Dell's Alienware inadvertently let the price slip out for its seemingly high-end gaming netbook, to be priced at $799.
The page source on Alienware's M11x Web site contains the following text:
"The Alienware M11x, with over 6.5 hours of battery life and weighing under 4.5 lbs. will start at an amazing $799! Leave it to the folks at Alienware to enable truly mobile performance gaming at an affordable price."
No word on release date, though. According to a CNet report from the Consumer Electronics Show, when the netbook was revealed, the M11x has an Intel Core 2 U7300 ultra-low voltage processor, the same kind you see in thin-and-light notebooks. It also has an 11.6-inch screen, an NVidia GT335M switchable graphics card and a red-on-black design that screams Crysis nerd.
Alienware says the claimed 6.5 hours of battery life applies to the integrated graphics mode, and you only get around two hours of serious gaming on a charge.
Still, the M11x is an interesting product, especially at $800. It's a little heavier than thin-and-light laptops, and a little on a pricey side for that category, but the graphics card is the star of the show. Apparently you can play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the machine at 30 frames per second with the highest graphics settings.
My only question: What would you do with a tiny gaming laptop like this? Break out a USB mouse on the airplane? You can plug the laptop into an external monitor via HDMI, DisplayPort or VGA, but I'd think that defeats the purpose. Maybe this is the right product for someone who has screens all over the house and doesn't want to be tied down to one room.
