14 DAY TRIAL // Hardcore computing specialist Rock has unveiled a new notebook in its Xtreme SL8 series of power laptops. The computer's central piece is the recently announced Nvidia GeForce 8800 SLI graphics card for notebooks, which is the highest graphics combination known to man and laptop.
As if this was not enough, the system is built around an extremely unusual quad-core processor. You would have expected to find a Penryn incarnation inside this roaring notebook, but things are a little different, and guess what: no Penryn inside. Instead, you will find an old-school 65-nanometer quad-cored behemoth, based on a X6800 desktop chip that will suck dry every last ampere in your battery.
Needless to say that the chassis looks like a huge car trunk with a LED billboard attached on it. As for the laptop, it surely lacks aesthetics, but its ugliness is diminished by its glossy black finish. The storage space is left upon user's choice. There are either 1TB made of two 5400rpm hard disk drives or 600GB on two 7200rpm disks. The 17-inch LCD display is also amazing and boasts the 1,920 x 1,200 resolution fueled by the two impressive cards in a SLI link.
Inside the "car trunk" that may be the system you've been dreaming about since you were a kid, you'll find 802.11n wireless connectivity, an Ethernet connector to go along with it, as well as a HD-DVD optical drive to meet your high-definition requirements.
Despite the voices arguing about the supremacy of either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, Rock decided that this would go better with the notebook, so stop complaining about it. In fact, Rock was so impressed about the HD-DVD that made it a standard all over its high-end products.
Rock will start taking orders for the huge semi-mobile, semi-desktop system in mid-February, but you'll have to squeeze between $4974 and $5969, depending on the final configuration. Well, you'd better start practicing weights-lifting, because you'll have to carry this cyclops wherever you may go.