DailyTech - Dell Unveils XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition

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Gadgets Dell Unveils XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition
Brandon Hill (Blog) - December 5, 2007 7:30 AM

53 comment(s) - last by mihai.. on Dec 7 at 8:51 PM

(Source: Notebook Review)

WoW fans can now have their own branded notebook

DailyTech first brought you information on Dell's XPS M1730 back in early August. The 17" notebook uses Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors, comes equipped with dual NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT graphics cards in SLI mode and features an AGEIA PhysX 100M physics processor.

Prices start at $2,699 for the base Core 2 Duo T7500 model and creep up to $4,431 for a Core 2 Extreme X7900 with Windows Vista Ultimate and 400GB of HDD space.

Starting December 11, Dell will make available another edition of its XPS M1730. Dell is catering to World of Warcraft (WoW) fans with a special XPS M1730 WoW Edition notebook.

According to Notebook Review, the WoW Edition comes with the following:

"Horde" or "Alliance" designs on the LCD lid
WoW packaging
Exclusive WoW original artwork on desktop backgrounds and screen savers
A WoW backpack
WoW & Burning Crusade
Strategy Guides
Behind the Scenes, "The Making of WoW" DVD
WoW and Burning Crusade Paperback Novels
WoW Audio Soundtrack
Blizzard beta key card with five keys used to access future WoW games
An upgrade certificate which allows access to a "Collectors Edition Account" to receive a special in-game pet
Golden Ticket to get a pre-paid special custom action figure based on their own in-game WoW character

While all of the goodies are likely to be welcomed by WoW fans, Dell still hasn't provided what standard specifications will be available with the system's $4,499 asking price. It's also doubtful that XPS M1730 WoW Edition will come with the top of the line Core 2 Duo Extreme X7900 processor given that there is only a $68 difference between the two and the abundance of WoW goodies included.

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Sounds good except...

By ranmaniac on 12/5/2007 8:00:33 AM , Rating: 5

It should also include a phone number for WoW Gamers Anonymous.

RE: Sounds good except...

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 8:12:43 AM , Rating: 5

And a warning label on the package stating "By opening this product you practically ensure that you will never get laid again. Open at your own risk."

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Brandon Hill

(blog) on 12/5/2007 8:17:44 AM , Rating: 2

This can be the only answer :D

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RE: Sounds good except...

By FITCamaro on 12/5/07, Rating: -1

RE: Sounds good except...

By suryad on 12/5/2007 8:31:12 AM , Rating: 2

Funny but it is quite far from real life. You will be surprised a lot of WoW players are not your typical thick glasses pizza faced poor hygiene prematurely balding braces wearing geeks.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 8:42:55 AM , Rating: 3

Perhaps not. But its still extremely fun to make fun of WoW players. You are right though. A lot are Chinese gold farmers who sell fake money for real money to the thick glasses pizza faced poor hygiene prematurely balding braces wearing geeks.

And the occasional hot chick who are like a black hole. We know they exist, we just have a hard time finding them to prove it.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Jacerie on 12/5/2007 8:49:18 AM , Rating: 5

Better be careful when making fun of WoW player... Mr. T will bring the Night Elf Mohawk whoop-ass down on ya.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By semo on 12/5/07, Rating: -1

RE: Sounds good except...

By sabre lime on 12/5/2007 9:24:32 AM , Rating: 2

Seems the humour was lost on you.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By aharris on 12/5/2007 10:09:13 AM , Rating: 2

He just hasn't seen the commercial yet.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By semo on 12/5/2007 11:55:28 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
i don't believe anything i see on ads anyway.

i've seen it and even so, i still think mr. t doesn't play wow. that's what i meant.

i can see him eating snickers though
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NySN_plfiNI

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RE: Sounds good except...

By TITAN1080 on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

RE: Sounds good except...

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 9:28:44 AM , Rating: 1

Man I feel bad for your wife. Married to a guy with no sense of humor.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By aharris on 12/5/2007 10:10:55 AM , Rating: 2

Pretty sure the OP wasn't JK about that.

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RE: Sounds good except...

By piotrr on 12/5/2007 3:02:40 PM , Rating: 2

Because stereotyping people is the hippest, coolest mode of humor ever invented in modern times. It's even newer than bad sarcasm!

