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Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop 338

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-many-jokes dept.
Psychor writes "Dell has released a high specification new laptop complete with World of Warcraft branding (Horde and Alliance versions available). With a starting price of $4,499 it's not cheap, but does feature SLI graphics and AGEIA PhysX technology (a laptop first). RAID and solid state storage are also options." Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.
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Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop More

Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop

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  • Is this really needed? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:15AM (#21585009) Journal
    Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with? I know that Burning Crusade was a little harder on systems than the original game and that Lich King is likely to be slightly more so, but we're still not talking about a game on the cutting edge of technology here. Even cheap, off-the-peg PCs bought in the last two or three years should be able to run it just fine. World of Warcraft relies more on design than technology for its visual appeal.

    Crysis? Sure, I can see that people could need an expensive upgrade to play that (I know I would - although after playing the first 2 hours, I'm not convinced the game is worth it)... but not World of Warcraft.

    That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.

    • Re:Is this really needed? (Score:5, Funny)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:18AM (#21585039) Journal
      Would the Alliance laptop not be able to boot unless it outnumbered the Horde laptops 2 to 1? ;)

    • Re:Is this really needed? (Score:5, Funny)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:19AM (#21585065) Homepage Journal
      So you can watch the resale value of it plummet as it is superseded both by new technologies and new trends in MMOs?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fizzl ( 209397 )
        Who resells computers anyway?
        I have like of box full of shit from last two decades in my attic. My upgrade cycle used to go like:
        1. Upgrade PC
        2. Demote old parts to the bedroom PC
        3. Demote old parts to the file server
        4. Demote old parts to that box in the attic

        When you get to the step 4, the parts are of no worth to anyone. And for some reason I cannot get myself to just trash them :)

        Nowadays I only buy laptops thou. The last one I sold, because it took so long in Acer warranty service that I had to buy a n

        • Re:Is this really needed? (Score:5, Funny)

          by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:59AM (#21585555)
          When you get to the step 4, the parts are of no worth to anyone.

          I disagree, they have a use. For example, I've still got my old ZX Spectrum. I showed it to my son last year, and he asked me in all seriousness where the dvd's went in. Then I mentioned the memory capacity (oh how awesome 48k was back then..) and he looked at me like it was time for me to visit the 'special' home.

          Ok so the use was to make me feel old and look silly, but it's still a use..

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by twistedsymphony ( 956982 )
          I know how you feel... "but... I spent $500 on that 4meg hard drive!"

          Maybe us /. posters should pool all our old equipment together and open a chain of computer museums.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by AnotherUsername ( 966110 )
            Do you really think that getting all these slashdotters together in the real world is healthy? I mean, online is one thing...but think of the children...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by shadowrat ( 1069614 )

      While World of Warcraft is not that demanding on hardware, there are plenty of other games that are.

      There isn't any stipulation that WoW is the only game you can play on this. It's simply a high end gaming laptop that happens to be WoW themed.

      Or maybe some people just want to play WoW on a laptop that can also handle Vista Aero :P

    • Re:Is this really needed? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:51AM (#21585477)
      That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.

      A $100 copy of Windows XP on any computer will do that just fine.
    • ...they should have just released a WoW Special Edition P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4 instead.

      Makes perfect sense.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) *
        Or perhaps a Crysis/CoD4/anything-that-might-actually-challenge-a-modern-PC branded uber-laptop, mmm?

        It's no secret that its the fps market that drives the top-end gaming PCs market. MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base. A cynic might suggest that it is those who are time-rich but cash-poor (to put it euphemistically) who are the most reliable market for these games, so forcing an expensive upgrade doesn't make sense.
        • Take a look at the rankings on the bottom left:

          http://www.xfire.com/ [xfire.com]

          Which market would you rather sell to? Nevermind the fact that Xfire is more entrenched in the FPS community than any other game community so the WoW numbers there are probably disproportionately low.

      • I've got one for you. I'll cut you a deal for about $1000. Alliance or Horde? :)
    • The last challenge after getting any number of characters to level 70 for an old school RPG/CRPG/MMORPGer like myself is multiboxing. For the most part WOW is pretty dead easy. Its designed to be that way, very much like the original CRPGs.

