Breaking with a long tradition of building my own desktops, I recently took the plunge and decided to switch to a mobile setup: an Alienware 13 R3 and Graphics Amplifier. Today is all about the 13 R3, and I'll go over the plusses and minuses of the Graphics Amplifier in follow-up post. Up until fairly recently, buying a "gaming laptop" meant making a compromise -- you could have something that was portable and underpowered or heavy…

Before we dive in, let me set the stage! I have my parents and Nintendo to thank for introducing me to video games, starting with a Christmas gift of an original Game Boy (and a copy of Tetris) in 1991. About a year later, a family friend gave us his Nintendo Entertainment System with copies of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, and Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat...and I was hooked. Since those…