A few weeks ago my old desktop passed away in the heat and I decided to get a replacement.  I considered doing a build-your-own or looking for a greybox or Dell that would suit my desires, but building my own just doesn’t appeal to me anymore, and nothing else really inspired me to hand over the hard earned cash.

On a whim I checked out the Alienware site and noticed that they had some ex-demo units for sale.  Now admittedly Alienware is one helluva an expensive brand and even an ex-demo unit is pricey for what you get, but I thought to myself “hey – I’m due for a mid life crisis and I can’t really see myself buying a Harley so why don’t I get one of these little objects of nerd lust even if I have to pay a little extra”.

I’ve got to say, so far I’m very impressed and I’m not at all let down by the price premium.  The build quality of this thing is second to none. I can’t even tell it’s an ex-demo unit.

It’s now running Windows 7 x64 beta and it flies along so I’m a very happy little customer. Oh, for the curious the WEI on Windows 7 is a 6.0, with the hard disk speed being the limiting factor (it’s a 7200 rpm drive).  The RAM and CPU are low 7’s, and the gaming graphics are a 6.7.  I’m pretty happy with those numbers, plus when I’m bored I can just stare at the shiny black box with blue lighting effects.  Mmmm shiny!  Plus it came with a Razer backlit keyboard and a freakin’ awesome Razer mouse with blue running lights.  Gaming in the dark just got so much better!

Anyway, here’s some unboxing pics for your enjoyment and my self edification.  By the way if anyone comments to tell me my machine is teh suxOr your input will be promptly deleted :-)

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The internals include a Phenom 9750 Quad Core, a single Radeon 4850 HD graphics card and 4 Gig of DDR2-800 RAM.