/ Per

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Bloodlust on 12/5/2007 9:44:00 AM , Rating: 1

Of course we know you are happily married, get laid a lot, and have a hot, smokin' wife, yet still find time to trek across Azeroth with your female night elf character. Why else would you be there?

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RE: Sounds good except...

By TITAN1080 on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

RE: Sounds good except...

By SniperWulf on 12/5/2007 9:53:42 AM , Rating: 2

Hey man don't include me in that group. I play and I get laid at least 10 times a week. Hell if anything my woman and I need to find some Nympho Anonymous groups lol

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RE: Sounds good except...

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 10:09:56 AM , Rating: 5

I run a nightly women's only NA meeting at my apartment. Feel free to tell your girlfriend about it. ;)

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Vanilla Thunder on 12/5/2007 11:29:58 AM , Rating: 3

That's good, because the word Nymphomaniac only applies to the female gender.

nym·pho·ma·ni·a (nmf-mn-, -mny)
n.
Excessive sexual desire in and behavior by a female.

Vanilla

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Drexial on 12/5/2007 1:46:29 PM , Rating: 2

he also runs the Redundancy Department of Being Redundant

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RE: Sounds good except...

By Drexial on 12/5/2007 11:14:13 AM , Rating: 2

I just don't understand why its a laptop, WoWers don't leave their parents basement. :-p

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i dont get it.

By logaldinho on 12/5/2007 7:48:09 AM , Rating: 2

why? what does it get 3 minutes of battery life? or maybe it turns on boots up and powers down unless plugged in.

RE: i dont get it.

By Trisagion on 12/5/2007 7:57:21 AM , Rating: 5

The whole point is, you look at the price and go WoW!

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RE: i dont get it.

By Jacerie on 12/5/2007 8:19:15 AM , Rating: 3

what i really do get is, why is there a Phys-ex card in there let alone the SLI?!?!? This is WoW we're talking about. I play it and i know that it doesn't take that kind of hardware to max out everything in that game.

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RE: i dont get it.

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 12/5/2007 8:30:55 AM , Rating: 2

Yea.. WoW doesn't even use PhysX, let alone SLI. Sounds like marketing gimmick to me.

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RE: i dont get it.

By cochy on 12/5/2007 8:55:37 AM , Rating: 2

Yes. As mentioned in many articles. This product is marketed towards gamers and gamers don't know much about hardware. As you say, they are suckers for marketing gimmicks.

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RE: i dont get it.

By Vanilla Thunder on 12/5/2007 10:08:23 AM , Rating: 2

WoW would probably run on an EEEPC. SLI? Physx? You've got to be kidding.

V.

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RE: i dont get it.

By aharris on 12/5/2007 10:14:28 AM , Rating: 2

Agreed. Wouldn't it be nice if they made custom-tailored laptops like this that didn't exceed $1500? That would've been completely possible with this design concept, but it looks like this is Dell trying to dip their hands in Blizzard's billion dollar pockets the one chance they get.

Wonder if Apple would've bitten on this idea..?

(You're a nub if you start an Apple debate over that comment).

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RE: i dont get it.

By Vanilla Thunder on 12/5/2007 11:26:50 AM , Rating: 2

We could always buy up some EEEPC's, slap some WoW decals on the case, load up a sweet WoW desktop background and screen saver, then push them out the door for like $800 a piece on ebay. What are we waiting for?

Vanilla

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RE: i dont get it.

By StevoLincolnite on 12/5/2007 8:45:34 AM , Rating: 2

If you run XP or Disable Windows Aero, you gain a significant amount of battery life, this is something I noticed on my Acer Aspire, where anything 3D will chew up battery life, also the Processor lowers in clock speed while on battery mode.
And the HDD's are usually only 5400rpm to conserve battery and most pieces of silicon in a laptop are usually Die shrinks/Lowered in clock speeds and voltage anyway.

So it would gain allot more than 3 mins, more like 1 to 2 hours.

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RE: i dont get it.

By aharris on 12/5/2007 10:18:25 AM , Rating: 2

True statement except that...

