back to article Who wants a quad-core 4.2GHz, 64GB, 5TB SSD RAID 10 … laptop?

When Eurocom releases new laptops – or 'mobile workstations' as it prefers to call them – it can be hard to keep one's jaw from the floor. This time around the company's released the Sky X9W complete with a quad-core, eight-thread, Intel Core i7 6700K capable of operating at 4.2GHz and nestled amidst an Intel Z170 Express ( …

  1. Ketlan
    Thumb Up

    Uurrgghhh...

    I just had either an orgasm or a heart attack.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Uurrgghhh...

      The purchasing experience probably involves both - the former when it's delivered, the latter when one attempts to pick it up for the first time...

      Er, and, yes, um, oh and of course I'd like one of these "laptops" very much indeed.

    2. Suburban Inmate

      Re: Uurrgghhh...

      La petite mort?

    3. DainB Bronze badge

      Re: Uurrgghhh...

      Why don't you have both ?

    4. Shadow Systems
      Go

      @Ketlan, re: reaction...

      Just for shits & giggles I went through the configurator & selected the most expensive option possible. While the resulting specs are <DarthVader>Impressive... Most. Impressive</DarthVader>, the sticker shock was enough to make me cackle in "Is THAT all? Why, at that price I'll take TWO!" style maniacal laughter. =-J

  2. John Robson Silver badge

    Luggable

    I remember those....

    My father brought home a "portable" computer from work. It had a ~5" screen at the top, two 5.25" disk drives, then a shelf to store spare disks.

    The full sized keyboard clipped onto the front, connected by a nice curly cable.

    Mains powered, obviously...

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Luggable

      Sounds like an Osborne to me. Drooled over them when they came out, but the best I could manage was a luggable C64, should look for it, must be still around somewhre in the garage... would be perfect for dumbbell-style workouts.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Luggable

        "Sounds like an Osborne to me"

        Just checked - it was a Compaq. With some image searching - a Compaq Portable (released in 1983, came home in about '85)

        Clearly I misremembered the shelf, and the "working" orientation (but it was carried upright) - got the curly cable right though ;)

        Released: March 1983 US$3590 (two floppy system) | Weight: 28 pounds | CPU: Intel 8088, 4.77MHz - RAM: 128K, 640K max | Display: 9" monochrome monitor built-in 80 X 25 text | Storage: Two 320K 5-1/4" disk drives

      2. Kubla Cant

        Re: Luggable

        The second computer I ever bought was an Osborne. The ads used to show an attractive young woman walking down the street swinging her Osborne. In real life she must have been about 8 feet tall with the muscles of a stevedore.

    2. Elmer Phud

      Re: Luggable

      ISTR 'Portable' came after 'luggable'.

      I still have a bag used for a Zentih XT luggable -- the horseshoe batttery took up about 1/2 the space.

      It's a big bag with reinforcing where the strap fixes on.

    3. Tom 7

      Re: Luggable

      I think luggables were all used up in the first gulf war - they were the only things denser than uranium that wasn't gold.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Luggable

        T7 "...luggables were all used up in the first gulf war..."

        Nope. Luggable PCs are still used by the military on a daily basis. In some cases it's because the full-size internal slots are required to contain a specific interface card for some old MIL-STD-nnn interface.

        It might the only option for on-aircraft software maintenance.

    4. Dan Wilkie

      Re: Luggable

      I remember those! My grandad used to bring one home sometimes, a superbrain or something.

      I fell in love with it the first time I saw it...

    5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Luggable

      I used one for quite a while, Kermit under DOS as a terminal. To this day I'm quite content running xterm in a window that size, the only difference is that these days I have to wear specs to read it.

    6. Kebablog

      Re: Luggable

      I remember a couple of luggable devices.

      Apricot PC XI (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6095/Apricot-PC-XI/) which wasn't as portable as you'd hope, but the keyboard clipped on the underside of the base unit and monitor wasn't too heavy!

      The Compaq (http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/pc/h/cppc.jpg) was a heavy beast - still managed to get it home on the bus.

    7. naive

      Re: Luggable

      In spite of all the cynical comments, a high end laptop is really something which feels nice, people would be surprised how it is to have something which has really high-end internal specs.

