goes off to do some scourcign in the backroom*
Him: Here you go! That would be 30 euros.
Me: Are you fucking bat shit crazy?! Why is it 30 euros?! It's not worth anything to anyone!
Him: It seems it might be worth something to you. *dangling the thing*. Want it or not?
Me: Damnit, you old mean spirited tradesman! *shells out 30 euros*

Re:Is this really needed?

[MrHyd3]

LOL, too funny. I have the similar experience when I show my son's the "demo's" I wrote on a C64 back in the days of the demo scene. They'd just say, that looks like CRAP. I miss those days....compiling and uploading via punter to a out of state bbs so other 'grammers could see my crap coding....

mrhyd3 aka walkman

Re:Is this really needed?

[nobuddy]

heh. i still have that 4M SIMm that I saved for months to buy, at $800. I had the baddest 386DX in town, baby! Finally replaced it with a 486/100 with Diamond Stealth 2M and a Monster II 8M combo that rocked games mightily. Someday I'll be able to affort to upgrade that one too. :(

Re:Is this really needed?

[Knara]

I haven't grouped with anyone yet (not usually a "group with people I don't know" type of player).

I meant "had" more in the sense of "it did last time I played it". I actually didn't have much problem at all with DX9 aside from some weird stuttering issues in menus for only certain window modes. DX10 was a pain.

Re:Is this really needed?

[gravis777]

Are you going to give him a 387 math co-processor to go with it? Also, are you planning to give him Dos 3.3, or be really nice and give him Dos 5? If he is bad, you can setup Dosshell (or was that Dos 6?). If he is really good, you can give him Stacker to double the size of his 20 meg hard drive.For Christmas, you can upgrade him to four meg of memory, and when he reaches manhood, he can have a SoundBlaster Pro, a VGA video card and monitor, and the MM compatable CD-Rom (with a substained data transfer rate of 150k a second). With the 2400 baud modem running Trumpet Winsock and NCSA Mosaic, he might be able to get on eBay to find used copies of the 7th Guest, Myst, and King's Quest 5.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Billly Gates]

I have a newer core2duo I built with a geforce7600GT and shattarah is almost unplayable. Isn't that state of the art just last year?

Re:Is this really needed?

[Billly Gates]

Shudder. Wasn't worth it on my 1.7ghz pentiumM system with an 910 graphics. Especially in Shattarah where my core2 system with a 7600 GTS goes into single frames per second.

Re:Is this really needed?

[billcopc]

Don't go telling me what I like and don't like. I specifically don't like the keying process. I quite enjoyed the quests, especially those in the expansion as they had more variety and were crammed together in a satisfying way (much like LoTRO). The rep grinds drove me foolish, because I had to go do the same damned thing over and over and over and over. It was like playing Final Fantasy 1.

Re:Is this really needed?

[GwaihirBW]

I am fairly certain that no children would result, so we should be safe on that angle at least.

$4500?

[RandoX]

For that price it should come with a lifetime subscription. Actually, it might just be cheaper to switch to meth.

Re:$4500?

[securityfolk]

Nah, $4500 in meth-dollars is ~1 year (or substantially less), and you'll only *think* you're a level 70 warlock ;)

Re:$4500?

[cecil36]

I'd rather spend this amount and trade in my car for FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!!!!

Re:$4500?

[PlatyPaul]

Well, assuming you take one hit per day, and using the numbers found here, you'd be looking at a cost of $5640 per year for your meth enjoyment.

Hmm - new laptop, internet connection, subscription fees, expansion packs... it's a toss-up, really.

Re:$4500?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You can probably hire someone to haul around your computer for less than that. Carrying this thing would probably give you a workout too, which you'll need after just sitting on your duff all evening. I couldn't find any specs on the size and weight, I'm guessing 2" or thicker, and about 12lb. At least, after sitting on your duff all evening, 12lb is going to feel like a serious workout.

Re:$4500?

[Peter Cooper]

You mean, as opposed to the millions of fat, bearded slobs on WOW who are "level 70 warlocks" for real? :)

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm somewhat puzzled why it costs so much. I bought an Inspiron from Dell a few months ago, and I know the XPSs are built to take it more than Inspirions, but Jesus.

Horde Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Speed: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
CD / DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 a/g Mini Card
High Definition Audio 2.0
17inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA
512MB Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT with NVIDIA® SLI®
NO MOBILE BROADBAND CRD
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Battery

for $4500 seems like a crapload for a laptop when I bought this Inspiron for $1600.

Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T7300 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)
Windows Vista Home Premium
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
160G 7200RPM SATA HDD
CD / DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Broadcom wireless card (but I clearly remember the Intel card was an extra $25, I just forgot to select it)
High Definition Audio 2.0
High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1680x1050)
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8600M GT
85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)

I mean, damn, the only really significant differences are the larger screen, superior video card, and better cooling and whatnot. How did that turn into an extra $3000 bucks? I was expecting some kind of mobile quad-core 4GB RAM monster.

Re:$4500?

[Hoi Polloi]

For that price you could buy a real sword and armor.

"Lighting bolt! Lightning bolt!"

Re:$4500?

[Hal_Porter]

I'd rather spend this amount and trade in my car for FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!!!! You misspelled furry.

Re:$4500?

[hackus]

As a Non Fat, Local bearded slob Level 70 Warlock, I find myself offended.

Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, Corruption and Immolation on you!

Your going to die any minute now....

-Hack

Re:$4500?

[sherpajohn]

That's the "barebones" version, I managed to pump it up to $8019 with only hardware upgrades (processor, RAM and HDD). Now that's a good deal!

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and you'll only *think* you're a level 70 warlock ;) But you'll look like an orc.

Re:$4500?

[DeadManCoding]

Hey now, I'm not fat or bearded, but I think my girlfriend would agree with slob. Unfortunately, I'm not level 70 yet, just a measly 47.

Re:$4500?

[bladesjester]

For that price you could buy a real sword and armor.

You can buy a real sword and armor for significantly less than that.

A well tempered, well made sword designed for actual use will run between $100 and, say, $1000 (unless you want an expensive antique or a sword made by a well-known master smith) depending on type of sword, maker, how fancy you want it, etc (average cost is more along the lines of $250-$600).

A good suit of chain mail can be gotten for between $250 (for butted mail) and $700 (for riveted mail from some makers) or you can go for the suit of plate mail for something in the neighborhood of $1400.

Add in a shield for between $100 and $300 depending on size, type, and materials, and about $200 or $250 for a helm.

Perhaps another couple hundred dollars for a dagger and mace, hand axe, or hammer and you're pretty well set.

So low end you'd be looking at about $350-$400 (less if you go with a leather brigandine or other light armor) and high end, somewhere in the neighborhood of about $3000 (and that was if you really wanted to splurge and get a stupidly expensive sword. Realistically, high end would be closer to about $2500-$2800).

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up before I send out my Felguard to... what's that mom? Yeah, I'll get the garbage in just a minute. Yeah, anyway, I would kick your ass in a duel, n00b.

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'm a Non Fat, Non bearded slob Level 70 Warlock: I'll send you a large package with a 8' tall, axe wielding demon in it to you for Christmas. Don't worry, he's housebroken.

Re:$4500?

[Drencrom]

Actually it can go up to $8019 with all the fancy stuff included!!!

Re:$4500?

[flitty]

Hey now, I'm not fat or bearded, but I think my girlfriend would agree with slob. Unfortunately, I'm not level 70 yet, just a measly 47.

Wait til you hit outlands, and you have to start grinding elementals for mats. The bearded fatness will show up before you know it.
"Mom! Toilet!"

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know if I should be impressed that you know all that or feel sorry for you

Re:$4500?

[Lord_Pain]

Hey! I'm a level 70 Forsaken Warlock and I am not fat or bearded!
I will concede the slob part though. ahem

Re:$4500?

[bladesjester]

I dont know if I should be impressed that you know all that or feel sorry for you

I figured that response was coming. Don't worry, I didn't know all of the prices off the top of my head (just the ones for the average cost of some of the weapons for reasons stated in a moment). Most of them I looked up from suppliers I've dealt with in the past.

I grew up training in martial arts (kung fu with cross training in Japanese and European sword arts) and have also done a fair amount of purchasing both for myself and others, so it's not hard to get my hands on average prices for decent equipment.

It's nothing to feel sorry for me over. I actually have a life. It's just that the training is a part of it =]

Re:$4500?

[tompaulco]

Yes, but for $4500 you get one and they send one to some third world kid that you can kill repeatedly to bump up your own character.

Re:$4500?

[jetsfandb]

No self-respecting Warlock wastes mana or a global cooldown timer on Siphon Life. Toss him a Shadow Bolt! :)

Re:$4500?

[ArsonSmith]

I take offense to that, I am not a Warlock.

Re:$4500?

[Dego]

as a fat, bearded level 56 warlock you just caused me to question my motivations

Re:$4500?

