Id like to see the manufacturers sack up for a change. Get all these so-called high performance, high dollar notebook producers together once, and then benchmark them against each other. Get a Dell, Alienware, Falcon NW, Hypersonic and any other of these other high dollar laptop companies together. Throw a couple of lower buck laptops with the same specs as the above machines into the mix. Then say "Ready - fight"
I think the boutique machines would be faster, but not $1000 faster. Id rather take a 2% performance hit than get ripped off. Companies like Alienware make their money off of morons with too much money that are too lazy to go ask some questions somewhere.
Keep it up sheep! You further the business of companies like Alienware, Dell and Apple.