      The thing with multiboxing is that you can put together a team of two or more characters and run your own team; just like the old CRPG days. The challenge becomes in cooridination and reacting. Learning the ins and outs of the script and macro languages. Even learnin

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by geminidomino ( 614729 ) *

        The last challenge after getting any number of characters to level 70 for an old school RPG/CRPG/MMORPGer like myself is multiboxing. For the most part WOW is pretty dead easy. Its designed to be that way, very much like the original CRPGs.
        Five'll get you ten that that it was a Bizzard marketroid in disguise who started that trend... When you're finished with the game, instead of letting your 'scription lapse, you BUY ANOTHER ONE!

        The Ferengi would be proud...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cluke ( 30394 )
        I remember reading an interview with Scott Adams (the old text adventure designer, not Dilbert guy) in which he said he now spent his days playing a 5-man "hydra" of Everquest characters all on his own. Sounded like the craziest thing I had ever heard at the time, I am intrigued to hear it is more widespread than just him.
    • I can run WoW in 1680x1050/8xAA with *everything* turned on max and not drop a frame under 60fps for 99% of the game - worst I ever saw was 47 fps flying through a particularly dense part of Shattrath. My rig is a Q6600 (of which WoW will only use one core) and a single 8800GT - this laptop is more powerful than my system by a fair chunk, and on mine the fan never even comes on on the graphics card while playing it.

      I wish they did more branding than just the cover though, seems a bit lame.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reapman ( 740286 )
      First off I agree, not worth it, but I also don't play WoW.. however from what I read on another site (hey this is /., did'nt rtfa but I'm assuming it includes the same info) this also includes stuff like Beta Keys for all future content, backpack, figurine of your own online character etc... assuming that's true that's pretty cool. Not $4500 or w/e it costs cool, but still kinda cool.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Garridan ( 597129 )
      My first question was, "Is this really worthwhile?" I mean, Xtreme Notebooks [xtremenotebooks.com] has quad core laptops for about half the price of this -- and for that much money, you can get just as good of a video card, 4GB ram, and some beastly hard-drives, too. So what are they charging for? A fancy case-mod?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Machtyn ( 759119 )
      Does the laptop come preloaded with Vista? Then, yes, it does need that much power to run Wow at an acceptable speed comparable to your P4 2.0GHz WinXP machine!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by pabens ( 979948 )
      WoW doesnt even support SLI...
      http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1610471297&postId=16099064527&sid=1 [wow-europe.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )
      "Is it needed?" - that's a really stupid question about any article in the video games topic.

      No, it's not needed. It's designed to play a video game. Duh. And for the record, you're right, the hardware in this laptop isn't needed to play the current version of World of Warcraft effectively.

      However, if you read the article, it also comes with a lot of WOW-related merchandise and swag and for many people I think it'll be worth the cost. Hell, you have WOW players who'll spend $4500 on monopoly money, why not

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by corifornia2 ( 1158503 )
      It comes with a Golden Ticket to get a FigurePrint of your character, a WoW backpack, novels, trading cards, an LCD stat screen(!!!) and a little guillotine to castrate yourself with to ensure you never get laid!!!

  • $4500? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:17AM (#21585037)
    For that price it should come with a lifetime subscription. Actually, it might just be cheaper to switch to meth.

    • Re:$4500? (Score:5, Funny)

      by securityfolk ( 906041 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:23AM (#21585119)
      Nah, $4500 in meth-dollars is ~1 year (or substantially less), and you'll only *think* you're a level 70 warlock ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cecil36 ( 104730 )
      I'd rather spend this amount and trade in my car for FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!!!!

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )

        I'd rather spend this amount and trade in my car for FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!!!!
        You misspelled furry.
    • You can probably hire someone to haul around your computer for less than that. Carrying this thing would probably give you a workout too, which you'll need after just sitting on your duff all evening. I couldn't find any specs on the size and weight, I'm guessing 2" or thicker, and about 12lb. At least, after sitting on your duff all evening, 12lb is going to feel like a serious workout.
    • For that price you could buy a real sword and armor.

