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4.5 stars
"Perfect, if you need it, or just want it."
Pros: Power, Speed, Feature Packed, did I mention Power?
Cons: Back Pain, Airport Security (They don't much like the power brick!)
Summary: As usual, the CNET editors did a bang up job of putting a product through its paces and letting us know what they found. That's why I always turn to CNET first. When I bought this machine in September, however, it wasn't even on their radar yet.
My only beef with the CNET review is that they focus completely on using this as a Gaming rig. Now, while this is certainly a formidable gaming machine, it has many attributes that make it highly effective (and reasonable from a cost perspective) as a mobile workstation.
Since I received this machine in 09/2007, I have been back and forth between New York and Chicago almost a dozen times. I also commute on a train. This machine goes where I go. I did not opt for the SLI configuration, I don't really need it. Frankly, I have yet to, and probably won't ever, play a game on this machine. Heck, I don't even watch movies on it. (I use my AV500 for that.)
I bought this machine for the brute force performance and the 3 x 250GB HD configuration. My work requires running multiple VMWare VM's in Workstation 6 ranging from multi CPU Solaris 10 and Win2003/2008 servers, to Linux, Win9x, and even a DOS/Win3.1 environment. As you can imagine, all of these OS's chew up a bunch of disk. If I were to store these on external USB disks, as I have in the past, performance would lag painfully regardless of the CPU. With the combination of CPU, Memory, and Disk available in this package, all of the VM's run quickly side by side with Visual Studio, Outlook, Word, etc. Heck, sometimes I run 'Net Radio and Rip a DVD (for backup purposes only) all at the same time.
I can do all this, and, when I have to go somewhere, I pick up the machine the brick (no kidding it is exactly the same size as an actual brick) and I'm out the door. No fussing about with USB cables and drives and junk. Yes it's heavy, but my laptop bag is actually lighter now than it was before because I don't have to carry the peripherals (or forget them which is certainly worse).
As for the lack of dedicated multi-media keys; I always wondered if anyone actually used them. I never touched them on other machines. By the time I thought to use the Media Keys, I had already hit the keyboard shortcut key sequence. Heck, I think the 5 app launcher keys on the machine now are a waste of time.
The point is, for the compute intensive, app developing, road warrior, this rig is as close to uncompromising as you can get and still fit it in the overhead bin. Don't bother pulling it out on the plane though. Only the tray tables in first class are big enough and even those groan under the weight of the thing. So if you want a trick laptop to impress people on the plane, then this isn't it. If, however, you need a "tank" that out runs a Ferrari (as in Acer Ferrari) while pulling nearly a Terabyte of data along with it, then this is the rig for you.
