14 DAY TRIAL // The market for gaming notebooks might be the only segment of the laptop industry that hasn't noticeably declined over the past years, since they aren't the type that can just be replaced by tablets.
Yet, the companies that make gaming mobile personal computers continue to make new ones and improve their existing designs.
Dell has just launched the latest generation of Alienware gaming notebooks: Alienware 14, 17 and 18.
The company used Intel's release of Haswell central processing units as a pretext to visually enhance the products.
There are many LEDs on and around the notebooks. The color of the one that makes the logo on the lid glow can be customized even.
What's more, the touchpad can shine in the dark and can be color customized too. All the lights can really, even the ones at the edges.
Not only that but, on the keyboard (with its retooled key caps) there are 10 color zones (five on the Alienware 14).
Klipsch speakers are the only performance-related addition, one might say, backed by Dolby Audio Theater. Everything else qualifies as an enhancement, even the move of the air vents to the back edge, away from gamer hands.
Speaking of hardware, the Alienware 14, 17 and 18 have one out of a whole bunch of Core i7 CPUs, NVIDIA graphics (one or two, from GeForce GT 750M 1 GB to dual-GTX 780M), 8-16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and an HDD or an SSD+HDD storage setup (up to 640 GB SSD + dual-750 GB HDD, or 768 GB dual-SSD RAID 0 + 256 GB SSD).
That leaves the ODD (super-multi / Blu-ray), the Killer NIC / Broadcom wireless support, and the displays themselves (14-inch 1366 x 768, 17 / 18-inch 1920 x 1080).
The starting price is of $1,199 / €1,199 for the Alienware 14, $1,499+ / €1,499+ for the Aliencware 17+, and $2,099+ / €2,099+ for the Alienware 18.
"The new laptops and matching Vindicator bags are the latest culmination of listening and learning from our customers since we delivered our first gaming system back in 1996," said Frank Azor, general manager of Alienware.
"We spent countless hours meticulously thinking through every detail of these new products to ensure they would be the most amazing line-up we've introduced yet."