Having paid the equivalent of rm 17k for a gaming laptop from alienware which i don't use anymore 3 years ago when i had more money than sense, i can say i'll never do it again. From experience those mofos/desktop replacements are just too heavy/bulky for prolonged used and run too hot and noisily.

They also seem to be a bad idea for a smoker like myself due to all the dust they collect from the fans spinning at full speed:p

Just looking at the first configuration option makes me think that it's badly designed already.. Running 1680x1050, or 1920x1200 on a 17" screen? Madness.

The designers must like squinting their eyes really hard to read the onscreen text. Not to mention how much work your graphic card(s) will have to do to display at the native res.

Having raid 0 on a gaming laptop is more than feasible.. but only if you're running solid state drives in raid like what alienware is currently offering.

I actually know from experience, my old alienware lappy had a resolution of 1600x1200 on a similarly sized screen. And 3 years ago, it was just not feasible to run 1600x1200 for gaming on a midrange dedicated graphics card. It's not comfortable at all, small text for standard use even at the largest pixel pitch, less than ideal frame rates at such high resolutions, blurry pictures when running games below the native resolution.

Modern games are getting to the point when a 7950gtx will dip below a minimum of 25fps at 1920x1200 resolution. Not to mention 1920x1200 is the standard resolution for a 24" monitor, imagine shrinking that to the size of a 17"

Also, if you're staring too closely at a laptop, it means either your eyes are bad or you're sitting too closely with a bad posture.