Dell Alienware M17x and Aurora hands-on

It's true, Dell unleashed two new systems this morning, and naturally we just had to check out the two epically powerful rigs in person. We spent the most time with the new 17-inch M17x, and while the chassis has been updated, it's still loaded with lots of LEDs, a trippy color-changing backlit keyboard, and chrome accents. The lid and edges have been given a more chiseled aesthetic, so we'd say it looks more muscular than ever. Obviously, the big story with the M17x is that it is now 3D capable. The full HD display is seriously beautiful, and while we didn't get to check out a Blu-ray 3D movie on the rig, we can only imagine how breathtaking the experience is going to be. We did, however, get to check out its new integrated 1080p streaming capability, which actually is based on an integrated WHDI solution SiBEAM WirelessHD. You'll need to pick up an extra box and hook it up to your TV, but in the demo we saw there was absolutely no lag between the clip of Final Fantasy on the laptop and on the TV. The unit we saw hanging around was packing a new Core i7 CPU and NVIDIA graphics, but it will apparently be available with AMD's latest graphics as well.

We also caught sometime with the new Aurora desktop, but like we said it wasn't much. The tower is still crazily-lit, but has been updated with the most powerful overclockable Intel Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge processors as well as new NVIDIA graphics that support 3D Vision. The Aurora should be available this month for a starting price of $1,799 and the M17x for $1,499 on January 10th. Hit the break for some more images and the source link for Engadget Spanish's short video. %Gallery-113117%