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Alienware introduces 4x Blu-ray drives for desktops
Alienware, never afraid of spec'ing its machines just a little bit ahead of the curve, has just introduced 4x Blu-ray drives into its Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500, Area-51 ALX, and Aurora ALX desktops, making the systems the first in the industry (or so they claim) to carry the faster drives. The new additions to the PCs will offer a significant performance increase in reading and writing Blu-ray discs (a 100 percent increase, in case you're not doing the math), which should make burning those massive discs just slightly more tolerable. Of course, the whole shebang is backward-compatible with CD and DVD discs, per typical Blu-ray spec, and will set you back an additional $600. Available right now.
Alienware Aurora 7500 gaming tower reviewed
When reviewing a computer from Alienware (or any other "boutique" electronics manufacturer, for that matter) it's difficult to compare to other systems on the market, mainly because these machines will offer a lot more power than your typical white box PC but also cost a good deal more than a similarly-equipped rig that you've built yourself. Therefore, setups like the ~$3,000 Aurora 7500 tower will never lead the pack in value, but XYZ Computing gives this particular model a thumbs up when it comes to performance, build quality, and upgradability -- and those benefits don't come cheap. As you'd expect, the 7500's dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor and dual nVidia GeForce 7900GT cards in SLI configuration make short work of even the toughest benchmarks, delivering more-than-acceptable framerates for high-end games even at a resolution of 1,600 x 1,200. Besides the steep price (though again, if you want this kind of power on the cheap, you're gonna have to spend hours building your own box), there's not much to criticize about this model, although XYZ laments the lack of dedicated fans for the dual hard drives and the fact that the toasty GPUs don't receive the same kind of liquid-cooling love as the CPU. Still, if you've got some extra dough laying around, but not a lot of extra time, it sounds like you can rest assured that the Aurora 7500 will deliver the top-notch fragging capabilities you desire.
Alienware's Aurora 7500 first to offer AMD LIVE!
We're sure this whole all-caps "LIVE!" thing is going to get old after a while, but for now we'll revel in AMD's attempt at a Viiv competitor and bother you with all sorts of systems based on it. Alienware has not only packed this new spec into their new Aurora 7500 and Area-51 7500 desktops, but are throwing in a Blu-ray drive as well to sweeten the deal. As with Viiv, most of the LIVE! spec is based around a bunch of vague multimedia buzz words, but the LIVE! software package seems like it'll make a decent addition to a WMCE PC, and it really can't hurt anything. Otherwise the specs stay true to their recently announced Aurora ALX roots, including quad SLI, liquid cooling, and of course some AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 to compensate for something power your exciting and fulfilling life. We specced a 7500 for what we guess is LIVE! compatibility (they're not actually letting you order 'em yet, though the Blu-ray drives are available now) for around $4300, so we suggest you get saving.[Via BIOS]
