Fuck yea! Free copy of Portal!

I got an alienware when i went off to college too didn't want the hassle of a desktop while moving around all the time. it still runs great, but for the money i've come to realize i really should have gotten either a thinkpad or something from asus....worked with both in the past and they just performed so much better with better specs and lower price.

Well...not even the highest end ThinkPad has graphics muscle for games. They do have the most amazing laptop keyboards ever though, and that alone is worth a lot. ASUS has all the features you want and the horsepower to back it up, but their exteriors are almost always tacky as a rule. I'm not saying Alienware exteriors aren't tacky, because they are, but at least you get it constructed of a sturdier material nowadays than you do with ASUS and they don't underclock their GPUs like ASUS does.

protip: get a fucking cooling fan to put under your laptop. Alienwares are notorious for over heating. 3 kids in my dorm had theirs shit the bed this past year because of overheating. My GPU gets up to 210 degrees sometimes if i forget to turn the fan on.

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Originally Posted by PenGuin1362

protip: get a fucking cooling fan to put under your laptop. Alienwares are notorious for over heating. 3 kids in my dorm had theirs shit the bed this past year because of overheating. My GPU gets up to 210 degrees sometimes if i forget to turn the fan on.

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From the "Building a computer?" thread:

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Originally Posted by Freelancer

Oh and I should probably add what I wanted to really ask in this post. Lots of reviews and such state that Alienware recommends using the laptop without a "laptop cooler", however I often find myself working with the laptop on my lap or on a non-ideal surface (such as a bed/couch/padded chair arm). We all know this isn't great for laptops since if they're sitting on such a surface there's no where for the hot air and radiant heat from the bottom of the laptop to go, so I'm looking for a low-profile cooler (that's large enough to sit under the M15x at: Width: 370mm and Height: 260mm) that doesn't angle the laptop very much. Mainly just looking for something that I can throw into the backpack beside the laptop and take out when I need it between the laptop and the surface it's going to be on. I don't need to have my legs fried while quickly browsing something online haha!

I'm looking at this Zalman cooler:
http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/...ad.asp?idx=394

It's not quite big enough but it should work, however I'd like something that's slightly larger than the stated dimensions. I would prefer coolers that run off the laptop USB ports, and provide a replacement USB port(s) for the one being used.

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Alienware, and most reviews I've read, state that the new M15x design cools A LOT better than the older design as long as you're working a flat surface and the bottom of the laptop can radiate heat. I'm looking to get a cooler for those instances when I'm not working on an ideal flat surface.

Edit:
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Just writing this down for organizational sake mostly so I do everything in the correct order. The videos I'll be creating for this laptop will be in order as follows:
1. Orion backpack unboxing/initial review.
2. Alienware M15x unboxing/initial boot.
3. Alienware M15x initial review.
4. Alienware M15x AlienFX lighting demonstration, including Winamp AlienFX plugin demonstration using the X-Files theme song. :allears:
Some time down the road...
5. Alienware M15x performance and general usage review.

Yesh!

That looks like it would be really uncomfortable to use the keyboard for gaming :S

Could the lighting be configured to highlight various sets of keys so as to make key/function recognition while gaming easier?

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Originally Posted by Cagerrin

Could the lighting be configured to highlight various sets of keys so as to make key/function recognition while gaming easier?

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At the moment you can't set each key individually, however there are four sections to the keyboard that can be configured. Alienware says that per-key lighting is possible and may be included in a future AlienFX update.