      This laptop is in the realm of MSI GT80, their choice of graphics seems weird, they do not offer high end NVIDIA, one would expect a SLI 980M config for that price, which is for sure needed to achieve acceptable frame rates on a 4K screen. The lack of NVIDIA options makes it not suitable for gaming.

      1. AZump

        Re: Luggable

        Maybe you got lost in the haze of "OMG!" The second paragraph clearly states: NVIDIA Quadro M5000M.

    8. erikj

      Re: Luggable

      Just to continue the digression, the first Kaypro portables were built in my neighborhood, but it was clear they had no clue what they were doing. They tried to convert their voltmeter factory (they were originally Non-Linear Systems) into a modern computer manufacturing building. But they wedged receiving and shipping together in a back corner of the lot, which jammed operations. The layout didn't match their processes, so material had to crisis-cross the buildings. And we they came to my company seeking a new integrated MRP system, they mandated the product had to run on a Kaypro. But sadly, we had decided porting our product to CP/M to get the deal wasn't worth the effort.

  3. PleebSmasher

    at $5000

    2-3 times more productive than your $500 laptop at 10x the price

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: at $5000

      For most people this might be true.

      However when you are running 6 to 10 different VM's with Oracle, SAP and SQLServer systems included in order to simulate an industrial plant even 32Gb of RAM just does not cut it.

      I'd love one of these. Luggable is about right but as my flight bag has wheels and can take a 17in HP unit then having to actually carry the darned thing is pretty rare.

      As for the heart attack? Well, my manager would have one if I put in a req for one of these. Then the Purchasing manger would follow suit.

      Well, that's one way to get rid of PHB's ain't it?

      Anon just in case.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: at $5000

        Will you put in a request for one for me to?

        (that should guarantee shuffling 'em off to the choir invisible)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: at $5000

        > "...when you are running 6 to 10 different VM's with Oracle, SAP and SQLServer systems included..."

        Couldn't you just stick that lot on a server farm somewhere and connect to it over t'internet?

        1. Bloakey1

          Re: at $5000

          "Couldn't you just stick that lot on a server farm somewhere and connect to it over t'internet?"

          You mean install it on someone else's machine? No problem there at all, might even pass the missus over as well, in fact my wallet and deeds to the house could go over as well.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: at $5000

          It love to do that but when I go on site to some of these plants, the only internet is via Satellite.

          In other places it is so slow that it becomes unusable if more than one person is using it at a time.

          Then there are the sites that are so paranoid about things like Stuxnet that they don't allow phones or any internet connection.

          Not everywhere has 1000Mbit Internet on tap 24/7

          So what use is having them all on a server farm (or in the cloud) somewhere then?

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: at $5000

          Having local vms is just much more convenient. Price wise I guess there ins't much difference. Crappy network connection will ruin your day, loss of connection stop work.

          id similar in a pc, though struggle with 16 GB of ram but only run 3 to 5 oracle vms.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: at $5000

        "Well, that's one way to get rid of PHB's ain't it?"

        Go for it!

      4. Fatman
        Joke

        Re: at $5000

        <quote>As for the heart attack? Well, my manager would have one if I put in a req for one of these. Then the Purchasing manger would follow suit.</quote>

        If I were to put in a request for one of these, my boss might request HR to have me 'drug tested' as she would be wondering: "What IS he taking?"

        The last time I requested something out of the box, it was one of these:

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/14/canonical_orange_box/

        and she screamed at me: "Are you out of your fucking mind???? There is NO way I would approve one, and even if I did, both the CFO, and the CEO would have to sign off on it."

        Now, if you want to give a PHB a heart attack, have them carry one of those orange boxen, it weighs 32 Kg. If that PHB happens to be a CFO or CEO, then it's then (2014) price tag1 would happily give the PHB a heart attack

        1the 2014 baseline configuration price was £7,575.00 ($12,750)

      5. JLV

        Re: at $5000

        A slightly cheaper approach is to buy a high end gaming laptop.

