A Xenomorph might be involved

One of the PC’s weaknesses is the tendency to be generic. That’s certainly not a weakness of Alienware’s new Aurora ALX. Using a new redesigned chassis, there’s no way your Aurora ALX will be confused with a bland black box.

And how could it, given its signature Xenomorph look? Previous Alienware cases have felt like rebadged commodity cases, but this new case is clearly unique. When we plugged the PC into the wall socket, the set of ventilation vents on top slowly flapped open and closed—as though the ominous black creature were alive and just took a breath.

Getting inside of the case added to the mystery. Like a caveman hammering away on a flying saucer with a rock, we just didn’t know how to open the thing. We finally found that lifting the very last ventilation flap unlocks the side hatch. With the door off of the blowing, pulsing, and breathing Aurora ALX, was it alien technology we saw? Fortunately, it was more Earth-bound. Inside, we found a water-cooled Core i7-975 Extreme Edition on a custom Micro ATX X58 motherboard. Graphics were in the hands of the latest hotness, two CrossFired ATI Radeon HD 5870s. Along with 6GB of RAM and a Blu-ray combo drive, there wasn’t much wanting in the rig. We do take issue with the storage configuration, which comprises two 1TB drives in RAID 0, with no local backup drive. Scary. However, we like the mounting system, which gives you easy access to drives.

Also quite cool is the Aurora’s new lighting system. Multicolor LED lights are embedded in the case, and the lights on the included keyboard and mouse can be changed in Windows to pulsate or even alert you if you have email waiting. The same application also lets you control the vents on top. It’s well done and far beyond what you can get from the typical boutique vendors, whose main customization is exotic paint.

This would be nothing without performance behind it, and the Aurora’s stock clock Core i7-975 performs as you’d expect it to. It’s plenty speedy but by no means a record breaker, especially when compared to the spate of 4GHz 975 rigs we’ve tested. The vast majority of those systems, however, pushed the $7,000 to $9,000 mark. The Aurora ALX is practically a bargain at $4,200. Compared to its direct peers, though, the Aurora ALX poses an interesting dilemma. Falcon’s $4,800 Talon system (reviewed in January) is faster, thanks to its overclocked 3.83GHz Core i7 and quad CrossFire configuration, but it’s also an LGA1156 system. The Aurora ALX is LGA1366, so when Intel comes out with its hexa-core Core i9 next year, the ALX can take the upgrade—the Falcon cannot.

That puts the ALX in a good place for folks who want a unique machine—without any of the hassles that can crop up with overclocking.

Touchscreen PCs haven't really taken off the way, say, touch-capable smartphones, media players, and other handheld gadgets have, and a big reason for that is a lack of power. So it makes sense (and gets us a little excited) that HP would cram a Core i7 chip into its TouchSmart line as part of its new 600 Quad series.

You do have to pay to play, however, with pricing starting off at $1,700. That gets you a 23-inch touchscreen display with an Intel Core i7 720QM quad-core chip racing along at 1.6GHz and 6MB of L2 cache. That also includes 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory, a 750GB 7200RPM hard drive (or 1TB if you're willing to roll with a 5400RPM spindle speed), Nvidia's GeForce GT230M graphics with a 1GB frame buffer, slot-load DVD burner, Wi-Fi, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and other odds and ends.

Some of the more noteworthy upgrade options include an Intel Core i7 820QM quad-core CPU (1.73GHz, 8MB L2 cache), twice the amount of RAM, a 1.5TB 7200RPM for just $50 more, and a Blu-ray player.

The HP TouchSmart 600 Quad series is available now.

Image Credit: HP

Just about everything you could want to know about Alienware's M11x 'sorta-netbook' has been leaked to the Web, including when the 11.6-inch notebook is supposed to launch.

It looks as though the M11x will land first in Japan this Friday, February 5th, and then in Malaysia sometime later this month. According to a leaked slide, Dell has decided to bump up the price from $799 to $899, putting the M11x further away from traditional netbook territory.

Not that there would be any mistaking the M11x with a traditional netbook. Rather than an Atom processor with integrated Intel or Nvidia Ion graphics, the M11x will come configured with either an Intel Pentium 1.3GHz chip or Core 2 Duo 1.3Ghz processor, and Nvidia's GT 335M graphics with a 1GB frame buffer, giving the notebook enough power to play 720p HD video

The M11x was originally scheduled to launch in the U.S. sometime this spring, but given that it's being released in Japan later this week, we wouldn't be surprised Dell released it stateside much earlier.

Image Credit: Alienware via netbooked.net

With the announcement of its Wind U135 'Special Edition Netbook' line, MSI and its entourage of ultraportables arrive fashionably late to the Pine Trail party. 'Special,' in this case, probably refers to the U135's "stylish color film printed case," which MSI claims prevents smudging.

The rest of the U135 is like just about every other Pine Trail netbook we've seen to date. Flying in the Wind is an Intel Atom N450 processor, along with Intel GMA3150 graphics, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB or 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n, 1.3MP webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, 3-cell or 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 Starter.

MSI also decked out the U135 series with its now familiar ECO Engine Technology. Exclusive to MSI, this power saving tech allows the user to switch between 5 different power modes -- Gaming, Movie, Presentation, Document, and Turbo Battery -- to extend the life of the battery.

The Wind U135 series is available now for $310-$330.

Image Credit: MSI