Alienware AM18XR2-8728BK 18-Inch Laptop (Black)

The m18x has a very solid build, good looking (but glare-y) screen and fantastic specs.

First off, i was looking for a desktop/road warrior spec that I could use to run a full network of VMs on under linux, play games well under windows and generally do some of the heavy duty computing that's part of my day-to-day life. This probably isn't the laptop for you if you just want to surf the Internet. You can put three harddrives in it, 32 GB of RAM, upgrade it to SLI video cards and upgrade the optical drive to something awesome like a BD-RE drive.

Things to be aware of:

1. This monster is heavy 10-12lb, but shows zero flex when lifting it by one end. When it's resting in your lap, it really digs into your legs. I stopped noticing that after a while. Again, that's not what this is designed for.

2. Screen has tremendous glare issues, but you can solve this with matte overlays. There are some made specifically for this laptop that makes this almost a non-issue. I generally do not have a light source behind me, so this problem is rendered moot.

3. The keyboard does flex some while typing, but it isn't bad. It's just noticeable coming for apple keyboards to this. The keyboard is well laid out, types quickly, and requires a little more force than usual to complete key-presses. Types really well though.

4. It's full of awesome and will consume your undivided attention.

The 18.4" screen is gorgeous and everything I view comes through crisp and clear. Zero dead pixels for me though I doubt that was an issue with this laptop. I look forward to getting my upgrades into the system: additional hard drives and RAM. It's core i7 processor chews through all of my work beautifully and the drive that comes with this laptop is very snappy. Ubuntu & Windows both boot quickly and none of my apps or VMs seem to strain it. The situation will improve drastically with additional drives. I do wish I could throw SSDs into and really let it scream, but I'll have to budget out for that.

Heat dissipation is incredible on this laptop. I have been running seti@home to help identify any hardware issues. It maxes out all 8 cores plus the GPU and it doesn't get hot to the touch. The fan noise is fairly quiet at full speed a plus.

I'd recommend putting the laptop through its paces immediately to identify any issues that might arise in the first 30 days. It's a big investment, but one that I think is justified as it will probably be more than adequate for my purposes for at least 3 years especially with the ease of upgrading all of the components.

I was originally looking at the Toshiba Qosmio desktop replacement laptops but decided to give Alienware a try since I heard great things about one from my friend. I was looking mainly for a powerful multimedia/gaming laptop with a larger than life screen, so Toshiba first came to mind since I've seen them at my local Bestbuy. After I did some research my confidence swayed towards the Alienware. Once received and powered on, I was happy to see it rip through some of my favorite games and video editing software. Overall very satisfied with this gaming rig so far! Time will tell...

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-Like: finest assembly, easy self-customizing with plenty of extendability, calmness, cool look

-Dislike: Its name is labtop, but actually it is not. You will need a car (with big backpack) to carry this.

-Recommend: after you recieve this, add immediately a solid state drive (SSD). Don't need to replace preexisting hard disk drive (HDD). There are two additional spots for full-size drive, and one m-sata spot.

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My initial impression of the laptop was overall positive. For the most part the laptop worked as expected.

After using the laptop for a little over 4 months the laptop stopped charging when the power was plugged in. The laptop registered the power was plugged in (blue light when plugged in > yellow when unplugged > back to blue when plugged back in) but refused to charge.

I contacted tech support and apparently because it was purchased from Amazon they will not provide support but if I call back during off peak hours they will do a 'customer transfer' after which they might provide support.

Be aware that if you want technical support if things break you should seriously consider purchasing it direct instead of from Amazon as purchasing it form Amazon prevents you from receiving support on the laptop.

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EDIT: I shut the laptop down to save battery and when I turned it back on prior to calling support it was charging correctly again. The manufacturer responded to the review with a link to register the product that gave an error an another link that was supposed to lead to a form that would resolve the error and instead led to the generic support page and the form was not on that page.

The manufacturer also suggested that I could try to get support from their community forums and twitter (I assume instead of jumping through the hoops they set up to actually get technical support on the product). This seems like a very poor substitute for actual technical support.

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I am now hooked on alienware. I did upgrade ram to 32g and upgraded the drives to ssd but even before that Photoshop screamed. I was able to put together a 200g panorama in less than a day of processing. Plus my clients think the colored keyboard is really cool. Nothing cheap in this box.