        ASUS has ones that go up to 32GB for example. Count 2-2.5K $. Bought mine specifically to run multiple VMs in. They may not have all the exotica of high end business laptops, but they cost less. And they are infinitely more powerful, with better screens, than normal business or consumer laptops. The graphics oomph is a bit wasted on dev work, but that's OK.

        One problem is that you have to replace consumer Windows with Windows Pro. Or put Linux on it.

        1. Justin Clift

          Re: at $5000

          The Nvidia Quadro M5000M is a reasonably (overpriced) graphics card for gaming... but conversely, if you're using CAD/CAM software which requires pro level cards, then a gaming card (eg GeForce) won't generally do an adequate job.

          It all revolves around the software you need to use.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: at $5000

      >2-3 times more productive than your $500 laptop at 10x the price

      Nope, it will be 5% as productive as you can get some decent gaming performance out of this stonehenge slab.

    3. Montreal Sean

      Re: at $5000

      Depends what your use case is.

      There are a few departments at Bombardier Aerospace that are equipped with $15k workstations.

      I'm sure these laptops might be of use to them, should they require some mobility...

  4. G2
    Black Helicopters

    fans

    so many fans... is that a notebook or a hoverboard? (can't be called a laptop... it probably becomes too hot to hold on your lap)

    if one fan dies... it probably becomes one of the flaming hoverboards.

    /helicopter icon for this - just because it's a big fan.

    1. Chris King

      Re: fans

      Add an air cushion, and you've got yourself a mini hovercraft !

      (Pulling it along on a cushion of air probably beats trying to carry the thing)

    2. Lance-Corporal Obvious

      Re: fans

      Connect the output to your tumble drier

  5. Shadow Systems

    GIMMIE! =-D

    I will gladly volunteer to write a full, in depth, excrutiatingly exhaustive review of one of these, and I even promise to give the unit back after I'm done...

    <whispers>eventually</whispers>

    *Cough*

    Damn I'd love to own one. I'd use it to play Progress Quest! =-D

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: GIMMIE! =-D

      Gotta say, this was intriguing enough to warrant a closer look..

      "Advice for completing Spite of Gromth quest

      As any player who has participated in a Spite of Gromth instance will no doubt have discovered, once Aco Rogbath is down in health a ways he will cast Big Sister. At that point, if any player moves before the effect decays it will chain geometrically, as both Curse Family and Acrid Hands will most likely be already active. This will blow up the raid, causing multiple base kilodamage with significant overdamage lingering. (This is particularly true on Spoltog and Pemptus, where trilobite familiars are disadvantageous in mountain marsh biomes.)"

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon
        Thumb Up

        Re: GIMMIE! =-D

        My adventure is underway!

        I am now a level 1 Enchanted Motorcycle Voodoo Princess called "Chitz-fer-brains"

        You go girl! lol

      2. Bloakey1

        Re: GIMMIE! =-D

        "As any player who has participated in a Spite of Gromth"

        <snip>

        I say Squiffy, I do not catch your banter! Did he take a waspy and flip over on the Betty Harpers or were there ten penny ones dropping in the custard?

  6. vmistery

    It is actually weirdly even fully configured not too terrible value. Although I think I will stick to an smaller unit for portable duties and a Desktop for the real work. In a larger Chassis I can have nice large fans to keep the noise down cooling it all.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    AUO B173ZAN01.0 - 17" (W)LED/AHVA, nearly4k(tm), 100% aRGB, matte, eDP, real8bit...

    At last!!! B-)

    Buggered if I'm paying $3000 to get a ~$200 panel 'though.

    Anyone recommend a cheap, sensible (i5ish, 1 HD, etc) 17.3" eDP machine it'll go in? ;)

  8. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Flame

    Exhaust from this laptop ------>

    Those are massive heat pipe tubes! Unless I'm mistaken, heat pipes in laptops are used to prevent heat transfer to the case by moving the heat to the exhaust vents. When everything runs hot I'd think that an insulated case would be more portable.

  9. Quando

    But but but...can it run Crysis?

    1. Elmer Phud

      It's about time we had an icon for that.

    2. James 29

      No... Will it blend?

      1. 404

        I'm pretty sure it would have to be disassembled to blend*.

        *Sent via Toughbook CF53... too bulky to blend.

