The Belly Of The Beast
An indicator on the bottom of the battery informs owners of its charge state at the push of a button. Below it, a custom name plate informs non-owners to whom this notebook belongs.
Much of the remaining underside is covered in ventilation, though Alienware does its customers the favor of pasting the Intel logo here. Microsoft's license certificates are wear-prone and easily-damaged, though lamination is an option.
The 11.1 V battery has the 85 Wh capacity needed to support a high-frequency Core i7 and two graphics cards, even if it’s only for a few minutes.
Opening the center cover reveals a pair of hard drives, a removable CPU fan, and a memory cover.
Though the memory and drives are easily-replaced, the rest of the M17x isn’t designed for simple upgrades. As with most non-user-configurable notebooks, the entire system must be disassembled from the top-down to access its most-important parts.
The support kit includes a manual, reinstallation disks, Flextronics 220 W power supply, hat, mouse pad, and decal. In a particularly Alien-unfriendly move, the hat is too shallow to fit most large or pointy heads.
