I gave myself a treat this Christmas.  I bought an Alienware M17 gaming notebook computer.  I have done away with my desktop computer and I now use this notebook for everything.  It is a powerhouse that can handle anything I throw at it.

The Alienware M17 is not built with portability in mind.  It is a desktop replacement machine that weighs around 10 pounds.  Needless to say, not many jet-setters will be carrying this thing around.  If you are looking for a gaming notebook and portability is not that important to you, then you need to take a serious look at the M17.

The M17 can be customized in many different ways.  I chose the 2.53ghz Core 2 Duo processor.  It can be easily upgraded to a quad core processor later on, so I didn’t feel it was necessary to pay the extra money for it now.  I also choose to get 4gb of RAM, 320gb hard drive, 17″ screen, illuminated keyboard and more.  You can really make the M17 your own.

The most important feature available on this notebook is the SLI graphics card option.  I went with dual ATI 3870 graphics cards, each with 512mb of RAM, and running in Crossfire mode.  That is two full video cards with a total of 1gb in video ram – in a notebook computer!

I haven’t had a ton of time with it yet, but I can tell you that this thing screams!  It plows through World of Warcraft at max settings with ease.  I also love how quiet it runs.  Even with the GPU fans at full speed, the noise is very acceptable.  I expected it to sound like a jet engine but it absolutely does not.

I’ll report more on its gaming performance as I get back into playing.  I am very interested to see how it can handle Vanguard’s hefty graphics engine.