    3. Nextweek

      It's important to note that the nVidia Quadro range offers poor gaming performance since it's designed for output quality not latency.

      If they hadn't picked the Quadro, this would have been the ultimate LAN party laptop.

  10. David Gosnell

    Cost...

    ... about what I remember paying for a Pentium III desktop with only a few modest bells and whistles!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cost...

      My Apple II in 1979 cost GBP1780 - about GBP6K nowadays?

      Floppy 100KB disk and 48KB ram, Black & white screen as the colour option was too much.

    2. Pen-y-gors

      Re: Cost...

      My first 'real' laptop (mid 1990s?) packed some sort of desktop chip (to keep the price down), a 10" screen, not much disk or ram, a 15 minute battery life and cost £2500 then - that's about £4500 now or $7000! It's still in a cupboard somewhere..

      I think I'll pop out and order one of these monsters now - bargain!

  11. Efros
    Mushroom

    OS X equivalent

    Just add a zero... or two.

  12. P. Lee

    Cloud Demo anyone?

    Probably just enough to run "Hello World!"

    As for the poor screen, with that much grunt you'll be doing compute-heavy tasks, like getting Word to repaginate your RfT, rather than playing Crysis. Any Photoshop will be on a proper, external screen.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cloud Demo anyone?

      What "poor screen"?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cloud Demo anyone?

      ...and you take a "proper", external screen with you on outdoor shoots? That must be... convenient :|

  13. Steven Jones

    Not a cool name...

    I think it sensible not to describe this monster as a laptop as it has the potential to be a little "uncomfortable" due to the heat being dissipated into the relevant part of the anatomy.

    1. Bloakey1

      Re: Not a cool name...

      We obviously need to run Duke Nukem on it to test the graphics capabilities as we did in days of yore.

      Personally I like large screen laptops / luggables as they can do nearly everything a desktop can without having to lug a big screen around.

      My first laptop was an Amstrad, I started my I.T. career with this and even got in to Uni a few times on the strength of this.

      http://tinyurl.com/gt2yyem

      1. stucs201

        Re: Not a cool name...

        Specs are wrong on that Amstrad. It wasn't an 8088 and didn't run at 4.75MHz. It was 8MHz and actually an NEC V30 (80186 clone).

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Not a cool name...

        "Personally I like large screen laptops / luggables as they can do nearly everything a desktop can without having to lug a big screen around."

        Back around 1992, my flatmate had a 386sx16 "box" - about 20cm*20cm*5cm, which had external everything and weighed about 1kg (most of which was steel case and 40MB MFM HDD)

        He'd put it in his bag and carry it to work or home, where it plugged into external keyboard/monitor/PSU.

        It's interesting the number of docking stations which are around replicating this same functionality (badly and with much greater fragility) nearly 25 years later.

        I think he paid about the same as this device, or more if you inflation adjust.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Not a cool name...

      "it has the potential to be a little "uncomfortable" due to the heat"

      Which is why the industry has been selling them as "notebooks" for years.

  14. David Roberts

    Dyson variant?

    Looks to have enough suck to clean most carpets.

    I hope they have made fan access easy, or banned use near cats.

    One occasional grotty task is stripping down laptops to get at the incredibly well concealed fan which has collected cat hair, trouser fluff and other strange stuff and compacted it in the airways. External access to the fan too hard, guys?

    [The inner pervert briefly considered a clip on adapter which could avoid those embarrasing "fell over whilst vacuuming nude" visits to A&E and be fully integrated with high definition pr0n but on second thoughts........just don't go there! Although it would be discreet in a laptop......just NO!]

    Oh, and I want one just because. Carrying it is not an issue - I had to lug full sized HP network analysers around at one time (X.25 and the like) which made luggable PCs look quite dainty.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Dyson variant?

      "One occasional grotty task is stripping down laptops to get at the incredibly well concealed fan"

      As a tip: A can of compressed air in the fan outlet (to loosen the crap that's got itself on the other side of the heatsink fins) followed by a full size vacuum clean hose held over the fan inlet works wonders.

      Don't do both at the same time. Most of the "compressed air" cans are blowing flammable gas the inside of a vacuum cleaner motor is a pretty sparky environment. I've seen flames come out the exhaust when people ignore that advice.

