You're probably wondering what an Alienware M17 costs. I sure was. But there's no single answer. It's basically $2000 dollars or more. When you buy one, you pick and choose your options as if you were buying a car. But make no mistake: you are buying a high-end power machine. You are going to pay for what you get. And you're probably not going to come in under $2000 if you're the kind of guy who's buying an Alienware. The M17 is not the system for people looking for a deal.

The most outrageous option is to pay $49 for a back-up CD. I think that crazy ribbed lid up there in the picture costs extra. That might have been pretty cool when I was fourteen. One option is a little silly: colored keyboard lights for $25. The keyboard I got was blue. It glowed coolly. In a movie, it's the keyboard you would use to control the cryogenic chamber.

I thought you got to choose between blue, red, and green keyboard lights. I was wrong. But I didn't know this until the product manager from Alienware tracked me down.

Read how that conversation went after the jump.

At first, I was a bit concerned when I heard the product manager wanted to talk to me. I thought I might be in trouble. I'd confessed to Alienware that I wasn't a normal hardware reviewer. Maybe they had changed their minds. Maybe they were worried I was just going to write a series of jokey and only borderline informative blog entries instead of a real review.

The product manager's first question to me was what behchmarks I was going to run. I told him I wasn't a normal hardware reviewer, since he apparently hadn't heard. He seemed okay with that. He kept asking me if I had any questions. I didn't. He asked me what games I'd installed. I ran down the list. He asked if I had any questions. I didn't. He told me they're all gamers at Alienware, which is something I hear nearly every time I talk to anyone in the games industry: "We're all gamers," they tell me. Which is pretty cool, since that's what I am, too. He asked if I had any questions. I told him I didn't.

"Will you do me a favor, Tim?"

"Sure."

"Do you like Left 4 Dead?"

"I do. Sure."

"Play Left 4 Dead on that M17 for me. But I have a request."

"Sure."

"I want you to turn the lights out. Can you do that?"

"Okay. You want me to play Left 4 Dead with the lights out."

I was afraid he was about to tell me to wear something special. Or even worse, maybe he was about to tell me to play naked. I wasn't sure I liked where this was going.

"Yes. And I want you to do something else for me."

Uh-oh.

"Do it with the keyboard red. You have to experience it to believe it."

Phew. Wait, what? They shipped me an M17 with a blue keyboard, which makes it the thing in my house that most looks like it should be on a spaceship. Second place would be my toothbrush.

"Red?" I asked the product manager.

"Yeah. Red. With the lights out. Will you do that for me?"

"My keyboard is blue."

"Ahh," he purred. "Let me show you something."

So the product manager pointed out the command to cycle the keyboard's colored lights. They go from blue to green to red to off. Pretty nifty. In case you're wondering - I know I was - the lit up blue alien head on the lid of the computer doesn't change colors. He's always blue. I also wondered how much battery power those lights were sucking. Could I boost the battery life while playing a game from an hour to an hour and two minutes?

I was on a Painkiller kick at the time, so instead I later played that in the dark, with the keyboard turned red. I hoped he wouldn't mind. And, yeah, I guess it was pretty cool. Truth be told, I think Painkiller would be pretty cool in the dark even if the keyboard was lit up pink. Heck, it's pretty cool even without a lit up keyboard. I guess if someone else was watching, it might have thrown some sort of eerie underlighting onto my face. Dario Argento would be proud.

Okay, maybe it is worth $25. What Alienware is figuring is that once you're resigned to dropping a few grand into a high-end gaming laptop, you're not going to want to look back one day and wish you'd gotten the lit-up keyboard. You're going to just tack on another $25 to prevent that day from ever happening.

But I will tell you one thing, and this is important: I like the M17 enough that I had decided I was going to buy it. When the review period was up, I decided I was going to pay Alienware instead of sending it back. Not necessarily because it was practical for me to buy a two-grand gaming laptop. But because I liked it that much.

Tomorrow: Just how much did I like it?
(Click here for the previous Alienware M17 game diary.)