[e1618978]

Siphon life is way better, as it is an affliction dot that will combine with the Soul Siphon talent to increase drain life damage. At least at level 48, where I am, shadow bolt sucks unless you trigger nightfall to reduce your casting time to 0 - the damage/mana ratio is just crap for shadow bolt. Somebody will undoubtedly tell me to do things differently, but I have an affliction build, and usually run through immolate/siphon life/curse of agony/corruption/fear/drain life/drain soul

Re:$4500?

[mrchaotica]

A good suit of chain mail can be gotten for between $250 (for butted mail) and $700 (for riveted mail from some makers) or you can go for the suit of plate mail for something in the neighborhood of $1400.

Why is plate mail more expensive? I would have figured it'd take less labor to make (compared to chain mail) nowadays, and thus be cheaper.

Re:$4500?

[bladesjester]

The plate mail figure was for all of the pieces necessary for a full suit minus the helm (rerebrace, vambrace, couter, mitten gauntlets, curiass, pauldrons, and leg armor). If you just want the curiass (breastplate and backplate) with tassets, it's only $525. Or you could go the roman route with a suit of lorica segmentata for about $350.

The chain mail was just for a mid thigh length chain mail shirt with half to 3/4 length sleeves. You can use standard leather gauntlets with it (which run $30 or so) or leather gauntlets with chain backing and light steel lame cuffs (which is $70-80) [or any other style of gauntlets, really] and if you wanted, you could add on a well-made pair of steel vambraces (forearm armor) for $70. Additionally, if you wanted, you could actually wear a suit of leather brigandine over the chain as it is basically just a leather vest with rows of steel plates riveted into it.

As for helm choices (which can go with any of the armors), you can get a chain coif (hood) for about $90-100 (for butted mail) all the way up to almost $250 for riveted mail from some suppliers. Helms, from the one armory I'm looking at right now (there are quite a few others) run anywhere from about $150 for an English style war hat (whose basic shape was actually still in use during the first World War) to about $450 for a Great Helm with Bascinet.

You also have the issue that chain can be made in sheets and later linked together in the right shape whereas plate has to be shaped for each piece.

Re:$4500?

[Billly Gates]

After reading this tread I have to ask hich one here is not a virgin.

Re:$4500?

[dgbrownnt]

As a fat, bearded slob, I take offense at being compared to warlocks. I mean seriously, standing back cursing people while they're little demons scamper around... any drunk could do that.

So yeah, um *cough* pallies rule...

But, more on topic, I don't see why you need this much computer for WoW. I mean, there are tons of games deserving (graphics-wise) of this, and WoW is not one of them. If you're going to play WoW on a laptop, and that's all, I recommend the Macbook Pro. It's what I use, and it runs WoW with all graphics options on high (nice and smooth).

Re:$4500?

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

As a non-fat meth addict, I'm also offended. WoW indeed!

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure affliction builds suck most of the time - an affliction/destruction build with Ruin can make great use of Shadow Bolt (and Siphon Life too).

Re:$4500?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never known an addict. One hit a day is a ludicrous estimation.

Re:$4500?

[Furtailloins]

So what's wrong with fat bearded warlocks :P

Yikes!

[slap20]

Wow plays fine on my current machine, and it would be nice to play it on a laptop, but for $4500.00 I can pay a sherpa to carry my desktop where ever I go.

Oh, wow...

[PlatyPaul]

LEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY'S laptop!

(click here if you didn't get it)

This laptop makes a real statement...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm going to die broke, and a virgin!"

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[192939495969798999]

Q: What kind of hooker you can get for 4500 dollars?
A: The kind that will make you wonder why anyone would spend that much money on a WOW-branded computer.

PS: that's 1 4500-dollar hooker, or 4500 1-dollar hookers...

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[PlatyPaul]

Or, possibly, "My wife/husband will kill me when she/he sees the UPS guy deliver this."

I mean, there's a reason why these sorts of sites exist.

(and no, honey, I didn't order one... please put down the hammer....)

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[ruiner13]

... and with a bad back.

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[TommydCat]

PS: that's 1 4500-dollar hooker, or 4500 1-dollar hookers...

Or 2250 Two Dollar Hordes?

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[mrv20]

Q. Which one is more likely to result in catching a virus?
...

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[Dewin]

Depends on what OS the laptop is running.

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[cyberfunkr]

Reminds me of the George Carlin line...

"I've never been with a 10, but once I was with five 2's"

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[MBGMorden]

Hookers? You can get connected with 2 or 3 PORN STARS (most of them do "side work") for that.

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[Travoltus]

"... but I will have one HELL of a hot Dark Elf babe to leave my hard earned farmed gold to."

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[Asisdead]

For 4500 Dollars You could get that hooker to be your level 70 Night Elf Female or male In real life and you would be able to do what ever you wanted.

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[SendBot]

Or 2250 Two Dollar Hordes?

Naga, please!

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[192939495969798999]

Off-camera stuff would cost you a ton more, but on-camera you could probably get 3 scenes for that... of course, then you're on camera.

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[MBGMorden]

Sounds about the same rate for off-camera (normally $1200-2000 per 1 hour visit).

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[Ogive17]

Oh wow.. hey TommyD.. it's Shaft from HZ.. interesting running into you here :)

Re:Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Internet, and your crappy ad-farm doesn't own the news story. Don't be so butthurt.

Best summary ever?

[Jason1729]

Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

That was great.

Re:Best summary ever?

[klngarthur]

wow and i thought apple over charged for laptops. Even without using any solid state drives or software you can easily get the price of that thing over $6k

Re:Best summary ever?

[SevenHands]

How can you tell a WoW addict apart from the rest of the geeks? They don't bother calling in sick on Tuesdays!

Re:Best summary ever?

[Random BedHead Ed]

No kidding. I don't even play WOW and I laughed a good minute. I had a single mod point when I reached this page, and I wish I could have given it to the original post.

Massive Overkill

[RaigetheFury]

I agree with RogueWon, this is insane overkill. I play World of Warcraft all the time, in end game raids with 25 people easy. This laptop is definitely not worth the cost. The laptop is nice but if you wait 6 months the same laptop will be half the price. This is a situation where it's like someone paying $5000 for a purse just because it's made by Gucci.

There's no reason other than bragging rights and honestly in computer games, It doesn't matter at all.

Re:Massive Overkill

[Chi Hsuan Men]

There's no reason other than bragging rights and honestly in computer games, It doesn't matter at all

Last time I checked the entire WoW community revolves around the concept of possessing the biggest, shiniest, chock-full-of-stats l00tz. Furthermore, WoW players will pay hundreds of dollars for a card containing an unlock code so an purple monkey with wings and horns that serve no purpose other than to follow their character around.

While there may not be any reason other than bragging rights to own this laptop, bragging rights matter a great deal to the community this technological terror is marketed to. While it may not sell like gangbusters, I'm sure they'll ship more than a few of these.

Re:Massive Overkill

[Krojack]

Reminds me of the people that jump on the iPhone boat and now are getting screwed over.. First the price was cut and now a 3G version coming out.

Re:Massive Overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can get a superior phone for a lower price anyway.

Re:Massive Overkill

[benmatth]

Not only that, you can pretty much get the same laptop -now- without the awful WoW/Alienware branding.

Re:Massive Overkill

[flitty]

Furthermore, WoW players will pay hundreds of dollars for a card containing an unlock code so an purple monkey with wings and horns that serve no purpose other than to follow their character around

If they made the laptop an in game pet, "Leeroy the Laptop", these things would sell like hotcakes.

Hmmm

[scubamage]

Given that it basically comes with both collectors editions (either of which can fetch upwards of 1200-1500$ on ebay), as well as a beta ticket for upcoming betas, this is a pretty good deal. I wish I could afford it. Not just for WoW either, with a physics accelerator and the SLI'd graphics this a pretty beastly desktop replacement.

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

*shrug* I see people spending tens of thousands of dollars "pimping their rides" when a gremlin or a pinto can do the job. I enjoy what I enjoy, and its not really important what anyone else thinks about it. Crackheads spend their money on crack, audiophiles spend their money on audio, movie buffs spend money on movies, I'm a gamer and I choose to spend my money on a game. To each his own.

Re:Hmmm

[Bieeanda]

There's a lesson here about perceived value versus real value, before even getting into technical things like battery life.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not just for WoW either, with a physics accelerator and the SLI'd graphics this a pretty beastly desktop replacement."

Whats a physics acceletor? Is it like those large magnetic rings that they use to acclerate particles to near light speed?
From the price tag you'd think so..

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Bearing in mind that it comes with the Collector's Ed upgrade certificates as opposed to the actual Collector's Eds of the game, you are incorrect in saying that this is a good deal.