      If you have a vac than can suck and blow at the same time, use the blow hose and a nozzle in place of the can of air. Run the airflow the other way too, to make sure it's all cleaned out - and a flashlight shone in the fan inlet usually provides enough illumination to be able to look in the fan outlet and see if all the fins are cleared.

      Cue people griping that this will destroy the fan and/or caused the internals to be staticed to death. Neither is true, although if the fan's bearing is dodgy you'll probably hasten its demise (plenty of audible clues this is about to happen anyway. Dodgy bearings rumble or rattle long before they cark it and they usually die through getting far too hot with no airflow so regular cleaning extends their life dramatically)

      Regular application of the vacuum cleaner hose to laptop fan inlet and outlet will clear out most crap buildups before they have the potential to cause trouble.

      1. GrumpenKraut

        Re: Dyson variant?

        Fan bearings: I prolonged the life of many with a small drip of oil, even some that where stuck. Clean, oil, then gently rotate until the friction cannot be felt anymore. Power on and check the motor doesn't get warmer than normal. It can be difficult to determine and reach the place to oil.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Dyson variant?

          "Clean, oil, then gently rotate until the friction cannot be felt anymore"

          If you're at that stage then you should pop the sticker and end bung off, remove the retaining ring and disassemble the rotor from the stator assembly. At that point you can trivially clean the shaft and bearing inner surface PLUS determine if the bearing assembly has gotten hot enough to melt the the plastic holding it in place (it happens - a lot - and moreso in smaller fans than larger ones) in which case the fan's wrecked and needs replacing as no amount of wishful thinking will ever get it "unwonky" again.

          Reassembly being a reverse procedure but you can add a drop of graphite-infused light machine oil (sewing machine oil) from a repurposed diabetic's syringe whilst you're doing it (although graphite-infused isopronanol is often a better choice)

          The problem with "just adding a drop of oil" is that most of the time access to the shaft is sealed and where it's not, that "additional lubricant" is actually washing grit particles back into the bearing surface where they can do maximum damage and the oil attracts more dirt to stick itself into the mess.

          1. GrumpenKraut

            Re: Dyson variant?

            Good points, thanks. The majority of such "repairs" I made just to keep the respective machines running until the replacement fan is purchased.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Weight.

    5Kgs is nowt you bunch of pussies.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      Re: Weight.

      Ay, when I were a lad I 'ad to carry a satchel of textbooks, undredweight o' coal an my spastic sister o'er sixty mile moor t' school and back every day, in all weather, with me rickets and club feet, and if I complained I got a pound of molten thallium poured into me arse. Did me no arm neither. I dunno what's wrong with kids today, must all be soft southerners 'round 'ere.

    2. Bloakey1

      Re: Weight.

      Agreed, in my other job I carried:

      Helmet 2Kg

      Radio 2Kg

      Rifle 3kg

      Ammunition 4Kg

      Mortar Rounds 2* 3 Kg

      Backpack 30kg

      Webbing 2kg

      Water *2 2Kg

      Brandt Mortar Tube 18.2 kg

      Brandt Mortar Sight 4.2 Kg

      Chain mail Glove 2.5kg

      Chainmail Shoulder Support 3Kg

      We had permanent bow legs and the above was carried across the hills of Corsica in a mountain company no less.Cinto, Rotondo, Orba I love you all now but hated you then.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Weight.

        What the hell were you Bloakey1? A mole catcher?

        ;)

        1. Bloakey1

          Re: Weight.

          Nahhh, Legionnaire innit. Molecatching was left to those chaps in DGSE.

          Had a right strange life until I did an I.T. degree and 'settled' down. Currently typing from my secret 'bunker' in the Algarve.

          For those who might doubt, log on to arrse and look up Bloakey.

      2. Kubla Cant

        Re: Weight.

        I'm not qualified to comment on most of these weights, but 2kg of webbing seems remarkable.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Weight.

          You probably need *LOTS* of layers to contain the little bastards.

        2. Bloakey1

          Re: Weight.

          "I'm not qualified to comment on most of these weights, but 2kg of webbing seems remarkable."