Laptop hard drives are 5400RPM standard b/c the disk heads have less distance to travel to acquire the same data they do on the 3.5" form of a desktop hard drive. Therefore you actually obtain the "same" speeds from a laptop 5400RPM as you do from a desktop 7200RPM.

At least that's the industry theory behind it. You do still save power, but that was never the focus.

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RE: i dont get it.

By mihai on 12/7/2007 8:51:35 PM , Rating: 2

lol. good thing in reality disk heads dont have to travel, or computers would have a lot of momentum from HDDs. Enough to need a tail rotor :)

actually, the smaller the disk (at the same data density), the smaller the data transfer (smaller linear velocity).

But your logic is interesting though. We just need to build very small disks to get infinite data transfer speed at 0 rpm. Write a memo :)

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wow

By slickr on 12/5/2007 9:52:49 AM , Rating: 2

haha you gota love how everyone is using WOW to sell things.
Comic books of wow, wow chess or whatever is called, wow action figures, wow episodes, wow clothing, wow PC accesories from wow mouse's to wow speakers, wow high budget movie, wow books and now wow laptops.

So let me enlighten you how much blizzard make a month.
9million subscribers x15=135,000,000/2(staff, maintenence, development costs)=67,500,000 pure profit just from 1 month subscription fee. Now if you also calculate the money from all the wow stuff sold= around 100,000,000. Yap 100 millions a month.

Damn i wish i was a blizzard developer.

Not to mention that starcraft 2 will probably sell 10 million copies the first month its out, which i'm a big fan of the game...

RE: wow

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 10:06:57 AM , Rating: 2

If you think the developers of the game are reaping the benefits you're sadly mistaken. I'm sure their pay isn't crap, but don't think they're wiping their @$$ with $100 dollar bills either.

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RE: wow

By Aarnando on 12/5/2007 10:23:30 AM , Rating: 2

I heard that Blizzard provides $100 bills in all company bathrooms. With all the money they have laying around it's easier than sending someone out for toilet paper.

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Does no else see the irony here?

By rushfan2006 on 12/5/2007 2:36:04 PM , Rating: 2

Ok so there's a ton of posts berating WoW players and the stupidity of a "wow themed" laptop with SLI and PhsyX but the people doing that are NOT acting like geeks with their analness? Yet someone who merely enjoys a game is the huge dork? Hmmm...funny as hell if you ask me. ;)

First off - don't be so damn gullible its just having to do with money. WoW is red hot, extremely popular and as such its making money hand over fist - companies exist to make money, if it sells it will be marketed to the masses to sell even more. "They" know you don't need SLI and PhysX for WoW....but it'll sell because of the game.

Much like how you folks slamming WoW know the reason you are slamming it is because its insanely popular, lord knows its not the first game that has consumed many, many hours for many gamers. Just as Microsoft is slammed partially because of their very success, same basic concept here. Not really that different.

The generalizations are entertaining too -- how many hours the casual player players, and if they are this age or that....what are you a friggin census bureau employee on special assignment for Blizzard? ;)

People are people...as such there is no single demographic that accurate fits a gamer, except for maybe an age bracket.

Personally the guild I'm in now - vast majority of players are married - most with kids. Its a more mature guild - for instance the GM even enforces an age requirement (19 minimum) to join because we do NOT want to deal with the ultra geeky teens who live and die for the game alone. We have doctors, an army sargeant, two police officers, a teacher and a few IT folks (of which I include myself) in our guild....not really your nerdy undersexed pizza delivery boy demo. And since we use vent a lot -- if a dozen or so of our members are real women then DAMN that's disgusting as hell because we have some pretty nice sounding guys....LOL.

;)

PS. That all said -- there are people who do play WAY too much...and in that regard I do agree with most of you. My point is there are some of us that simply enjoy the game but have real lives as well, no more and no less. Personally I just don't watch much TV when most folks do.

RE: Does no else see the irony here?

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 3:06:07 PM , Rating: 2

Realize that the heckling is all in good fun and you'll get carpal tunnel far later in life than sooner since you won't have to type this long posts explaining yourself.

Do I think WoW sucks? Yes. Do I think all people who play it are mindless losers sucked into the bottomless pit that it is? No. My two best friends play. And a girl here at work. Plus a few more I probably don't know about.

