We'd much prefer a 'breathing'-style pulse, though as it stands, Alienware's implementation is just an annoying flash. Some can have effects applied, such as smoothly transitioning from one colour to another, or pulsing. There are nine different zones, including three across the keyboard and two on the lip, that can have their colours changed. The other Alienware thing, a mass array of lights, is certainly in force in the M17x. While having Intel graphics inside is a benefit to battery life, we can imagine that to save themselves from the pain of this system, users will just leave the AMD graphics enabled. Well, mostly - while we've never had a problem with the hardware switch, the software switch in the M17x R3 often wouldn't switch between the two until we'd reset, and created annoying pop ups that didn't even do you the benefit of telling you which graphics card was enabled. We've seen it supplied in both hardware and software switches, leaving it directly up to the user when to switch between the two. Then there's the middle ground: the direct switch. We can only assume that it's due to the CrossFire configuration (that's two AMD cards working in tandem for those not aware), but the machine insists on restarting Windows to switch between the video cards.

The worst is found on Alienware's M18x, the M17x R3's bigger brother. It often tends to break games the first time you run them, as the game launches with Intel graphics and then gets dumped out by AMD's recommendation that you switch. The most elegant is an auto-detect, but non-auto-switch software, which recommends that you switch to discrete graphics when it detects them.

Alienware mx17 r3