Last year, Alienware unveiled their new 17 line of laptops. This year, they’re bringing out the latest iteration of it, dubbed the 17-R2 (at least from what I’ve seen on screenshots of pages now fixed from their site). The page now says that there are two Alienware 17s – one having its current configuration, and one with new 900-series mobile GPUs and more goodies. Let’s take a look at Dell’s refresh of their 17” mobile battlestation, before we’re intended to by its’ creators.

(Photo from Dell’s website.)

First off, from the pictures on the website it looks identical to the old 17. These may just be placeholders, but I’m not sure as the M14x R1 and R2 looked identical as well. I’d just like to put it out there that all pictures I show in this article are and are showcasing property of Dell; I do not own them, and are using them under the United States’ Fair Use act.

First off; the specs. There are two options for graphics this time around, the 3GB Nvidia GeForce 970m and the 4GB Nvidia GeForce 980m – the latest Nvidia mobile GPUs. It sports a 17.3” FHD 1920×1080 display, coming in a standard and touchscreen variety. It has an internal soundcard sporting the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi MB3 software, and a 2.1 Klipsch audio system with subwoofer (7.1 supported through HDMI-out). It has a webcam, two Killer Wireless network cards to choose from, a gigabit ethernet port, 4 USB 3.0 ports (1 with PowerShare technology), an Alienware Graphics Amplifier port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a 9-in-1 card reader, a headphone jack, line-in jack, and a Noble Lock port. The keyboard is a full, AlienFX supported keyboard with a numpad and 9 fully programmable macro keys. It comes with either Windows 8.1, 8.1 Pro, or Windows 7 Professional. This whole package weighs in at a whopping 8.73 pounds; heavier than my fully-grown 8-years-old Teacup Poodle (she’s 6 pounds).

Here are some screenshots of Dell’s website page for this laptop, which I’m pretty sure isn’t supposed to be public yet:

[Overview Page Screenshot]

[Tech Specs Page Screenshot]

I’m curious to see Dell’s reaction to having their latest laptop model out in the open before it’s intended by accident (most likely an accident). Stay tuned here at Gaveroid.com for more tech news on subjects such as the Alienware 17-R2 gaming laptop leak!

This just in: the lead developer of the hit zombie survival game DayZ, Dean “Rocket” Hall, just sent out a tweet that his building was on fire.

So uh…. My building is kinda ON FIRE

— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) October 23, 2014

According to a tweet sent just afterwards, he noticed some water leakage up above him, called reception, and they told him to get out of the burning building as it was on fire.

Ceiling above me was leaking water. So I called reception… They are like LEAVE THE BUILDING IT IS ON FIRE

— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) October 23, 2014

 

Hopefully they get the fire out quickly. He just said “my building,” which is most likely his apartment where he lives. Hopefully the fire can be contained and everyone gets out safely. As for the image below that Rocket tweeted, it doesn’t look like too massive of a fire.

Snorkel going up pic.twitter.com/3N2g5rAKMH — Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) October 23, 2014

Picture taken by Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) and posted to Twitter.

About a month ago, search engine (and now many other things including YouTube) giant Google made a move to buy the popular video game streaming site Twitch.tv (previously owned and integrated with Justin.tv). The purchase has been finalized and we are already seeing major changes in the way Twitch operates.

After the popularity spike in gaming videos on YouTube, content creators wanted a solution to be able to have viewers watch them play games live and interact with the streamer. Twitch was one of the best options, just overall being a good platform with good quality video capabilities, and a good chat system. I have myself done livestreams on Twitch, and after using it I would never want to switch. Twitch is one of the top sites for network traffic in the world, I believe. YouTube unveiled a new live streaming capability. On the users end it is a great system. Imagine watching a YouTube video with live comments. However, it isn’t so convenient for the streamer to get their content up. I have personally attempted to do a YouTube livestream, and the only free solutions (mainly Wirecast) didn’t really work properly for me. I find that Twitch has many more good programs that support it. So, that coupled with the fact that Twitch has subscriptions (where you can pay so much per month to the creator, not to be confused with follows which are like YouTube subscriptions), many streamers simply stuck to what works best.

Google noticed this, and, wanting to make their livestreams better, bought Twitch. We are already seeing changes; video on demand content (livestreams saved for later viewing) is now being scanned by a Content ID system similar to YouTube’s. Many people are swarming social media about the matter. Allow me to quote @OfficialFIERCE on Twitter – “I give it about 2 weeks before Google tries to push Google Plus on Twitch TV,” referring to the controversial event in which Google forced all YouTube users to connect their channel to their Google Plus to continue commenting on YouTube videos. I totally agree.

So, where will Twitch end up? Users are skeptical of the outcome of these events, and many have already started searching for a new place for their live content to call a home.