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RE: Does no else see the irony here?

By rushfan2006 on 12/7/2007 3:31:39 PM , Rating: 2

Fair enough on your views of the game. Lord knows there are plenty of games I think completely blow chunks but yet many folks go crazy over them.

As for the Heckling is in all good fun -- that's fine in spirit if that's all it is, but its hard over a forum to tell emotion so if you look back at some of the "heckling" it seems some people are kinda seriously pissed or hateful at those that like or play the game.

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Big Bang Theory

By derubermensch1 on 12/5/2007 2:58:08 PM , Rating: 2

Has anyone seen the episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon they are all partying in the living room on their laptops and Sheldon abandons his party, grabs the sword of Azeroth, immediately logs out, posts the sword on ebay, someone clicks buy it now, and it turns out the person who bought it was his friend sitting across from him? : ) Awesome show, best half hour comedy to come along in a very long time : )

RE: Big Bang Theory

By FITCamaro on 12/5/2007 3:02:08 PM , Rating: 2

Yes. Saw it Monday night I believe it was.

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RE: Big Bang Theory

By derubermensch1 on 12/5/2007 3:11:28 PM , Rating: 2

It was on again? I can't wait for the strike to be over so we get more episodes. So many of my friend's friends at WPI were exactly like Sheldon so it's hilarious to me : )

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Sad

By Vim on 12/5/2007 9:06:29 AM , Rating: 2

I wonder how many people will go into debt just to buy one of these & of course continue to play endlessly.

RE: Sad

By SpaceRanger on 12/5/2007 9:47:12 AM , Rating: 2

My guess?? It'll get so-so sales. It's a nice mobile gaming platform, but I wouldn't want to saddle a system like that with horrid cover-designs.

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WOW is for casual gamers

By vision33r on 12/5/2007 11:28:49 AM , Rating: 2

Casual gamers dominate WOW today, the content is richly made for casuals. Easier leveling, lots of easy loots, and very easy ways to game.

The proof that WOW is for casual folks is the Black Temple which is the hardest and highest level dungeon in WOW is only being accessed by 1% of the guilds in the entire game. That means 99% of the folks out there aren't even close to finishing the game.

Most WOW players are not geeks, they are usually between high school and working folks. They play probably 3-4 hrs each night but hardly close to hardcore.

The Geek players exists in every type of gaming but they aren't exactly the best or skilled WOW gamers.

RE: WOW is for casual gamers

By saiga6360 on 12/5/2007 1:45:16 PM , Rating: 2

Since we are going to make generalizations about 'geeks' I think we can all agree that geeks can be pretty smart so I'm guessing geeks are smart enough not to try to be the 'best or skilled' with WOW. Even geeks have better things to do.

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Two Words.

By Vanilla Thunder on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

RE: Two Words.

By FITCamaro on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

RE: Two Words.

By Vanilla Thunder on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

RE: Two Words.

By novacthall on 12/5/2007 10:33:31 AM , Rating: 2

To each his own. Here's hoping you found something that made you smile. =)

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WOW Wife

By akitaakita on 12/5/2007 2:59:37 PM , Rating: 2

I am a wow wife. ie a wife that plays wow. My husband plays, my daughter plays and son plays. We run 3 accounts. Are we addicted .... absolutely!

You gotta luv my daughters new T-shirt.
"Now you can tell all your friends you were PAWNED by a girl"

She is a kick butt PVP'r watch out boys.

signed "wow wife"

ps. She wants this laptop real bad, lol.

RE: WOW Wife

By JoshuaBuss on 12/5/07, Rating: 0

Only problem

By SavagePotato on 12/6/2007 12:31:22 AM , Rating: 1

The only problem is they won't sell it to you.

To get the laptop you have to first spend a few weeks gaining Dell faction by posting favorably on message boards.

Once you have enough they attune you to the genius bar and you and 25 of your friends have to head down to the local Mac shop(which you can now enter with your shiny new attunement) and defeat Stephan, the ponytail wearing, goatee bearing overlord that throws refurb iPods at you in an epic battle.

All 25 will have to roll for Stephan's ponytail clip which is bind on pickup and can be traded for the new laptop at the Dell online store.