This is a very powerful, but horrificly expensive machine that we in merry olde England get for half the listed price ;)

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

I'm kind of curious about battery life myself. With a solid state drive, since everything is using a mobile chipset (mobile graphics, mobile physics chipset) I think the battery consumption would actually be pretty low. However its also powering a 17" screen which is pretty monstrous, and I can only imagine cooling and all the fancy-schmancy LEDs will eat up battery power. Given the machine though, like I said I think this is meant to be more of a desktop replacement than a serious road warrior machine.

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

Physics accelerators are kind of like fancy math coprocessors from back in the day. Basically it allows your CPU to offload otherwise cpu/gpu intensive physics and geometry calculations to a specialized chip so the processors can worry about more important things. A lot of newer games can utilize them (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and CoD:4 for example). They're pretty cool, and allow for a lot more detail in scenery.

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

I think you're still getting all of the same items though, maybe just not with the boxes. If you read the complete listing it says that it includes all of the warcraft comics, novels, posters, art books, behind the scenes DVDs, etc - most of this was stuff included with the collectors editions, and a lot that wasn't. If you're a Warcraft fan in general its pretty cool.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

ermm... why would the CE edition of Burning Crusade fetch upwards of $1200-1500 on eBay? Last I checked, my local Fry's still had stacks of the things for standard retail price.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

1200 dollars? I see TBC for 70 and I see the original for 300 buy it now.

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

I stand corrected :) They used to be MUCH more expensive, though it could have been related to the expansion coming out. I even saw a copy of the original collectors edition sell for more than 2 grand. Maybe its not so worth it as I thought :-P

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing a '.' before those two 0s.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious?

I have the collectors edition signed by the developers. I guess I have a free lottery ticket. :-)

Re:Hmmm

[yandros]

The original collectors edition is much more valuable (in the secondary market) than the expansion CE, due to several factors. I'd guess that one of the biggest factors is simply the fact the the original CE was nearly impossible to get (a marketing snafu caused almost every game franchise in existence to pre-sell several more copies of the CE than they could actually sell).

Battery life?

[gEvil (beta)]

Anyone know what sort of battery life this thing gets? : p

Re:Battery life?

[beavis88]

It has a battery?

Re:Battery life?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't use a battery anymore. The laptop runs on the Mr. Fusion from the back to the future movies.

Re:Battery life?

[navygeek]

Doesn't really matter. Once it dies you just have to wait for it to respawn at a graveyard and run back to your desk.

Re:Battery life?

[Pop69]

It's not actually that ba

Re:Battery life?

[mikestro]

Battery? Probably more like a litle UPS inside.

Re:Battery life?

[aicrules]

No battery, it runs on solid fuel rockets.

Re:Battery life?

[Hal_Porter]

Anyone know what sort of battery life this thing gets? : p You only care about battery life if you want to go Outside. This is for WOW addicts.

Re:Battery life?

[MattHawk]

Also, assuming you actually find a suitable power supply for it, how long can you keep it on your lap before it starts causing 3rd degree burns, and/or sterilization?

Re:Battery life?

[CambodiaSam]

I got the m1730 a month ago, just not the WOW branded version. I get about 2 hours out of a charge. It came with a spare battery and a power adapter that's about the size and weight of an actual brick.

I also upgraded to XP Pro instead of going with Vista, of course. I would imagine that Vista chomps that number down to about 90 minutes since it has to do all that indexing in the background. You never known when you need instant access to that horribly outdated resume you wrote 8 years ago.

Well..

[DeeQ]

I know plenty of gamers that play WoW and other games. Its aimed for those people who need more than what can run WoW to run newer games. Just a gimick to try to sell more gaming laptops even though playing games on laptops is horrible.

Imagine...

[jo42]

...a beowulf cluster of these laptops...

[someone had to say it :]

Hmph..

[moogied]

I wonder if this was built by Gnomish engineers, or goblin engineers?

See, thats why Slashdot needs a "-1: Lame Joke" option.

Re:Hmph..

[faloi]

I think it boils down to which battery was used. Sony batteries are obviously from the goblins.

Re:Hmph..

[HNS-I]

.. so imagine a beowulf clusterbomb of those.

Re:Hmph..

[Kingrames]

Gnomes, you mean.

Goblin Engineering fails less often.

Re:Hmph..

[Cyno01]

When goblin devices do fail however, they tend to go boom. None of my devices have ever killed me directly. I've been shrunk at inoportune moments, or my transporter has beamed me a couple hundred feet in the air and i didnt have my parachute cloak equipped, but its not like reloading a goblin mortar.

As a side note, i wonder what percentage of slashdotters who play have engineering as their profession despite it being a complete money sink.

And what i wouldnt give for an epic [Engineer's belt of the Bat], with like 3 extra useable trinket slots...

Re:Hmph..

[Kingrames]

The backfire effects from goblin engineering deal damage to you.

The backfire from gnomish devices can kill you instantly. No damage.

provided you have any bandages or potions or some other ability to heal yourself, you can survive any backfire from goblin engineering.

Awesome

[Futile Rhetoric]

Would anyone want to be seen with one of these? Really? Plus, how much life are you going to get on a charge, thirty minutes? A laptop which has to be plugged in all the time sort of defeats the purpose of buying one in the first place. Ah well, MMORPG junkies need bling too, I guess.

Strange Wording

[avalean]

World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade and all major game patches

They probably mean the latest patch. Having the .exe files for all the major game patches would be a major waste of space. Also why would you need both the original and BC, last i recalled if you didn't have the BC expansion, the BC client would just limit you to what you can do.

Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[downix]

Egads, this is getting rediculous. Eventually they'll start selling the Warcraft car, the Warcraft home, and even the Warcraft refrigerator, so you never have to give up your Warcraft addition for pesky things like driving to the grocery store or having a life.

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Hoi Polloi]

You'll never see Warcraft suntan lotion though.

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Howler]

So, what you're saying is that there is a buck to be made here? Hmmmm, I'll be right back... *runs off to start buying cars and house to paint in both Horde and Alliance schemes*

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[ticklemeozmo]

It's almost as if their VP of Marketing was a KISS fan.

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[The Relentless]

Da' Warcraft Flamethrower! Kids'll love it. Warcraft IV - The Search for More Money. [/spaceball ripoffs]

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Blakey Rat]

and even the Warcraft refrigerator, so you never have to give up your Warcraft addition for pesky things like driving to the grocery store or having a life.

Where do I order one of these? I tried Costco.com, but no luck...

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, they'll make it -- just won't be used for sunbathing.

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Kingrames]

Never underestimate the power of the dork side.

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[JAlexoi]

Oh... Yeah they will... With my mobile 3G card and a nice notebook with ATI Radeon x300 I played WoW for whole 1.5 hours on the beach... If they had a place to plug in then I would have played for longer...

Re:Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack?

[Pollardito]

Warcraft themed hot-pockets are long overdue, i could use a Kodo Surprise Hot Pocket right about now

In europe

[RogerWilco]

In europe we sleep on wednesday from 3:00-11:00, not tuesdays, you insensitive clod!

Re:In europe

[spocksbrain]

I lol'd, but unfortunately for you somebody who doesn't play WoW decided to use their mods points in a WoW article's comments.

wow..

[seheart]

Are you kidding me? I like Dell's cheap machines and love Warcraft, but if you wanted to sell a lot of them, they wouldn't price them so high. You're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers. Way overpriced.

Re:wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize in my end-game raiding guild there is an investment banker, and a high roller lawyer. (they both make well into 6 figures).

Re:wow..

[FredFredrickson]

ou're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers. Way overpriced.

Given that most WOW addicts have little to no job (it gets in the way of playing), money will be tight...

Re:wow..

[seheart]

so very true. its acually sad to see people on there as much as they are. GET A JOB!

Re:wow..

[Hal_Porter]

Do you have an astronaut and a Nobel prize winner too by any chance?

Re:wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Dell is very generous with their Financial Account offerings.

Re:wow..

[geekoid]

That's what we need, more people telling other people how to live their life~

I know many people that spend 40+ hours a week, and have a job. In all cases they have professional jobs, in some cases 6 figure incomes.

Plus the largest demographic of players are housewives.
Quite frankly, who wants to spend there life at a job?

Re:wow..

[crabpeople]

"You're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers."

I think its much more likely that an investment banker would play wow than a gamer. Most true gamers got bored of wow, or wisely avoided ever getting addicted to it in the first place. Anyone who still plays wow after 2 or 3 years should have their head examined.

Re:wow..

[tompaulco]

I know people at work that play during the day. People at our Operations Center in Dallas spend most of their day playing. They actually get pissed when they get interrupted and have to attend to a backup or reboot a server.
Meanwhile, I'm putting 60+ hour weeks actually working. I think I must have missed a memo or something.

Re:Credit where credit is due

[theantipop]

As noted above, no ad-whoring hardware news site owns the internet. I happened to hear of this on Engadget. Considering the site you linked just posted the story this morning, I doubt the submitter actually saw it there first.

Progress of graphics-power docking station again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat off-topic, anyone know the progress of the concept for having a mains-powered docking station with high powered graphics card inside, and then a barebones laptop? I saw this half a year ago being sketched out.

