Smooth Creations wedges high-end desktop CPU into a notebook

Smooth Creations might not be a household name, but man, do they make some slick looking notebooks with the go to back up all that show. The company has announced its latest mobile workstation called the Bulldozer. Considering the specs, the name is appropriate, as the beast should push many other notebooks to the side.

The notebook is an Intel Core i7 based machine that claims to be the world's first notebook to offer the Intel Core i7 quad-core processor and Xeon options are available as well. Graphics for the notebook are via the NVIDIA GeForce Go GTX 280M with 1GB of RAM.



_{Above: A custom-painted Smooth Creations workstation}

Storage is equally hefty with 1.5TB and options for RAID 0, 1, 5, for data security. A glance at the specifications will tell you that the battery life isn't a priority -- and indeed, Smooth Creations only promises one hour of run time.

The machine uses three separate physical HDDs to support the RAID options and the specific processor options are the Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition and the 3.2GHz Xeon X5580; both desktop class processors.

Other features of the beastly notebook include HDMI out, eSATA, DVI out, and a 17-inch WUXGA resolution screen. Up to 12GB of Ram can be configured with the system. Operating system choices include XP Pro 64-bit, Microsoft Server 2008, Vista 64-vit, and Red Hat Linux.

A fully optioned machine will set you back somewhere north of $US7,000 ($AU9280). They're not available in Australia -- surprise surprise -- but Smooth Creations' online shopping cart does accept addresses worldwide, so there's every chance you could direct import one if you were so inclined.