      "Lighting bolt! Lightning bolt!"
      • For that price you could buy a real sword and armor.

        You can buy a real sword and armor for significantly less than that.

        A well tempered, well made sword designed for actual use will run between $100 and, say, $1000 (unless you want an expensive antique or a sword made by a well-known master smith) depending on type of sword, maker, how fancy you want it, etc (average cost is more along the lines of $250-$600).

        A good suit of chain mail can be gotten for between $250 (for butted mail) and $700 (for riveted ma
    • That's the "barebones" version, I managed to pump it up to $8019 with only hardware upgrades (processor, RAM and HDD). Now that's a good deal!

  • Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by slap20 ( 168152 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:18AM (#21585041)
    Wow plays fine on my current machine, and it would be nice to play it on a laptop, but for $4500.00 I can pay a sherpa to carry my desktop where ever I go.

  • Oh, wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PlatyPaul ( 690601 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:18AM (#21585043) Homepage Journal
    LEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY'S laptop!

    (click here [wikipedia.org] if you didn't get it)

  • This laptop makes a real statement... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:19AM (#21585061)
    "I'm going to die broke, and a virgin!"

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:25AM (#21585129)
    Given that it basically comes with both collectors editions (either of which can fetch upwards of 1200-1500$ on ebay), as well as a beta ticket for upcoming betas, this is a pretty good deal. I wish I could afford it. Not just for WoW either, with a physics accelerator and the SLI'd graphics this a pretty beastly desktop replacement.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ermm... why would the CE edition of Burning Crusade fetch upwards of $1200-1500 on eBay? Last I checked, my local Fry's still had stacks of the things for standard retail price.

  • Battery life? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:27AM (#21585151)
    Anyone know what sort of battery life this thing gets? : p

  • Ever wonder why it's nicknamed Warcrack? (Score:4, Funny)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:34AM (#21585245) Homepage
    Egads, this is getting rediculous. Eventually they'll start selling the Warcraft car, the Warcraft home, and even the Warcraft refrigerator, so you never have to give up your Warcraft addition for pesky things like driving to the grocery store or having a life.

  • wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by seheart ( 1137717 )
    Are you kidding me? I like Dell's cheap machines and love Warcraft, but if you wanted to sell a lot of them, they wouldn't price them so high. You're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers. Way overpriced.

    • "You're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers."
      I think its much more likely that an investment banker would play wow than a gamer. Most true gamers got bored of wow, or wisely avoided ever getting addicted to it in the first place. Anyone who still plays wow after 2 or 3 years should have their head examined.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Costs as much as an epic flying mount, fer chrissakes!
  • So, I run WoW on my MacBook Pro CoreDuo (not the Core 2 Duo), and it's graphics are all maxed out in options, and I still pull around 39fps. My laptop only cost me a $3,000.

    Seriously, fully spec'd, that Dell WoW lappy maxes out at around $6400! WTF?
    • That was my first thought. I never thought *DELL* would ever make a Macbook Pro look affordable in comparison!

  • Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 )

    Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

    OK, this might be an in-joke for you WOW players, but, honestly ... WTF???

    Strange random stuff shows up in summaries, but this is probably one of the more arcane ones.

    Cheers

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:48AM (#21585445) Homepage
      It's not that arcane. All the WoW realms go down most tuesdays for regular maintenance.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by KeatonMill ( 566621 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:01AM (#21585587)
      Tuesday mornings (US time) are when Blizzard does weekly maintenance on its servers. As for the logging in, the authentication server occasionally crashes meaning that while players who are already logged in can continue playing, no one else can start.
    • WoW server maintenance takes place from 3:00am to 11:00am PST every tuesday. In regard to the log in comment, WoW is plagued with random login problems with their authentication servers.

  • WOW mouse? (Score:3, Funny)

    by threaded ( 89367 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:44AM (#21585395) Homepage
    Does it come with a WOW mouse? I guess it would look something like a hedgehog on steroids...