Don't forget the added Bonus!

[netglen]

Your brand new Dell laptop comes pre-installed with Blizzard's very own spyware.

Re:Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

www.reghardware.co.uk is hardly an ad whore news site. It's part of "The Register" set of sites, a fairly well known IT news site thats been around for years and has been linked to from \. many times as well.

An Extra bonus:

[veddermatic]

Topical Rogaine is included in the backpack to really fill out your neckbeard.

Re:An Extra bonus:

[Hoi Polloi]

You're thinking of the Richard Stallman model.

Why?

[_14k4]

WoW runs fine on my p4 with 768meg of ram, running Ubuntu Gutsy and wine...

bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

im glad i quit mmo's.

imagine how much time you dump into that garbage?

even if you spent all your spare time picking up gum off sidewalks youd at least have something (a big ass ball of gum?) to show for your life.

if you mmo, let me let you in on something i'm sure you've pondered.

i remember when kunark had just come out for eq1. i saw alot of my friends ruin their lives playing this game (one dropped out of college so he could play full time, he was 2 weeks away from graduating a chemist). sure, i played it alot myself. multiple times. but at the end of the day, all you have are intangible pixels that will mean absolutely nothing 1 month from the day you loot them off the mobs corpse.

please. for your sake, and for the sake of the inhabitants of this world-- put your pixel addiction behind you. go do something productive (get a big ass ball of gum?).

Re:bleh

[Krojack]

I personally wouldn't blame EQ1 for the fault of someone dropping out of college 2 weeks before graduating. That is the fault of the person not having his/her head on straight in the first place. An MMO is no different then anything else people do in life for leisure, as anything can be taken to far if you don't know where to draw the line and keep control.

Re:bleh

[daninspokane]

Would you blame the drug dealer for selling the cocaine that killed the student? It's a 2 way street.

Re:bleh

[beef curtains]

Would you blame Comcast, Comedy Central, HBO, Cartoon Network & the studios that pump out TV show DVD box sets for the lazy sack of crap that fails out of college because he'd rather sit on his duff watching TV than go to classes or study?

Likening cocaine to video games is a ridiculous comparison. In cases where someone drops out of school 2 weeks before graduation because they'd rather play a video game, it is most definitely NOT a 2-way street - 100% of the blame lies on the kid, not the game.

Re:bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is a coke-head absolved from blame of any kind?

If cocaine is ruining your life, stop snorting it.

Golds. There are never enough.

[coolhaus]

Costs as much as an epic flying mount, fer chrissakes!

Apple not so expensive anymore...

[mnslinky]

So, I run WoW on my MacBook Pro CoreDuo (not the Core 2 Duo), and it's graphics are all maxed out in options, and I still pull around 39fps. My laptop only cost me a $3,000.

Seriously, fully spec'd, that Dell WoW lappy maxes out at around $6400! WTF?

Re:Apple not so expensive anymore...

[ZorinLynx]

That was my first thought. I never thought *DELL* would ever make a Macbook Pro look affordable in comparison!

Re:Apple not so expensive anymore...

[eeyoredragon]

Really? Man, I should have gotten last years model.... I can't run with all the graphics settings all the way up on my Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro. Hell, I was getting 19fps in Shatt last night running no mods. Classy :)

Huh?

[gstoddart]

Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

OK, this might be an in-joke for you WOW players, but, honestly ... WTF???

Strange random stuff shows up in summaries, but this is probably one of the more arcane ones.

Cheers

Re:Huh?

[Evangelion]

It's not that arcane. All the WoW realms go down most tuesdays for regular maintenance.

Re:Huh?

[KeatonMill]

Tuesday mornings (US time) are when Blizzard does weekly maintenance on its servers. As for the logging in, the authentication server occasionally crashes meaning that while players who are already logged in can continue playing, no one else can start.

Re:Huh?

[gabrygenoa]

> Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, > and some days you just won't be able to log in. This if you live in USA, europeans will be unable to login wednesday :) ... Yes it's a joke for wow players since tuesday morning (in USA) and wednesday (in EU) there is the weekly server maintenance :)

Re:Huh?

[mnslinky]

WoW server maintenance takes place from 3:00am to 11:00am PST every tuesday. In regard to the log in comment, WoW is plagued with random login problems with their authentication servers.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

TUESDAY = Patch Day!

Usually they intend for the servers to up by 11AM PST. In reality it's more like 1-2PM PST.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuesday mornings is when Blizzard does system maintainance. However lately they only really take the systems down on Tuesdays when its a patch day.

I have to say I have not had a single queue or log on problem in a long time either. Its waaayy better than it used to be, so this diss is really about 12 months too late.

Re:Huh?

[crossb0nez]

that's because the comment caused +5 arcane damage to your cognitive understanding...

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore server downtime for maintenance and occasional login problems are pretty much common to the overwhelming majority of MMOs. Not that arcane a reference.

WOW mouse?

[threaded]

Does it come with a WOW mouse? I guess it would look something like a hedgehog on steroids...

Re:WOW mouse?

[Xentor]

Yes, and it looks like a Wolpertinger. Now that would be cool.

Re:WOW mouse?

[nerdyalien]

whos' the product promoter????

Haris Pilton???? or BenkerTill????

Why a Laptop?

[iregisteredjustforth]

Surely the countless hours you are going to spend playing the game should be spent on a desktop computer, not huddled round a laptop with a tiny mouse and keyboard?

Re:Why a Laptop?

[GiMP]

I actually prefer playing WoW on my laptop. I have a keybinding for literally every key on my keyboard, and use the trackpad to minimize movement of my mouse hand. Using a mouse, there is much more hand movement and thus a slower reaction time.

Re:Why a Laptop?

[dave562]

A lot of playing WoW is all about the social aspect. You can take a laptop over to your friend's house and play together.

Re:Why a Laptop?

[illeism]

Using a mouse, there is much more hand movement and thus a slower reaction time. My eyes and brain have stopped communicating thanks to this comment - reaction time is not a factor in WoW - It is a factor in UT or whatever FPS you like...
Thanks for blinding me...

Raid Options

[QuantumRiff]

Rather than just raid 0 drives, they also have an option for a 64GB Flash drive, and 200GB second hard drive. This looks like an interesting idea. Get the speed and power savings of a flash drive, and the second drive can spin up and store more when you need it to, then go back to sleep.

Re:Raid Options

[Anonymous Coward]

They got rid of the raid 0 drives when they realized players were complaining. "I've been on all weekend. Where is this raid 0 and what cool loot does it have?"

Re:Raid Options

[jweller]

No option for RAID 1. Having dropped a laptop and crashed a HDD, I'd rather have that than RAID 0.

Re:Raid Options

[WreathOfBarbs]

Solid State Drives mean no more crashed HDs since there are no moving parts to impact and damage your data.

Re:Raid Options

[Anonymous Coward]

Just watch the idiots at Dell ship the laptop with the WOW files on the solid state disk. So much for power savings.

Slashvertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

This just doesn't seem like "stuff that matters" to me. No new hardware, just some marketing and some stickers.

As both a WoW player and Dell owner I ask, why is this important?

Yeah you are right...

[TobyWong]

...they should have just released a WoW Special Edition P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4 instead.

Makes perfect sense.

Re:Yeah you are right...

[RogueyWon]

Or perhaps a Crysis/CoD4/anything-that-might-actually-challenge-a-modern-PC branded uber-laptop, mmm?

It's no secret that its the fps market that drives the top-end gaming PCs market. MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base. A cynic might suggest that it is those who are time-rich but cash-poor (to put it euphemistically) who are the most reliable market for these games, so forcing an expensive upgrade doesn't make sense.

Re:Yeah you are right...

[Constantine XVI]

I've got one for you. I'll cut you a deal for about $1000. Alliance or Horde? :)

Re:Yeah you are right...

[TobyWong]

Take a look at the rankings on the bottom left:

http://www.xfire.com/

Which market would you rather sell to? Nevermind the fact that Xfire is more entrenched in the FPS community than any other game community so the WoW numbers there are probably disproportionately low.

Re:Yeah you are right...

[bberens]

Given that the only thing that makes this thing a WoW machine is a $0.50 piece of form factor plastic, I don't think it matters much. I'm more surprised that there isn't aftermarket parts to 'mod' your laptops in this sort of fashion anyways. You can get that stuff for basically any gaming console/handheld.

Re:Yeah you are right...

[PastaLover]

True, as I understand it there's a big market for laptop skins, but a quick google doesn't turn up any results for WoW specific skins. I think whoever put that out there would make a lot more money than dell will on this laptop. I can't see the market for a 5k$ WoW-specific skin personally.

Goldfarming...

[Notquitecajun]

Great, now WoW has people goldfarming IRL for this thing.

Re:Goldfarming...

[mdm-adph]

We have a different term for that over here IRL -- it's called armed robbery.