          It was the silk suspenders that tipped us over the edge. Ok, hmmm:

          First aid kit containing morphine, sewing kit, tourniquet, amphetamines etc. heavy, rifle cleaning kit heavy ish, 2 bandages lightish, bayonet, quite heavy, bottle of water 1 kg, compass, escape kit.

          Hmm you are right, probably closer to 3 or 4 kilos.

      3. Bluto Nash
        Mushroom

        Re: Weight.

        Not being familiar with "Bloakey" and apparently on the wrong side of the pond, as well as not knowing much about mortars aside from "Incoming!," what's the chain mail stuff for?

        Icon for the receiving end.

        1. David Roberts

          Re: Weight.

          "Not being familiar with "Bloakey" and apparently on the wrong side of the pond, as well as not knowing much about mortars aside from "Incoming!," what's the chain mail stuff for?"

          Not being in any way military myself, I would guess that if you had put the mortar down and lobbed off a few quick rounds it might be a little warm for a while.

          If you then decided to move somewhere else a bit sharpish then I assume a mailed glove and mailed shoulder pad might make this a tad less painful.

    3. Don Dumb
      Boffin

      Re: Weight.

      @ZanzibarRastapopulous - 5Kgs is nowt you bunch of pussies.

      Try running a half marathon with a 5Kg weight, I can assure you it is far from nowt

  16. Joerg

    RAID 10 ? Why not RAID 5 then?

    For such an high price and with a big chassis like that they could have put an hardware RAID controller with 4 2.5" HDUs or SSDs in RAID-5.

    1. Youngdog

      Re: RAID 10 ? Why not RAID 5 then?

      According to the configurator page they can do RAID 5 for the same price - and they offering RAID 1 mirroring on the PCIe storage too!

    2. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: RAID 10 ? Why not RAID 5 then?

      Because nobody in their right mind uses RAID5. It went over the usability horizon about the time that disk capacities started exceeding 100GB and their costs came down. *dons downvote armour*

      [Edit: seriously guys, get 2 diskfulls from 4 in RAID10, or 3 from 4 in RAID5? Is 50% more capacity really worth risking needing a full rebuild when you hit an Unrecoverable Read Error? During which another URE would kill you? When UREs are have a probability of 1e-13 --- wasn't so much a problem when disks were small, but that's 1 error per 10TB]

      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

        Re: RAID 10 ? Why not RAID 5 then?

        In RAID10 (excepting 0+1 variants), disk rebuild means copying data from one partner disk. Obviously requiring this partner disk to be in perfect health.

        For a 4-disk array, risks of a rebuild failure are 3 to 1 (as RAID5 requires 3 good disks to copy from, RAID10 requires 1). For 8-disk array the ratio increases to 7:1, and so forth.

  17. Ol'Peculier

    Monitors

    Support up to 4 external monitors? If you can carry that lot get yourself entered for Britain's Strongest Man...

  18. elDog

    Trying to keep the cost down..

    How about I order it with Linux instead of Windows?

    1. Bloakey1

      Re: Trying to keep the cost down..

      Nahhh, to keep the historical context of such a large machine it would have to be CP/M.

      Is anybody up for rebadging a load of Old Amstrads and selling them on Ebay as one of these?

      I would love one myself, I reckon if I set it to do a bit of Bitcoin mining, I would have a dollar after a few years.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Linux

      Re: Trying to keep the cost down..

      >How about I order it with Linux instead of Windows?

      Why not? There's no "Window$ Tax" on them so you'll save yourself a handy $150 - $350 and you'll avoid having the firmware b0rken for you.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Trying to keep the cost down..

      Let's hope the firmware won't brick if you rm -rf /

    4. Cameron Colley

      Re: Trying to keep the cost down..

      Windows costs nothing* to OEMs, so there is nothing to be saved by providing a machine with Linux. Those OEMs which do, occasionally, provide machines running Linux do so in order to provide a bargaining chip on their next M$ licensing negotiations.

      Isn't this general knowledge by now?

      *They pay M$ a license for "projected machines shipped" and, likely, extra charges for anything which doesn't run Linux (taking into account the negotiations taken into above).

  19. picturethis
    Alien

    Meh....