  • Raid Options (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @10:49AM (#21585457)
    Rather than just raid 0 drives, they also have an option for a 64GB Flash drive, and 200GB second hard drive. This looks like an interesting idea. Get the speed and power savings of a flash drive, and the second drive can spin up and store more when you need it to, then go back to sleep.
  • Great, now WoW has people goldfarming IRL for this thing.

  • The rell Dell WoW laptop (Score:4, Informative)

    by ACMENEWSLLC ( 940904 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:20AM (#21585857) Homepage
    Dell has a Vostro for around $800 US right now which would play WoW very well.

    Go here;
    http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/vostronb_1500?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=bundlestab [dell.com]

    Select the smart buy unit and customize the video card & select the 8600GT with 256MB of RAM. Bare in mind this is the DDR2 and not the DDR3 version, so it's not a super quick 8600GT but it's plenty fast for WoW.

    The normal site has it for $729 right now. Corporate customers can get a better deal.

    Take it to a 2.0Ghz dual core, 2GB RAM standard, the 7200 120MB HD, BlueTooth and the webcam -- a better gaming build, and you are just under $1000.

    That's one hell of a deal for decent casual (not extreme) gaming machine..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      But where are the WoW icons? the WoW swag? the WoW lid?

      You aren't paying for performance here.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ACMENEWSLLC ( 940904 )
        Yea, that's the point. If you just want a decent laptop which plays WoW, and don't want to pay insane amount of money then that's your laptop. Throw some WoW stickers on it and viola.
  • One unfortunate customer reports that their WoW PvP laptop was smashed to bits by an enemy version that had removed all of its branding. The enemy unit was 'steathed' waiting at a local Starbucks.

    Dell has announced that there will be no refunds, but users are encouraged to purchase another laptop and return the favor.

    Blizzard has been dutifully deleting all posts on their forums that address this matter. Officially they have yet to comment.

  • SLI Video? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:24AM (#21585917)
    I have never actually played WoW, but I have seen others playing it, and the graphics didn't look like they were all that intensive.. Does WoW really need the high end SLI graphics capabilities?

    On that Dell laptop, what accounts for the ridiculous cost? The basic specs didn't look like anything exotic.. 160GB 7200RPM drive, 2GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core2Duo, not exactly pushing the limits with that.

    The only exotic pieces were the SLI video, and the "physics accelerator". Would those two things really add $2,500 on to the price of a laptop?
  • How much does the damn thing weigh? I can't see that spec listed anywhere, but to have RAID, SLi cards (and their cooling requirements), etc can't make the thing portable. For a fraction of the cost of that, why not build a microATX PC in a case with a handle? With the remaining $4000 in difference, you can buy as many monitors and keyboards to leave anywhere you'd want to bring the thing.

  • For the Horde! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:34AM (#21586051)
    So for Horde fans in this thread, is getting modded Troll a complement?

    bye bye karma!

  • Good call! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hemorex ( 1013427 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:50AM (#21586279)
    Right! We need physics acceleration for a game that doesn't even have hit-box collision... I think I'll keep playing on my dinosaur PC, thank you very much.
  • I just bought a laptop with the same specs (without SLI or PhysX) and it cost $1000... Does PhysX and SLI really warrant an additional investment of $3500?
  • WoW is so old that it doesn't take advantage of most new gaming PC technologies. Dual-core "support" was just added in the last patch, allowing about 10% of the second core to be used. SLI gives no tangible benefit in WoW at all, and actually degrades performance for some people.

    Also, many people with decent PC's are reporting abysmal framerates in newer WoW content, while people with mediocre Macs have no performance problems at all. I'm forced to conclude that if you want a really good laptop for WoW, you

  • FigurePrint (Score:3, Interesting)

    by uigrad_2000 ( 398500 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @03:24PM (#21589409) Homepage Journal
    The best part of the deal is not described well on the Dell site. You get a figurine of your character in a snow-globish type of thing. Still overpriced by my estimation, but important none-the-less. Here's a video showing the FigurePrint:

    FigurePrint Demo [youtube.com]

    This blog [wired.com] says that you'll also get a special in-game pet. Those who don't play WoW don't understand how much value people put on such things. Many people buy blizzcon tickets ($100) each year just to collect the in-game pet from that year.

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