Re:About time

[Hal_Porter]

Don't click the links in the parent - they redirect to a shock site that spawns a load of windows.

Yeah but does it come with

[denzacar]

the Sword of a Thousand Truths?

Multiboxing.

[Shivetya]

The last challenge after getting any number of characters to level 70 for an old school RPG/CRPG/MMORPGer like myself is multiboxing. For the most part WOW is pretty dead easy. Its designed to be that way, very much like the original CRPGs.

The thing with multiboxing is that you can put together a team of two or more characters and run your own team; just like the old CRPG days. The challenge becomes in cooridination and reacting. Learning the ins and outs of the script and macro languages. Even learning how to get all your hardware to work together.

there are some who run ten at a time. I currently run three on an iMac just fine. Its loads of fun and learning to coordinate three completely different characters is quite the challenge.

Still, this notebook is really just a big buy in to future BETA testing. See that one little note buried in the features?

Re:Multiboxing.

[geminidomino]

The last challenge after getting any number of characters to level 70 for an old school RPG/CRPG/MMORPGer like myself is multiboxing. For the most part WOW is pretty dead easy. Its designed to be that way, very much like the original CRPGs. Five'll get you ten that that it was a Bizzard marketroid in disguise who started that trend... When you're finished with the game, instead of letting your 'scription lapse, you BUY ANOTHER ONE!

The Ferengi would be proud...

Re:Multiboxing.

[cluke]

I remember reading an interview with Scott Adams (the old text adventure designer, not Dilbert guy) in which he said he now spent his days playing a 5-man "hydra" of Everquest characters all on his own. Sounded like the craziest thing I had ever heard at the time, I am intrigued to hear it is more widespread than just him.

Re:Multiboxing.

[ShadowcatBlue]

If you think that's crazy, you obviously haven't seen this: http://kotaku.com/gaming/wow/2-people-47-pcs-46-wow-accounts-no-life-275830.php

Re:$4500? uh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhhh meth won't ever make you think your a lvl70 whatever the f... if you know nothing about it its better to stay silent.

Re:Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh right, I guess it's all the whoring ads that threw me off.

The rell Dell WoW laptop

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Dell has a Vostro for around $800 US right now which would play WoW very well.

Go here;
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/vostronb_1500?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=bundlestab

Select the smart buy unit and customize the video card & select the 8600GT with 256MB of RAM. Bare in mind this is the DDR2 and not the DDR3 version, so it's not a super quick 8600GT but it's plenty fast for WoW.

The normal site has it for $729 right now. Corporate customers can get a better deal.

Take it to a 2.0Ghz dual core, 2GB RAM standard, the 7200 120MB HD, BlueTooth and the webcam -- a better gaming build, and you are just under $1000.

That's one hell of a deal for decent casual (not extreme) gaming machine..

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[geekoid]

But where are the WoW icons? the WoW swag? the WoW lid?

You aren't paying for performance here.

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Yea, that's the point. If you just want a decent laptop which plays WoW, and don't want to pay insane amount of money then that's your laptop. Throw some WoW stickers on it and viola.

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention you can spend the $3500 you saved on case mods to give your machine a WoW theme.

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in Heaven's sake would I want a:

7200RPM 120MB HD

?

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[novakreo]

Yea, that's the point. If you just want a decent laptop which plays WoW, and don't want to pay insane amount of money then that's your laptop. Throw some WoW stickers on it and viola. I don't quite understand what serenading your laptop will achieve, but if it makes you happy, go for it!

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Slashdot, you're better off getting the Apple Macbook for an extra hundred or two. Then you can run Windows under it! According to Slashdot, it actually is a better "Windows computer" than actual Windows computers- with the possible exception of machines costing three or four times more.

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[ockegheim]

$3000+ could get you a cool customized sticker of your own toon. Or your toon in T6.

Re:About time

[HNS-I]

Seriously though does this thing steal my cookies?

Avoid the PvP Version!

[BobMcD]

One unfortunate customer reports that their WoW PvP laptop was smashed to bits by an enemy version that had removed all of its branding. The enemy unit was 'steathed' waiting at a local Starbucks.

Dell has announced that there will be no refunds, but users are encouraged to purchase another laptop and return the favor.

Blizzard has been dutifully deleting all posts on their forums that address this matter. Officially they have yet to comment.

SLI Video?

[tji]

I have never actually played WoW, but I have seen others playing it, and the graphics didn't look like they were all that intensive.. Does WoW really need the high end SLI graphics capabilities?

On that Dell laptop, what accounts for the ridiculous cost? The basic specs didn't look like anything exotic.. 160GB 7200RPM drive, 2GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core2Duo, not exactly pushing the limits with that.

The only exotic pieces were the SLI video, and the "physics accelerator". Would those two things really add $2,500 on to the price of a laptop?

Re:SLI Video?

[SSpade]

I have never actually played WoW, but I have seen others playing it, and the graphics didn't look like they were all that intensive.

WoW has some sort of adaptive graphics engine. It'll degrade graphics quality fairly gracefully to the point where your graphics system can keep up.

It's a neat feature - it means that Blizzard can provide very pretty, immersive graphics for people running higher end cards, while still selling monthly subscriptions to people with older graphics cards. And retaining customers who upgrade their graphics cards by giving them immediate pretties for doing so, and so on. As opposed to some other MMOs which don't do it as gracefully, so end up either providing mediocre graphics to everyone or being unplayable on anything other than the latest, shiniest graphics hardware when they launch.

Spec missing...

[ruiner13]

How much does the damn thing weigh? I can't see that spec listed anywhere, but to have RAID, SLi cards (and their cooling requirements), etc can't make the thing portable. For a fraction of the cost of that, why not build a microATX PC in a case with a handle? With the remaining $4000 in difference, you can buy as many monitors and keyboards to leave anywhere you'd want to bring the thing.

Re:Spec missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that laptop line "starts" at 10.6 pounds. That's for the one with one battery and one hard drive. This version has two batteries and two hard drives, so I'd guess at least 14 pounds for this one. It's also 16.0" x 2.0" x 11.9". The 15" MacBook Pro is 14.1" x 1.0" x 9.6" and 5.4 pounds. The 17" MBP is 15.4" x 1" x 10.4" and 6.8 pounds, so you could literally fit two of either of them into the volume consumed by this monster. Two of the 15" would fit in the weight, though two 17" would probably be a bit heavier.

For the Horde!

[Ogive17]

So for Horde fans in this thread, is getting modded Troll a complement?

bye bye karma!

Re:Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

o hai! welcum to teh internets!

WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would Shatner do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AF1lPRWG8 (Shatner Wow Commercial)

Good call!

[hemorex]

Right! We need physics acceleration for a game that doesn't even have hit-box collision... I think I'll keep playing on my dinosaur PC, thank you very much.

You're absolutely correct, it's redundant.

[Fross]

I can run WoW in 1680x1050/8xAA with *everything* turned on max and not drop a frame under 60fps for 99% of the game - worst I ever saw was 47 fps flying through a particularly dense part of Shattrath. My rig is a Q6600 (of which WoW will only use one core) and a single 8800GT - this laptop is more powerful than my system by a fair chunk, and on mine the fan never even comes on on the graphics card while playing it.

I wish they did more branding than just the cover though, seems a bit lame.

Re:You're absolutely correct, it's redundant.

[Anonymous Coward]

My rig is a Q6600 (of which WoW will only use one core) and a single 8800GT - this laptop is more powerful than my system by a fair chunk, and on mine the fan never even comes on on the graphics card while playing it.

That's because it's an 8800GT, which has buggy firmware that means the fan basically doesn't kick in till it's already above 80 degrees, and doesn't get fast enough to have any real cooling effect till the card is boiling water.

Re:You're absolutely correct, it's redundant.

[mobby_6kl]

I wouldn't say that the laptop is more powerful than your PC. First of all it's dual core vs your quad, but even for the purposes of WoW, its single core runs at 2.2GHz vs your 2.4. The laptop does have two graphics cards, but they're mobile 8700 GTs. It's pretty difficult to tell which are faster in the real world since mobile and desktop cards are rarely compared directly, but keep in mind that the laptop's WUXGA screen has 30% more pixels to fill.

Or maybe it's just cognitive dissonance on my part, trying to justify my recent $1k Q6600/8800GT build. Actually, scratch the 8800GT part, it's yet to arrive.

Re:You're absolutely correct, it's redundant.

[Fross]

Trust me, the 8800GT is well worth it. Especially if it's a pre-overclocked one (or you do it yourself, though I've heard yields of OCing on stock cards is low, probably as manufacturers are now testing and OCing themselves), it's blindingly fast.

Hmmm

[SilentOneNCW]

I just bought a laptop with the same specs (without SLI or PhysX) and it cost $1000... Does PhysX and SLI really warrant an additional investment of $3500?

Because its about fashion

[geekoid]

Yes there are much cheaper machines that can play WoW very well. But they aren't WoW 'branded'.

