I don't get it?

Was one notebook tested under XP and the other Vista???

Why would you do that?

They had two notebooks come in at the same time, with the same display size and resolution, similar weight, etc. so the higher ups thought it would be the closest match for a comparison from notebooks they had on hand.

The only "fair" way to compare two "similar in some ways, disimilar in others" systems is in "bang for the buck".

...it would have been nice if Eurocom had used WinXP Pro, but they didn't. It was up to the technician and writer to work with whatever they had.

yes, but if Eurocom had used WinXP it would have been the perfect opportunity to examine the SLI advantage in a Notebook setting. The big question being "for MY game, is the performance advantage worth the price?"

The only fair way would have been to format both machines and install either XP Pro or Vista on both. Yes it would have been more time consuming but not impossible. Then there would have been a clear "apples to apples" comparison between the two which would have give folks a real idea if there was an advantage between a single card versus an SLI system without distorting your results with driver issues, compatibility issues and OS issues. You could have easily been robbing one system out of 15 - 20fps on any one application.

Its just sloppy and lazy.

When I recieved my Dell XPS M1330, the first thing I did was format that sucker into two partitions. In one I installed XP Pro and in another I installed Vista U. I then installed like applications and benchmarks and proceeded to see what differences I was getting. As expected, the XP games ran much better than Vista, but Vista multitasked a bit better. It was a pain getting all XP drivers but I did it and wasn't even getting paid by a high profile company to do so.

Am I missing something here... with a $3400 - $4400 price range, GeForce Go 7950 (or two), and 17" with 1920x1200 resolution - Aren't these the higher end of gaming laptops? Or is their some significantly faster laptop hardware (CPU/GPU) out there that I don't know about?

To use desktop video cards as a rough scale for the weight classes:
8800 Ultra: Bleeding Edge (Fastest Available)
8800 GTX: Heavy Weight (almost as fast, ~80% price of ^)
8800 GTS: Middle Weight (decent price/performance ratio)
8600 GT: Budget gamer (adequate performance at a low price)
<8400: El cheap-o gamer (student that dreams of something better while forced to eat mac and cheese to afford this one)

I'd personally love to see how a Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz with an 8600 GT @ ~1440x900 compares to those 2 systems.

Thomas Soderstrom and Shelton Romhanyi need to do some research before wasting their time on an article like this.

For those who are uninformed, like Thomas Soderstrom and Shelton Romhanyi both Alienware and Eurocom use CLEVO laptops. Europcom pretty much takes the CLEVO models as they are and resells them. Alienware takes the internal components and puts them into a slick laptop shell. For more info on the Clevo models go here...

http://www.clevo.com.tw/

Everyone in this forum is correct, this article compares apples to oranges. The Alienware model is the Clevo D900C while the Eurocom model is the M570RU. If they wanted to have a more accurate comparison they should have used the Eurocom D900C PHANTOM-X. It is the same model... only significantly cheaper and it doesn't sport the Alienware name or case.

Oh and BTW the Alienware mode is considered to be a desktop replacement. Only they don't use a standard desktop processor in order to save energy and allow them to use a smaller power supply. The Eurocom/Clevo desktop replacement I listed above uses full blown desktop processors, making it a better choice for gamers and space concious worker bees.

The Eurocom laptop listed is the only middle weight contender since the Alienware is just a underpowered version of a heavyweight desktop replacement.

Good job on the lack of research, Not!

Ok, lets assume that you are right... I am a dumbass. Help educate me. Tell me what the differences are between two systems that originate from the same manufacturer (differences that the manufacturer hasnt told everyone already). Why would a manufacturer (CLEVO) produce two systems that do the same thing and/or are in the same class? Ummm... thats right they didn't! Why go for the same market share with two products, why not make one product for each market? Oh, that's right, CLEVO did! Only instead of using the good yet heavy cooling within the heavyweight D90 series Alienware simply used their own solution and used a mobile processor in order to keep temps and weight down, consequently robbing it of its processing/gaming power.

Don't get me wrong, I am not disputing that the Alienware takes the cake here for the better gaming solution between the two. But why do a compare and contrast between to dissimilar systems?

Why not do a compare and contrast with another sli laptop? Oh, thats right thats all they had available to them to review right? Well you could write a review comparing and contrasting the differences between your mom and a pile of feces (since you probably have ready access to both) but would it really be worth writing about? Who would really gain anything from that write-up? Same applies here. If you don't have the right equipment, don't write the article. Do individual reviews with benchmarks if you must but don't try to pawn a review like this off as legitimate.

Calling me dumb because I point out someone elses lack of effort/research is like the pot calling the kettle black. I do my research, as does most of the other readers within the tomshardware realm. But hey what do I know, I'm the dumbass right?

Pretty sure that's 100% wrong. Would you not get only 160gb of space?

No, Level 0 gives you 320GB, RAID 1 gives you 160GB.

I am in the process of building a 3 disk RAID 0 array for a review unit. Should make the slowest component. the hard drives as good as they can get.