
We'll forgive it this drawback though as the laptop is mainly designed for indoor use - anyone who dares take its garish green chassis outdoors runs the risk of being attacked by bees. If you're on a train or near a window, for example, reflections are all too prominent.

The 17-inch widescreen display is great for gaming and looks great when running at its full 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution, but its reflective Clearview coating doesn't make for great viewing if using the laptop in broad daylight. It's difficult to find fault with the core specification, though - 2GB of RAM and a 2.2GHz processor are difficult to argue with. Power moguls may bemoan the lack of a top-end GTX-badged card, but the price hike between the GS and GTX is an unreasonable one for all but the most hardcore of gamers.

Alienware has strapped together two 512MB GeForce Go 7900 GS cards into this £2,000 version and it certainly shows. The big performance shout with the m9700 is undoubtedly the SLI configuration. There's a good mix of audio connectors on the right side of the laptop
