Zepto's Hydra A17 leaves no cliche unturned

Let's see, we've got tons of black, a semi-gothic dragon thing, a "Z" in the brand name and a mythological creature in the product name. Yup, Zepto's new Hydra A17 is exactly what gamers need. Sure, the P9500 Core 2 Duo processor, 1920 x 1200 17-inch screen and NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX with 1GB of VRAM don't hurt. There's even a subwoofer and 4GB of RAM, yours for a mere £2,029 (about $3,585 US). Luckily, you can strip this one down to £1,420 (about $2,510 US) but you'll have to sign over your gamer cred at the door -- we might not even let you thread safety pins through your eyebrows.

[Via PC Launches]

[Trevor @ Sep 5th 2008 9:10PM]

[ ]Gaming
[ ]Laptop

Choose one.

[yopladas @ Sep 5th 2008 9:16PM]

where do you get that background? (i know im replying to get a 2nd post :P)

[JohnTitor @ Sep 5th 2008 9:20PM]

choose both, there's a huge market for gaming laptops for portability and convenience etc
they aren't any slouches either, the most powerful is the Clevo D900C
available with desktop Quad Core Extreme CPU, dual 9800GTX, 2 DVD/Blu-ray drive bays, and 3 harddrives in RAID

[Znarfaggle @ Sep 5th 2008 10:08PM]

@John: yeah, that sounds portable. like a tank. technically, it's mobile, but you don't want to put on in your backpack probably.

then again it probably beats my new antec 900 case in terms of portability.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 5th 2008 9:13PM]

You can also sign over your "ever getting laid" cred while you're at it.

[Haikibutsu @ Sep 5th 2008 10:03PM]

Why is everything about 'getting laid'.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 6th 2008 12:48AM]

The Hydra A17 will have buyers.

So not EVERYTHING is about getting laid, obviously.

[Conor @ Sep 6th 2008 1:43AM]

You'll find out someday.

[puhsitch @ Sep 6th 2008 12:11PM]

Because that's what we're on this planet to do, Haikibutsu.

[Intellectual and Open-Minded @ Sep 5th 2008 9:14PM]

[ ]OSX
[ ]Poor OS.

Choose one.

[Striker @ Sep 5th 2008 9:21PM]

Seriously, drop it. Vista makes my Thinkpad T61 all moist and yummy like cake. I bet you can't say that about your OS.

[machine @ Sep 5th 2008 9:40PM]

But I don't want OS X or Linux.

[Ignatius @ Sep 5th 2008 9:57PM]

But hey, you can use your MBA to cut that moist and yummy cake! At least it's good for something. ;D

[Ninjakamster (PS360 FTW!) @ Sep 5th 2008 10:04PM]

Your username can't be further from the truth in describing you Mactard.

[Znarfaggle @ Sep 5th 2008 10:10PM]

i'm with ninja.
your comment was silly.


meta-discussion: does commenting on an unnecessary comment make my comment useless too?

[Ayle @ Sep 5th 2008 10:17PM]

Intellectual and open minded my ass!

[Matthew C @ Sep 6th 2008 12:03PM]

I chose both :)

[ZeitgeistXIII @ Sep 6th 2008 1:50PM]

The cake is a lie!

[Coolbee8 @ Sep 6th 2008 1:09PM]

At this kind of price level, dell m1730 with raid 0 drives and sli-8800m GTXs seen better than this to me.

[JohnTitor @ Sep 5th 2008 9:17PM]

This Laptop is YET-ANOTHER-REBRANDED-CLEVO, the original has been out for like 2 years
look it up, the original color is Orange trips, I'll reply the model number if I'm not lazy later

[JohnTitor @ Sep 5th 2008 9:26PM]

ok there's the original, its known as the M571TU
http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo.asp?productid=84

I was wrong, the Orange trims are standard on the Sager rebranding
available here for a much better price
http://www.pctorque.com/sager-5796-gaming-computers.php

[dBs @ Sep 5th 2008 10:04PM]

Yep, I was going to say the same thing. In fact Im TYPING on one =P

[gob33 @ Sep 6th 2008 12:43AM]

I agree. CLEVO is a taiwan manufacturer.
Their laptops are solid, not realy quiet because of heat of processors, but you can configure at your convenience and parts are easy to replace when broken or upgrading.
Quality/price is good.

