Fuck yea! Free copy of Portal!

[PenGuin1362]

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.

[Warsaw]

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.

[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.

[Cortexian]

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.

From the "Building a computer?" thread:

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.

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:
---------
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.
Some time down the road...
5. Alienware M15x performance and general usage review.

[Cortexian]

Yesh!

[Pooky]

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

[Cagerrin]

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

[Cortexian]

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

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.