    Alienware 17r3 can be configured with about the same specs (except for only 4.0 Ghz, only 16GB Ram and 2 M.2 slots + (1) 2.5" slot) with an i7-6820 and it is about the same price....and if you go for the graphics amplifier, the GPU's can be any of nVidia's top of the line cards - your choice.

    I know because I just purchased one about 3 weeks ago.

    Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in any of the above mentioned products

    1. Justin Clift

      Re: Meh....

      The Alienware 17r3 doesn't seem to have any Quadro cards available in the configurator, so "any of nVidia's top of the line cards" isn't accurate. Top of the line gaming cards, sure... but that's not what this laptop is for.

  20. Tromos

    Does the battery last...

    ...long enough to login?

    1. Darryl

      Re: Does the battery last...

      Probably just about gets those fans up to speed

  21. regadpellagru

    don't see the point

    I really don't ...

    A laptop is mostly for office stuff that surely doesn't need such config ...

    If you want gaming or video stuff, surely half this price will buy you a similar ITX/ATX setup ...

  22. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    X9W

    For a moment I read that as 9KW which seemed about right.

  23. jason 7

    Whilst it's not for me...

    ...at least it doesn't have a 70's disco floor keyboard and dragons/aliens etched all over it.

    I have a mint Dell M6400 that I picked up for £80 a couple of years ago. Now running with a quad core CPU, 8GB of ram, backlit keyboard, 120GB SSD, 500GB HDD, Quadro GPU, USB3.0. Works quite well and the 17" 1920x1200 screen is a nice one. The 120w power supply is rather massive though. Gave it to the Gf as a back up machine for her desktop. Luggable is what I would call it.

    1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

      Re: Whilst it's not for me...

      How did you upgrage the processor? All the ones I see have core2Duo's.

      1. jason 7

        Re: Whilst it's not for me...

        The old fashioned way which was take it all apart. The best you can usually do is the 3GHz dual core or the 2GHz Quad.

  24. Starace

    Seems cheap

    My Tadpole SPARC laptop was over £25K and that was 20 years ago.

    Now that was a true mobile workstation.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice but...

    ...this will look like a toy when Zen cored APU powered laptops show in '17 for half the price and are far more powerful.

    1. jason 7

      Re: Nice but...

      What all one of them (probably from HP) and still with 4GB ram, 500GB 5400rpm HDD, 2.4Ghz wi-fi only, 1366x768 screen and all for the bargain price of £650.00!

      You'd think someone was paying the OEM's to hamstring AMD. Not that AMD doesn't do a pretty good job of that themselves.

      Speaking as an old die-hard AMD fan that finally lost their patience with them a few years ago.

  26. Mark M.

    Great spec for a laptop, and what to people go and do? Bung Windows on it.

  27. DCLXV

    I'm disappointed there's no optional kevlar and ceramic plating offered

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Or a cup holder that uses the exhaust heat to keep a cup of coffee warm. Or make one.

      (I've been rewatching some episodes of Eureka recently - I'd like the sort of laptop Henry Deacon lugs around.)

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. CPU

    Just what I need to get my AI research started.

    The only big problem is, why does the beast only have 4 cores?

    8 cores are pretty much standard these days and the newer CPUs support core shutdown

    for low TDP use.

    Still having multiple SSDs is handy especially when as is typical one breaks.

    I'd still have an HDD mirror which runs in the background in the event something really bad happens

    such as a particularly nasty virus or multiple failures (seen this happen, 3 drives in 1 day!!)

    If all the SSDs share the same firmware its possible a bug or errata could affect them all simultaneously.

  29. Bibbit

    Oooooooh!

    I could think of no possible task I would need that beast for and yet I want it so badly I ache. A flaw of the human condition.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time to start saving...

  31. Jon Massey
    FAIL

    RAID10

    It doesn't. Two of the ports are M.2, two are vanilla SATA so you can only have two NVMe drives.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >>There's also a 17.3 inch 4K screen at 3840 x 2160

    And with that small a screen size, you'll need binoculars to read anything on the screen at that resolution...:P

  33. daflibble

    Reminds me of the suitcase handle option I used to fit to mini tower PC's to make them luggable back in the 90's.

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