It's the same reason people pay 200+ dollars for a shirt, 500+ dollars for shoes.

More expensive than you thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations! Your system is ready to be built.My Components
FACTION Horde edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Extreme X7900 (2.8GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition edit
MEMORY 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz edit
HARD DRIVE RAID Performance: 128GB (2x64GB) Solid State Drive edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Blu-ray / DVD / CD Burner (Blu-ray Disc Drive) edit
WIRELESS CARDS Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 a/g/n Mini Card edit
BLUETOOTH OPTIONS Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR) edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 edit
My Software & Accessories
PRINTER Dell AIO 926 - Includes Media Card Reader edit
SPECIAL VALUE BUNDLES 926 3-Pack: 1 Photo, 1 High Capacity Black, 1 High Capacity Color edit
SPECIAL OFFER Holiday Pack: Black Color Photo Ink, 4x6 photo paper, Avery Cards Labels CD edit
PRINTER CABLE Dell 10ft USB Printer Cable edit
SERVICE & SUPPORT 1Yr Ltd. Warranty, 1 yr HW Warranty Support, 1 yr Advance Exchange edit
DELL 926 PRINTER Dell All-In-One Printer 926 edit
ADDITIONAL INK CARTRIDGES Dell 926 Photo Cartridge edit
Training EducateU - Shoot and Print Digital Photos Course Pack - 30 Days Access edit
WIRELESS ADAPTER Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 edit
Extended Service Plan for Partner Printers Extended Service Plan for Printers, 2 Year, under $100 edit
WIRELESS ADAPTER D-Link Bluetooth USB 2.0 Adapter edit
PRINTER Dell AIO 966 - Includes Fax, 2.4 Display and Media Card Reader edit
SPECIAL VALUE BUNDLES 966 3-Pack: 1 Photo, 1 High Capacity Black, 1 High Capacity Color edit
PRINTER CABLE Dell 10ft USB Printer Cable edit
TWO-SIDED PRINTING Dell 966 Duplexer edit
SERVICE & SUPPORT 3Yr Ltd. Warranty, 3 yr HW Warranty Support, 3 yr Advance Exchange edit
ADDITIONAL INK CARTRIDGES Dell High Capacity Color Print Cartridge 966 edit
DELL 966 PRINTER Dell All-In-One Printer 966 edit
PAPER TRAYS AND OPTIONS Dell 150 Sheet Drawer for the Photo All In One Printer 966 edit
BLUETOOTH D-Link Bluetooth USB 2.0 Adapter edit
PRINTER Dell Wireless AIO 966 - Integrated WiFi, Fax, 2.4 Display and Card Reader edit
SPECIAL VALUE BUNDLES 966 3-Pack: 1 Photo, 1 High Capacity Black, 1 High Capacity Color edit
TWO-SIDED PRINTING Dell 966 Duplexer edit
Training EducateU - Shoot and Print Digital Photos Course Pack - 30 Days Access edit
SERVICE & SUPPORT 3Yr Ltd. Warranty, 3 yr HW Warranty Support, 3 yr Advance Exchange edit
ADDITIONAL INK CARTRIDGES Dell High Capacity Color Print Cartridge 966 edit
DELL 966 PRINTER Dell All-In-One Printer 966 edit
PAPER TRAYS AND OPTIONS Dell 150 Sheet Drawer for the Photo All In One Printer 966 edit
BLUETOOTH D-Link Bluetooth USB 2.0 Adapter edit
PRINTER Dell Laser Printer 1125 edit
PRINTER CABLE Dell 10ft USB Printer Cable edit
SERVICE & SUPPORT 4 yr Ltd. Warranty- Advance Exchange edit
ADDITIONAL DELL TONER CARTRIDGES Dell 1125 1,000 Page Toner Cartridge edit
ADDITIONAL DELL TONER CARTRIDGES Dell 1125 2,000 Page Toner Cartridge edit
ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Trend Micro Internet Security 24-months edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Wolfking Warrior XXtreme 2 in 1 Gamepad edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse-Anarchy Red edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Logitech ChillStream Gaming Controller edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Logitech 2.4 Cordless Joystick edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Logitech MOMO Racing Force Feedback Wheel edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Pro Flight Yoke Controller with PZ45 Throttle edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Wolfking Warrior USB Gaming Keyboard - Black edit
GAMING ACCESSORIES Razer Tarantula USB Gaming Keybo

Oh Oh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was playing around on the site, and after configuring all of the high end options I got a call from the Department of Homeland Security!

Be Careful!!!!!

Horde or Alliance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see...if I'm heterosexual then I want the Horde model. If I'm a flaming homo and want to see or be a midget gnome then it's the Alliance model all the way!

Lan-parties?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, granted, the laptop being discussed is ridiculously over-priced, but, that said, there is a market for 'gaming laptops' that you can take to friends' houses, or lan-parties, and still have a decent gaming machine. Granted, you *can* dis-assemble and take a desktop with you (I did that for a while, but honestly it's a total p.i.t.a. - especially lugging around an external monitor). Or you can just grab your laptop, stuff it in your backpack, and go.

As for the mouse, there's this amazing technology called USB, that all laptops made in the last 10 years come with, that allows you to plug in whatever mouse your heart desires to use. Oh, and if you really wanted to, you could plugin a keyboard too (but that's kind of overkill, really; laptop keyboards aren't that bad, though you do sometimes have to setup 'alternate' keybindings from those that come default with some games). And if USB is just too trailing edge for you, you could also use a wireless bluetooth mouse, if your laptop happens to have a bluetooth chip (which many do).

It's quite possible to get a laptop that can run most games reasonably well for under $2000. I really can't fathom what that extra $3000 buys you. Just goes to show that some people have more dollars than sense.

Actual Cost?

[rhkaloge]

Can someone with a little more hardware knowledge (which is everyone) tell me the price of an equivalent laptop without the WOW branding (if there is one)? How about if this was a desk top rather than a laptop?

Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising

[zifn4b]

...where the real money from the game is made. World of Warcraft the T-shirt, World of Warcraft the Coloring Book, World of Warcraft the Lunch box, World of Warcraft the Breakfast Cereal, World of Warcraft the Flame Thrower... the kids love this one!

Comparison Shopping

[Tulisin]

Basic Horde Laptop: $4,499.

Dell XPS Laptop I customized to be as close as possible: $3,458.

Differences:
1. XPS has 400 GBs of space because basic is 120, WoW laptop is 160, and there was no middle ground.
2. WoW laptop has a "AGEIA(TM) PhysX(TM) Physics Accelerator", XPS has a "AGEIA PhysX(TM) 100M Processor".
3. XPS has a free recycling kit.

All in all, pretty darn close, specs-wise, considering that everything else is identical. The XPS actually pulls ahead in HD space.

So what do you get for your $1041?

17" HD widescreen notebook complete with World of Warcraft backpack
Illuminated speaker grills and faction specific Honor Badges
Back-lit keyboard stays awake as long as you can
Track your stats with the world's first built-in notebook Logitech® GamePanelTM LCD
Enhanced graphics with NVIDIA® SLITM technology and AGEIA PhysXTM Mobile TechnologyTM
Pre-loaded with World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade and all major game patches
Golden Ticket for a custom FigurePrintTM of your actual in-game World of Warcraft character with your actual armor and weapons
World of Warcraft Beta Club Key Card with a key to future World of Warcraft beta tests
World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade Collector's Edition Account Upgrade Certificates
Exclusive desktop background artwork and screensavers
Additional loot like a behind the scenes DVD, soundtrack, Warcraft novels, strategy guides, trading cards, etc Some paint, $50 of software, a "making-of" DVD + a gift package ($50 in books/cards, maybe?), a backpack, no idea what the figureprint is, a beta code, and, ooh, a screensaver!

• That better be a damn good backpack.

Notably, you can cut off another ~$500 from the XPS if you don't bother getting adobe and "Ultimate" Vista (Home edition is included in price). There are a whole slew of other options you can cut that a real gaming machine doesn't necessarily need, the option to remove these isn't really available with the WoW laptop.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Blakey Rat]

There are WOW players who would pay a grand for the beta entry alone in that list.

There are a lot of Slashdot commenters who simply do not understand that the point isn't the laptop hardware, the point is the branding and the swag. If you took that exact swag and eBayed it, you'd get a couple grand no problem.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Tulisin]

That seems so odd, I've never seen anything of the sort in EQ. Someone truly dedicated to the game would surely funnel extra funds into in-game benefits, either through multiboxing or buying trading cards hoping for in-game items. Another level 70 character is worth more than all the WoW backpacks in the world, e-peen wise.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Sage Gaspar]

If you're willing to overpay that much for that kind of branding you're going to be playing the trendiest game around and EQ is way past its prime in that sense. In EQ2 even when they released that card game there were some people dropping a couple hundred bills for stuff that basically conferred very little in game advantage but looked pretty.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Tulisin]

That is entirely different. I can understand paying out the nose for something in-game. But having a WoW backpack doesn't make you trendy at all unless you take pictures of yourself with it and send it to everyone.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Tulisin]

Err, and EQ has more subscribers than EQ2 by a long shot, and around the same amount it has always had. It isn't so much past its prime as eclipsed by the popularity of WoW and the growth of the MMO playerbase.

