Details of Alienware’s M17x All Powerful Notebook Leak Early

By Geoff Duncan Published May 29, 2009

Details of Alienware — Image used with permission by copyright holder

With the revamped E3 Expo set to kick off next week, gaming and entertainment companies are looking to get a jump on the buzz with pre-announcements and “accidental” slips that reveal product plans on the cusp of the event. So it is with Alienware’s long-teased “All Powerful” M17x notebook: the details have finally spilled, and we’re suer some gamers are busily sopping up drool.

The M17x is set to be a monster, sporting a 17-inch display with a resolution up to 1,920 by 1,200 pixels driven by (get this) either one or two Nvidia GeForce GTX260M GPUs (for dual graphics fragging power) plus a separate Nvidia 9400M mobile GPU for battery-respecting graphics when surfing the Web, handling email, or otherwise not blowing the daylights out of your competitors. The GPUs will feature HybridPower technology, enabling the 9400M to operate on battery power, then let the bigger GPUs take over when running on AC power.

Recommended Videos

The rest of the M17x packs the features and options, offering an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU starting at 2.4 GHz and working all the way up to a Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core CPU, support for up to 8 GB of RAM, from 250 to 1 TB of hard drive storage with RAID 1 or 0 support (drives are swappable when users remove the M17x’s battery), or users can opt for SSD storage. Users will be abe to select from a variety of DVD and Blu-ray optical drive options, and, of course, the system will pack gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, four USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, an ExpressCard slot, audio output an 8-in-1 media card reader, plus video output: HDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA.

And the M17x will be a monster, weighing in at some 11.6 pounds, and measuring almost 16 inches wide by 12.65 inches deep.

No word on when Dell and Alienware plan to offer the M17x for sale, but the base configurations will start at $1,799 and escalate quickly from there as players add options and upgrades.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Topics

Computing

OpenAI is investigating more incidents of AI agents going rogue days after hack

It appears that the "AI agents going rogue" tale has more to it than what AI giants have revealed publicly so far. Merely days after OpenAI announced that its AI agents went rogue and hacked Hugging Face, Anthropic dropped a similar bombshell. Soon, it was discovered that not just one, but multiple services were compromised. Well, it seems there are even more layers to it.

Reuters reports that OpenAI has found more incidents of AI agents escaping their software containment environment during research. Citing sources with knowledge of the incident, the outlet notes that the AI agents didn't go beyond OpenAI's software environment and affect any external service.

Computing

AI is finding Apple security flaws faster than Apple can sort through them

Apple has limited how many bug reports researchers can keep open as AI tools produce both genuine Mac vulnerabilities and a flood of questionable submissions

Lighting, Architecture, Building

Apple has capped the number of security reports researchers can keep open at once after AI bug hunting put its review process under pressure, according to the Financial Times.

Some submissions describe hallucinated or purely theoretical risks. Others uncover vulnerabilities serious enough to require patches. Bynario told the FT that it found more than 50 possible macOS flaws in three weeks, including a privilege-escalation chain that could give an attacker full control of a Mac.

Computing

Anthropic is paying $1.5 billion over pirated books, but it can still legally cut up purchased ones

The settlement addressed unauthorized ebook downloads, not the destructive scanning of lawfully bought physical copies, a distinction now alarming booksellers

Book, Publication, Indoors

A federal judge has approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement over nearly half a million pirated books. The same litigation also protected a more physical method of feeding its AI systems. Anthropic bought print books, removed their bindings, scanned every page and destroyed the originals.

The legal divide came down to acquisition. The settlement covers books downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi, while the court treated Anthropic’s one-for-one conversion of purchased books into private digital files as fair use. Training AI models on lawfully acquired material was also considered transformative.