The world's most extreme laptops

Some laptops will give you a hernia, while others will fit in a coat pocket. Some cost a day's pay--others, half a year's. Here are the outliers of the notebook world.

The Biggest Traditional Hard Drive



Name: Alienware M17X (European model)

Price: about $3272 and up

Availability: Now, in Europe

Extreme spec: Two 500GB drives

Reasons to love it: Though Western Digital's Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive is available, so far it hasn't surfaced in a machine that you can buy off store shelves. Until then, a pair of two 500GB hard drives remains the biggest storage option you can get in a retail laptop.

The Alienware M17X has a lot more than storage to love. You get a killer gaming experience on its 17-inch LCD, courtesy of a maximum 2GB of dedicated video memory. In addition, the M17X sports a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme Mobile processor, an nVidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card, an eight-in-one card reader, up to 8GB of RAM, and a battery with an average life of just over 3 hours. Optional features include a TV tuner and a Blu-ray drive.

When PC World put this desktop replacement through its paces, Senior Writer Darren Gladstone said that the M17X had "blistering gamer-approved performance" thanks to its high-resolution display and amazing graphics capability. The downside is that the 1TB storage option is available only in the Alienware M17X European model. Unless you plan to travel across the pond, you'll have to make do with a maximum 640GB of space in the form of a 5400-rpm traditional hard drive, or 512GB of storage from two 256GB solid-state drives.

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