Gaming Notebooks: The Full Story

Despite the efforts of Alienware and its imitators, the average gaming PC remains a big, ugly beast. It’s so huge that it has to be hidden in a study or back bedroom, and so noisy that some people can’t bear to be in the same room. If you live in a cramped space or have a style-conscious partner, it can be hard to justify why you keep one in the house at all.

These are the same factors that have led to a dramatic swing away from desktops to notebooks in the home. Notebook PCs are expected to take over 50 per cent of overall PC sales in 2007, and much of this is down to the consumer market. Even if the average consumer doesn’t need mobility in the classic sense, there’s something about a system that can be carried from room to room, used on the sofa, and packed neatly away at the end of the day that we find irresistible. The only problem for gamers was that the vast majority of notebooks have – until fairly recently – been utterly useless for playing games.