Re:Comparison Shopping

[Sage Gaspar]

Everquest is past its prime in the sense of being trendy in any way. The graphics are not flashy and it has a largely steady playerbase as you've mentioned. It's not getting press coverage so most people only have a vague knowledge of what it actually is, which again takes away from the trendy factor. EQ2 is in a similar position but there is a little fodder for the graphics whores and their ilk, plus it's number two which is automatically better than number one for people in that mode of thought :P

I place paying a premium price for a laptop and laying down a couple hundred dollars to get little knick-knacks that confer no advantages in a similar boat. They both proceed from the desire to have cool looking gear. There are people that have real life gamer friends to impress with their shiny new WoW laptop y'know, and at least that's a physical object instead of a model change that took some dev five minutes hehe

Your missing the point.

[Xmastrspy]

Sure you all can drive to work in your Ford Pintos, but I will drive my Nissan 350z. Both cars run, stop, haul your butt to work, basically accomplish the same task, but one of them looks a whole-hell-of-a-lot cooler. Oh and one is much faster too :)

Re:Your missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you can't spell for shit.

Re:Your missing the point.

[Xmastrspy]

Should I respond to an AC??? Might as well.... WTF are you retarded? Can you please point out the "spelling errors"? Grammar or punctuation, probably have a leg to stand on. How about this... Why don't you man up, get some balls and not post as AC next time. Mmmmk. Oh and your Pinto SUCKS!!! :)

Re:Your missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you all can drive to work in your Ford Pintos, but I will drive my Nissan 350z. Both cars run, stop, haul your butt to work, basically accomplish the same task, but one of them looks a whole-hell-of-a-lot cooler. Oh and one is much faster too

Yes, indeed. But the analogy is better than you realise: what the hell is the point of a fast car when you're crawling along in rush-hour traffic? If you're going to buy a fast car, you should take it somewhere you can drive fast. If you're going to buy a cool-looking car, you should drive it somewhere you look cool, not commute in it. If you just want to commute, it makes far more sense to use a cheap, economical car, so you don't have to worry too much about idiots cutting you up or running into the back of you at the lights.

Re:Your missing the point.

[tirefire]

I'd much rather drive to work in this Pinto than any Datsun.

Retarded

[HunterZ]

WoW is so old that it doesn't take advantage of most new gaming PC technologies. Dual-core "support" was just added in the last patch, allowing about 10% of the second core to be used. SLI gives no tangible benefit in WoW at all, and actually degrades performance for some people.

Also, many people with decent PC's are reporting abysmal framerates in newer WoW content, while people with mediocre Macs have no performance problems at all. I'm forced to conclude that if you want a really good laptop for WoW, you should buy a Mac.

Obligatory Diff

[Anonymous Coward]

XPS1730 WoW Edition: $4519
XPS1730: $2829

Here's what you pay the extra $1690 for:

+ WoW themed Backpack, T-shirt and Mouse Pad(those go for $400 right?)
+ 40GB on the HDD
+ Alliance/Horde Branding i.e. a proud advertisement of your virginity

Seriously, don't listen to the slashvertising in the summary, the laptops are the same in every other way (same gfx card, both have Ageia, same RAM and CPU...) with pretty much the same upgrades available, at least for as much info as Dell gives you about any components. If you don't believe me just go and spec it out yourself.

Don't know about you, but i'd rather spend that difference on buying a desktop that will still kick any laptop's ass any game.

figureprint

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a video about the FigurePrint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUvqT4M1zNI

Re:FigurePrint

[DataBroker]

How much does this cost? I

The website states "$99.95 plus $14.95 Shipping and Handling to any address in the US and Canada."

FigurePrint

[hubt]

No one mentioned the custom Figurine. This done by figureprints.com with a 3d printer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUvqT4M1zNI

I saw this youtube video that seems to point out what it looks like. How much does this cost? I have to say this makes the deal to me. I don't even play WoW. But for someone super hard core, it'd be neat. Going to the FigurePrints.com says that they open Dec 11.

SLI? RAID laptop?

[zbend]

How exactly do you have 2 SLI video cards, and a RAID array in a laptop? Is it 4.5'' thick?

Looks nice, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll buy one right now if it's Microsoft-free. Can I get this thing with Linux or OS X? The web page doesn't say.

Why? Native resolutions.

[gknoy]

Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with?

Native laptop resolutions, I suspect.

My home system is an Athlonxp 2200, with a 6600GT. It's somewhat old, but was pretty much Just Fine when I was running at ~1024x768 resolution. I could get most graphical effects, shader stuff, and a good range of "vision". Last December, my family bought me a 24" widescreen LCD. Holy cow. I cannot play at lower than native resolutions. It's physically possible, but it's an assault on my eyes. Thus, I play at full resolution, but absolutely bare minimum graphical settings.

While this laptop is surely overkill (and I'm sure any recent laptop would do Just Fine), there's a reason to have all the bells and whistles. :) If you're buying a warcraft themed laptop you're already in the small group of people with money to burn on crazy stuff like that, so they may as well expect that you as a customer want a machine which is Damnably Good at anything gaming related.

Hence, SLI and PhysX. (I didn't know WoW could even use PhysX?)

Re:Why? Native resolutions.

[gknoy]

.... and once again I misclick the Submit button instead of Preview. Can I get a -1 mod on the parent, and I'll re-post with better formatting? :D

---- what I meant to say was ... -----

Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with?

Native laptop resolutions, I suspect.

My home system is an Athlonxp 2200, with a 6600GT. It's somewhat old, but was pretty much Just Fine when I was running at ~1024x768 resolution. I could get most graphical effects, shader stuff, and a good range of "vision". Last December, my family bought me a 24" widescreen LCD. Holy cow. I cannot play at lower than native resolutions. It's physically possible, but it's an assault on my eyes. Thus, I play at full resolution, but absolutely bare minimum graphical settings.

While this laptop is surely overkill (and I'm sure any recent laptop would do Just Fine), there's a reason to have all the bells and whistles. :) If you're buying a warcraft themed laptop you're already in the small group of people with money to burn on crazy stuff like that, so they may as well expect that you as a customer want a machine which is Damnably Good at anything gaming related.

Hence, SLI and PhysX. (I didn't know WoW could even use PhysX?)

Re:Why? Native resolutions.

[SendBot]

(I didn't know WoW could even use PhysX?)

Cool! I can't wait to see how awesome it will look when I explode the catapults now.

Re:Why? Native resolutions.

[gknoy]

Think of the gnome soccer! :D

(I play alliance, but even I crack up at that idea.)

Modded

[StreetStealth]

(-1, Night Elf)

thotbot says it disenchants to...

[txguy1]

a specially-branded "second life" E-machine desktop.

( /lol, /rude )

Um...EVE, anyone?

[ImpShial]

MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base

Gonna' have to disagree with you there. EVE Online is pretty hard on the resources, especially with the expansion patch that is being rolled out today. The creators of EVE realize that their player-base isn't going to come close to WOW (I think they have only 200,000 registered accounts right now), so the experience is what they go in for. The release going out today, called Trinity, is a completely revemped graphics engine.

Trinity Homepage: http://www.eve-online.com/trinity/index.html.

Now I know somebody's gonna' say "EVE is nothing like WOW or LOTRO!". True, is caters to the Sci-Fi fan and not the fantasy fan, it is an incredibly beautiful game, requires a lot of patience, has the biggest virtual universe of any other MMO and the average player-age is 27. Not 15.

But it's still an MMO and the creators still rely on the monthly subscriptions from their player-base. So they make the game player-friendly, while at the same time push the limits of many machines vid cards & ram.

Re:Um...EVE, anyone?

[murdocj]

Now I know somebody's gonna' say "EVE is nothing like WOW or LOTRO!". True, is caters to the Sci-Fi fan and not the fantasy fan, it is an incredibly beautiful game, requires a lot of patience, has the biggest virtual universe of any other MMO and the average player-age is 27. Not 15.

Ah, so the folks who play EVE Online are relatively young? The people I play World of Warcraft with probably average about 35 or so. You do occasionally run into someone who has to go afk to do homework or clean their room, but that's the exception, not the rule.

Re:Um...EVE, anyone?

[Evangelion]

I found people going AFK to take care of their kids (myself included) to be the most common.

The vast majority of the people I played with were adults.

Re:Um...EVE, anyone?

[murdocj]

Yeah, sometimes we're playing with friends and they have to take a break because one of their kids had a nightmare or some such.

