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The question is: what for? To sell more of the old stuff before new line of Kepler dices comes in? Commercially - prolly very welcome. Practically - unnecessary. Well, Intel did exactly the same with refreshing the i7 line, didn't they. :-/ I've seen some people at NBR switching from 2920xm to 2960xm just because of the higher number, or at least that's what they put in their signatures (i wonder how many specs given in sigs actually bend the truth "a bit"). BTW, I believe that Kepler will be nothing more than Fermi redone in 28nm. People expect new designs, ultra abilities and hyper performance. Prolly nothing like that will come. They will just re-produce Fermi in 28nm, make it at average 20-25% faster with focus on more performance per Watt and then sell a whole new series of cards. Making cards faster is commercially illogical. It's better to release a new series of somewhat faster cards again. And then again. Nvidia kept on milking poor Fermi for more than 2 years. Correct me if I am wrong.

I used a book for two months with the m18x. the laptop was too heavy and kept on sliding down. that was quite annoying, plus I damaged the book. That thing from Belkin costs less than 10 bucks and is very stable.

Re price. You can always negotiate prices with Alienware. Call and ask for a discount. If that rep refuses, call another one. In such a way I actually managed to pay 450 EUR less for my M18x this summer. It was the 6th rep I tried that day who finally agreed to cut the price.

Gaming is generally GPU dependent, so regardless of a CPU of your choice even with the weaker GPU option, so GT 555m 1.5GB (which really isn't such a bad card), you will still be able to play games, e.g. BF3. The difference between 1.5Gb and 3GB version isn't anyway drastic, so if you are not going to play games the difference of those 100-150 bucks isn't worth it. For the CPU, i5s and i7s available for m14x significantly differ: i5 2430M features 2 cores and 4 threads while even the weakest i7 2670QM has 4 cores and 8 threads and twice as much cache. This pretty much makes such an i7 CPUs quite potent, while the i5 remains 'regularly' efficient (meaning no thrills). If you won't game hard and play around with overclocking your GPU and so on, the laptop should not overheat. You can always on the fly switch off the dedicated Nvidia GPU and run everything just using the CPU and the Intel integrated graphics built into the CPU, and hence gaining battery life and lower temperatures. You can also apply high quality thermal paste to lower temperatures even more, but in case of m14x that's quite complicated for a beginner. All of this means I would strongly suggest to get an i7. If you don't want to spend too much, already 2670QM will do just fine. A stronger i7 processor will deliver much higher efficiency and will be somewhat more time-proof. According to alienware.com the difference i5 2430M vs i7 2670QM, including the cost of faster memory, is 140 bucks. That's not that much, is it? Worth spending. Edit: BTW, 2670QM does not support 1600Mhz RAM. There is a mistake there forcing you to upgrade to faster/more expensive RAM. Better call them and order the laptop by the phone. I mean, faster RAM will be somewhat faster anyway even if the CPU is stuck at 'talking' to memory at 1333, yet it seems you don't want to pay too much, so stay with generic 1333. You may also want to invest in two other things: a 1600x900 display and an SSD drive. SSDs drives truly make all the difference. Choose the cheapest disk option when ordering the laptop and buy an SSD disk separately. It will be much cheaper this way. BTW, if you want your laptop to run reasonably cooled, keep its back a bit elevated, as the air intake is placed on the bottom and sucks the air from below your laptop. You don't need a laptop cooler for that (laptop coolers don't really work, let's face it). Something like Belkin Coolstrip will do just fine.

Anyone else getting excited about these two titles? GRFS will feature quite intelligent and demanding multiplayer. Should be quite refreshing after the "Call of Duty" stylized shooters. I am truly looking forward to playing this game. Oh, GR Online will be free to play (different game, different developer).

As soon as IV arrives any SB XM will significantly drop in price, and IV arrives in a few months. I am fine with 2860qm anyway. I was fine with 2720qm running on my m18x too. Haven't noticed any difference so far talking regular use.

What to expect? 580M SLI's performance is outstanding. This thing can chew on anything, literally. You may want to use a moddified vbios making performance levels p0 and p1 equal. This along with 285.62+ drivers will make the infamous throttle problem disappear almost completely. You can find a neat list of modded bioses in here. If you have any more questions, just ask.

AFAIR XMP memory will work without any problem with M14x. The thing is you will have to tweak it a bit in BIOS, Frenzy. You can also go higher and get 1866Mhz memory. The CPU will 'talk' to RAM at 1600Mhz, but still 1866Mhz offers faster memory transfers. I bet 1600 will be just fine, though.