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Sep 5th 2008 9:25PM]

same i think
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/range.html?t=nb&c=all&r=X70

Older Orange tipped one
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/range.html?t=nb&c=all&r=X8B

[MICHAELSD @ Sep 5th 2008 9:55PM]

I agree with John, there are all rebranded Clevos, there's nothing special about any of them. I think you should report when Clevo or Sager (Sager is the official reseller in the US, and any Clevos bought in the US actually ship from them) releases the notebook, not when every brand releases the same one. They're all built by Sager and designed by Clevo anyway, only orders and tech support are handled by the resellers.

[1234321 @ Sep 5th 2008 10:37PM]

I'm pretty sure Sager is just one manufacturer
Falcon Northwest and formerly VoodooPC and Alienware before being bought by HP and Dell made them too at prices so f'ed up they weren't worth looking at

[Ninjakamster (PS360 FTW!) @ Sep 5th 2008 10:06PM]

What I want instead of these gaming laptops are external graphics, and ATI looks to be the closest to that with their XGP solution that was announced a few months ago but unfortunately, would be restricted to AMD Puma notebooks, they developed with another company a proprietary port, won't be using the slow Expresscard format.

So I can have a 12" thin and light Puma laptop to take around school and when at home, hook it up to my HDTV with a high end ATI card and use it as a gaming PC. Much better than carrying around a 17" laptop.

I'm waiting for these external graphics, so many laptops out there have fast processors, lots of ram and a fast hard drive but either low end discrete or integrated graphics.

[1234321 @ Sep 5th 2008 10:39PM]

great idea but never seems to work out, ATi and ASUS seem to never be able to release the XGP and XG Station after years of development

for some reason I feel like nothing in a laptop market becomes mainstream without intel's endorsement

[Wolfticket @ Sep 5th 2008 10:09PM]

Engadget article about mediocre laptop leaves no cliché unturned.

[Danger @ Sep 5th 2008 10:14PM]

At the risk of being downranked, does anyone else feel that this blog is turning completely satirical?
I like the occasional jab or two, in fact, I encourage it, but during my light, random browsing this week, I realized that I haven't read one serious gadget or tech article on this site.

Instead of poking fun at every single product or technology, how about giving us the real news, and then taking a stab at it?

[sr1329 @ Sep 5th 2008 10:53PM]

Are people using the term "subwoofer" indiscriminately or is it just me?

[CJ @ Sep 6th 2008 8:43AM]

Well, if it is a speaker that produces sound in the low ranges of frequency (or 'Sub-woofer' level, 'woofer' being the term for a midrange speaker), then it's a 'Subwoofer'. The same way that any speaker that produces sound in the high ranges of frequency is a 'Tweeter'.

Not all subwoofers are twelve inches across and designed to leave no room in the boot of a Honda Civic.

[Benson @ Sep 6th 2008 3:27PM]

Indeed, some of the better ones are designed for real cars; they don't even fit in Hondas.

[Scabrous Vermicelli @ Sep 6th 2008 1:09AM]

Apple is way behind in terms of offering semi-gothic dragon things for their systems. I'm terribly disappointed that it has persisted this long and might have to start a petition. Moar dragonz!

[blockdog @ Sep 6th 2008 3:49AM]

Don't care about laptop, just need this wallpaper! :))

[Matthew C @ Sep 6th 2008 12:44PM]

me 2

[becoming @ Sep 6th 2008 10:30AM]

That wallpaper is very needed!

[JR007 @ Sep 6th 2008 12:53PM]

Oh sweet...need that wall, please..........

[insats @ Sep 8th 2008 2:30AM]

Well, atleast zepto makes their own laptops as well (such as Nox A15) and not only rebranded clevos.

[ice @ Sep 8th 2008 11:00AM]

i needa get that wallpaper, seriously it's awesome!

[Alexander @ Sep 18th 2008 8:25AM]

A piece of advice

Get VLC (for example)
Download HD trailer for Hydra

Take a screenshot in the end of the video when the dragon is appearing ;)