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Alienware laptop is fast and furiously expensive

The new Alienware Area 51 m5790 now ships with an optional overclocked Core 2 Duo processor.

Alienware Area 51 m5790

This morning Alienware officially announced a Special Edition of its Area-51 m5790 desktop-replacement laptop. What's so special about it? You can now order the m5790 with an overclocked Core 2 Duo processor, boosting its frequency to 2.66GHz. The company claims the overclocked Core 2 Duo will run up to 20 percent faster than the previous-generation Core Duo processors. The hot chip is paired with a high-performance ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 graphics card (which has 256MB of dedicated memory) and room for up to 2GB of swift 667MHz RAM. A 17-inch wide-screen display, with a 1,920x1,200 native resolution, complements the built-in Blu-ray drive, and if you're feeling flush with cash, you can stuff the laptop's two hard drive bays with 7,200rpm drives and up to 400GB of capacity.

Alienware says it wants to provide an "elite multimedia experience" with the m5790, and elite it is. Very, very elite. Though the laptop's starting price is a palatable $1,299, upgrading to the highest-end component options will bring you more in the $4,000 range (the overclocked processor alone adds $800 to the base price). Given the price of CNET stock (cough), we don't think a tricked-out m5790 will be showing up in the Crave household anytime soon--but we can always dream.