Of course, the kids come in handy, apparently one of our friends is upping her fishing skill by "letting" her child fish.

Re:Um...EVE, anyone?

[darkvizier]

Now I know somebody's gonna' say "EVE is nothing like WOW or LOTRO!". True, is caters to the Sci-Fi fan and not the fantasy fan, it is an incredibly beautiful game, requires a lot of patience, has the biggest virtual universe of any other MMO and the average player-age is 27. Not 15.

Uh... yeah, and the gameplay is completely different. In fact, I think the ONLY parallel that you can draw between Eve and WoW is that they're both online games. What Eve has to do with this discussion, I don't know... I certainly wouldn't pay $4500 for a laptop to play it on. I can get a lot of strippers and cheesecake for $4500.

Dad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you let me out now anyway ? I'm nearly 38 now.

--
your son

Re:Progress of graphics-power docking station agai

[mrv20]

I spotted a Toshiba docking station in a store last night that appeared to only connect via a single USB but offered a plethora of ports including VGA out. Over USB it's not going to be very high performance but the idea has made it to product form.

Give it a faster interconnect (proprietary or a new standard) and you might get something that can do 3D at a reasonable frame rate.

Randy Marsh endorsement...

[jnadke]

In other news, Randy Marsh was quoted as saying:

"This is the best laptop in the world..... of Warcraft."

FigurePrint

[uigrad_2000]

The best part of the deal is not described well on the Dell site. You get a figurine of your character in a snow-globish type of thing. Still overpriced by my estimation, but important none-the-less. Here's a video showing the FigurePrint:

FigurePrint Demo

This blog says that you'll also get a special in-game pet. Those who don't play WoW don't understand how much value people put on such things. Many people buy blizzcon tickets ($100) each year just to collect the in-game pet from that year.

No license for a Murloc Vanity Pet?

[macz]

Jeez, If I am going to spend that much on a laptop, at least give me a unique in-game reward that lets me show off to the other fan boys. Like maybe a full set of S3 arena gear!

I love it

[jhRisk]

I have several systems at home including two which have dual 8800 768MB cards, 4 gigs of ram and are pretty much decked out all around. One I built myself and the other is a first generation Dell H2C. Sure I can run WoW on the others and it's not half bad but nothing beats the frame rates and overall experience I get out of those two beasts. I'm able to go all out at resolution, texture, shading and everything on a 24" widescreen giving me a much better experience when compared to standard machines. Also, I've never had to worry about my FPS when killing Gruul and other large raids.

It's certainly not necessary but I consider those systems luxury items much like tricked out a cars, boats and other hobby items. In terms of selling or buying such a system solely for WoW, at a glance it does sound silly but I wonder how many people have purchased high-end machines at this price level simply for the ultimate WoW experience? I mean c'mon haven't you ever heard of someone doing something silly for or because of WoW? I personally know of 3 in the past 6 months that bought high-end Alienware or Falcon Northwest laptops solely for WoW. Granted the cost and portability was at least in part so they could hide it from their wives but WoW was still the primary driver.

Cool! A Minnie Driver/Anne Hathaway love scene.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Hehe, "As low as $135 a month".

I think they mean $149.95 a month".

The Ultra-Safe Laptop Battery

[EXTomar]

It always amazes me that in "World of Warcraft" so many "inventions" have "ultra-safe" in their titles but are anything but that. If I saw an "Ultra-Safe Laptop Battery", I'd be scrambling for the bubble hearth.

Shame those

[R22B]

Specs are pretty much double of what is needed to actually play the game. "Graphics so cartoonish, you'll think you're reading a comic book." Seems like they should of marketed it as a Crysis computer or something.

The Real question remains..

[Sigg3.net]

..will it run Duke Nuke'Em Forever?

Pathetic!!

[MoxFulder]

Who has $4500 to spend on a laptop, and is so obsessed with a computer game that they want it stamped all over their computer???

Whoever you are... when I grow up, I do NOT want to be like you!!!

WoW doesn't use the PhysX card...

[batkiwi]

See subject. How about I sell you a set of sparkplugs for your diesel car as well!

Oh boy! It will match my World of Warcraft...

[tenyearsgone]

...lunchbox. Next?

Re:wow.. or is this reasonable

[WillAffleckUW]

Plus the largest demographic of players are housewives.
Quite frankly, who wants to spend there life at a job?

Interesting. I remember when a WoW player tried to steal a guild I created from me, using gkick to kick everyone out and trying to trick me into making him GM, and using his officer ability to take 1 gold from the guild bank. Then, he said "If you can't win at WoW, you'll never win at life."

It's a game, people. If you can level to 70 in six days, you have no life.

Meanwhile, in the real world, people actually do things, not just play games.

But, online at night, it does seem to be a lot of housewives.

MMO's dont even support SLI

[thedawg20]

I made that mistake when i bought 2 7500GTX's last year. WOW is right, 500$ wasted on a second nic that doesnt help WOW at all.

PVP

[dghcasp]

If you play on a PVP server and get ganked, your laptop dies.

LOL @ Dell

[greymond]

World of Relative Hostility Craft has such low system requirements that a $4k priced pc is just so ridiculous sounding. I'm not a fan of FPS...but they tend to be the games that require a lot more from one's video card and processor and it would have made more sense to pick whatever FPS has the latest and popular'est engine right now. But of course what am I saying, it's Dell and their target audience is consumers who know that little johnny likes WoW and that their office has a bunch of Dell systems - so Dell must know what is best for me - right?

This is why people would..

[RSA7474]

# Pre-loaded with World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade and all major game patches # Golden Ticket for a custom FigurePrintTM of your actual in-game World of Warcraft character with your actual armor and weapons # World of Warcraft Beta Club Key Card with a key to future World of Warcraft beta tests # World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade Collector's Edition Account Upgrade Certificates # Exclusive desktop background artwork and screensavers # Additional loot like a behind the scenes DVD, soundtrack, Warcraft novels, strategy guides, trading cards, etc There is a lot of kids out there, who have rich parents... but the fact it comes with the above makes it somewhat more appealing..

Buying a Mac Mini for WoW ...

[WillAffleckUW]

1. Mac Mini with higher scale monitor at educational discount - $600 plus $249.
2. Full install of all WoW expansions by a techie friend or servatron at the U Bookstore - $50 or free (depends).
3. Purchasing a 3D snowglobe of your WoW character from an obsessive biochem grad student - $100 or free (depends).

4. Realizing you have $4000 or more to pay goldfarmers and jerks who loot guild vaults so you have the twinkiest WoW experience - PRICELESS.

Comical

[obeythefist]

That the WoW laptop includes an Ageia physics solution specifically for a game that doesn't support Ageia physics.

This is indeed a fine mechanism to separate the rich from their money.

yay

[brock bitumen]

yay, hooray for hilarious summary writers!

Boo! to dell for fleecing rich people with too much spare time. well whatever, i guess if it's good for their stock, they can do it...

Re:yay

[Quill_28]

Yes, boo to DELL. How dare they sell something that people are willing to buy! Jerks.

Raid performance

[voodoo89]

I think a lot of WoW players would be tricked by that hard drive option...

Fatlas *shrug*ged

[Anonymous Coward]

*shrug* I see people spending tens of thousands of dollars "pimping their rides" when a gremlin or a pinto can do the job. I enjoy what I enjoy, and its not really important what anyone else thinks about it. Crackheads spend their money on crack, audiophiles spend their money on audio, movie buffs spend money on movies, I'm a gamer and I choose to spend my money on a game. To each his own.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Self-absorbed hedonists like you are the reason the world's a mess. Try choosing to spend your non-essential income helping the disadvantaged and stop justifying your excess by comparing your luxury expenses to the addictive need of a "crackhead".

Fancy crack pipes for the win!

[Il128]

Just add one of these babies http://tinyurl.com/mdryu (Verizon Wireless)and presto you can play WoW at your children's graduations, weddings, sports events and at work, during sex, meals, funerals...

Avoid Ageia, they are anti-open source.

[Anonymous Coward]

AGEIA PhysX is anti-open source and refuses to give out any technical information on their products to any open source programmers. This means that even though you buy the hardware, you will never own it.

New Dell Laptop

[darrinallen]

I am really big into LAN gaming. I havent been able to find a Laptop suitable for hardcore pc gaming. Maybe this is the one for hardcore pc gamers. I hope to see the new Dell Pc at the huge Lan party in my city at the end of decemeber http://www.extremelankc.com/

Slave gamer?

[boxxertrumps]

Wish I had kids...

*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

And again Dell doesn't learn. Yet another Windows only computer, despite calls and calls for linux to be offered!

WoW works flawlessly on linux via Wine! It's what built Transgaming Technologies (prior to their current sad state.. good thing wine now does the trick)

Sites Giving these away

[rpgSE]

http://www.gamertex.com/ and other gold selling sites have already announced that they will be giving these away to customers as soon as they can get their hands on them. Match made in heaven for marketers!