Alienware's out-there prototypes (pictures)

What conveys power better than a nuclear power plant? Well, this design for Alienware's flagship PC was ultimately nixed.

This design was a top contender for Alienware's 2003 revamp of its computers. This is a refined version.

Beyond a sketch, Alienware began thinking through what types of colors the Reactor could have, including a glowing top.

Count this as one of our favorites. The design is inspired by spaceship crashes, complete with an off-center tower and "afterburner" exhausts on the top.

Talk about alien! This design has squidlike curves and many gill-looking ports. Alas, it was not to be.

This one is probably the closest to a standard PC, though the design could have been pretty fun. Imagine pulling this computer out of an alien junkyard.

Alienware began exploring what the Chopshop would look like as an actual computer. Would you have bought one?

As with the Reactor, Alienware began thinking through how the design would actually function as a real computer. The alien-feel is lost a little in translation though, and now it almost looks like something from a World's Fair in the '60s.

Oddly enough, many of the designs in this one ended up in other products. There are plenty of see-through cases on the market now, and the handles had been used by Apple for its Power Macintosh line since 1999.

Talk about War of the Worlds, this one probably would have been a little harder to open up and change parts in, but imagine if your computer had three feet on it.

This is another practical-seeming prototype. Boxy is easy in computers, and with handles all around the edges, it would have made the computer easy to pick up and carry around.

Look familiar?

Now we come to the design that's most familiar.

The Alienware Predator went on to cement the company's status as a maker of innovative PCs.