Alienware m9700 Review: m9700 - The Oblivion Trials :

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Ever seen something so jarring in the design of it, that you find your eyes drilling holes into it? That’s how people seem to react when I take the Alienware m9700 out in public. Since it’s this large, green laptop it’s almost immediately noticed and rather hard to not ask about. A week or so ago, my friend Tasha and I went to the local late night restaurant and brought our laptops with us. She brought her tiny MacBook and I brought along “Godzilla”, which I’ve aptly named this beast of a machine.

While we were there, at least two or three people in the restaurant that passed had to make comments about it on their way out. In booths nearby, people chattered and peered over at it and I caught their eyes a few times. That’s just how beautiful it is to look at. Now, imagine that kind of attention and then take notice of the insides. That’s what a lot of people had no clue about, they had no idea what kind of power rested beneath the glittering green façade.

While there at the restaurant, I wanted to try out the battery’s length. So, with me came the laser mouse from Logitech and Oblivion. I mean, if you want to try out any computer’s strength and overall finesse, that’s the game to make attempts with. So, vividly and in stunning color – Oblivion booted up. Giving the fellow patrons of the Carson City Nugget something to watch, I wandered around Oblivion’s streets. With no slow-down whatsoever and the most enchanting colors and fine-tuned definition, the m9700 laughed at any hint that it couldn’t handle the graphically intensive game.

This game, Bethesda Softwork’s Oblivion – has killed computers before, eaten their insides and coughed out the broken remains. Not because it’s designed poorly, but because computers can rarely handle it’s minimum requirements let alone their maximum ones.

To give you an idea of what this computer is capable of, when I installed it – Oblivion went ahead and detected which settings to use and immediately felt the highest settings would be fine. I expected slow movements, choppy sounds, perhaps even water that looked pixilated. How could they just assume!? Highest settings? Not to mention, playing Oblivion and using the processor to it’s max, the battery life STILL lasted a little over two hours. On my normal desktop, I am impressed I can run Diablo II on it’s highest settings!

As I sat there, tinkering and playing around with my beautiful elven character and nibbling on my late night breakfast – I noticed more and more eyes on the game. Liken the experience to bringing a gorgeous million dollar Lamborghini to a bicycle race, the big elephant in the room that had roaring fans to cool it’s brilliant processors and power the glorious innards to the God of Gaming PCs.

Stay tuned for our third part to the Alienware m9700 review, where we get to the guts of this laptop for practical applications.