I am considering buying the Alienware M17x but have had read/seen very mixed reviews about and was wondering if anyone on the site could provide some insight on whether to go ahead with this Laptop.

Whats your price range? Alienware isnt the best when it comes to gaming.

>>2 They have the best laptops, but laptops aren't really for gaming, the technology industry is always advancing by the end of next year nVidia will have a complete new serie of GPUs and guess what, you can't change your laptop's GPU.
Three years from today all today's laptops will be slow and laggy for the future games, and 1400$ laptop for just three years isn't worth it, at least form me.

If you want a PC for gaming then buy a Desktop, with a desktop you can actually change it's hardware so it'll be always up to date, the only problem is the money, you'll have to buy a new GPU and discard your old one, of course you can always sell your old GPU.

This is just my opinion, laptops aren't for gaming. Alienware's laptops are too expensive.

Thanks so much guys. I Think i'll start looking into desktop computers.

Look into building it yourself, also. It's much cheaper and it's a great skill to have anyway. There's plenty of resources online about building PCs.

Since I don't know where you live I recomend searchiing for hardware here: newegg.com
It's a worldwide ordering website, you could also try amazon or a local hardware store.

If you live in Portugal try chip7.pt

If you don't mind bulk and a weak battery then go for it.