(UPDATE: Price, Specs) Indian gamers can finally get Alienware! [Hands-On Preview]

It has been a long and tiresome wait, but the world’s premium gaming PC hardware manufacturer has finally come to India. Dell has announced the launch of Alienware’s range of products in the country, with the M17x laptop – claimed to be the world’s most powerful gaming notebook – being the first item on sale.

“The Alienware M17x is a gamer’s dream and sets the universal standard for 17-inch laptops that enthusiasts worldwide will love,” said Girish Mehta, Marketing Director for the Dell India Consumer Business. “The introduction of the Alienware M17x to the Indian market ensures avid gamers in the country will be able to experience the most innovative and immersive gaming experience on a laptop.”

We got a little hands-on time with the M17x at the Mumbai launch and finally realised why it’s called ‘Alienware’: the experience was simply out of this world!

The raw power of the machine was demonstrated through everybody’s favourite benchmark game, Crysis Warhead. With maxed-out graphics settings and anti-aliasing set to 4x, there was no visible performance issue whatsoever.

Now, keep in mind that this is meant to be a desktop replacement and not a laptop that touts its portability, since it weighs in a solid 5.3kgs.

The aluminium casing was a treat to hold, though, and the backlit keyboard blew us away. We usually spend a lot of hours playing in complete darkness, so the ability to see the keys is a boon indeed.

What’s more, not only can you customise all the lighting of the keyboard, Alienware tweaks the slightest hint of any LED light to such an extent that each application can result in a custom light theme.

The keyboard is divided into different sections and also sports a numpad, allowing for a cool transition effect of different coloured lights.

Flush with dual front speakers, the device sports a 17-inch screen with a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, and supports processors ranging from the Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz) to the Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9300 (2.53GHz). The M17x is powered by a 1GBDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card, which can be dialled up all the way to dual 1GB GeForce GTX 280 graphics cards using SLI technology. How’s that for graphics power?

Running on Windows Vista, the laptop can be fitted with 4GB, 6GB or 8GB of DDR3 RAM, while storage is restricted to a hard disk of up to 500GB or an SSD of up to 256GB.

Equipped with either a slot-loading DVD burner or a Blu-Ray combo, it comes with almost all the connectivity options you could think of: 4 USB ports, eSATA, HDMI, D-Sub, ExpressCard, Gigabit Ethernet, 3.5mm audio jack, microphone port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 8-in-1 media card reader, and can even support a TV tuner.