Beverly Hills (CA) – Video editors and ray-tracers will probably salivate at the quad-core laptop we saw yesterday at the HD Expo in Beverly Hills.  Made by 1 Beyond, the GoFlex317 HD uses a desktop Intel Q6600 quad-core processor to provide desktop-like performance.  But don’t you dare call this a laptop, because the 17-inch screen and 12-pound weight makes it more like a shrunken down desktop.

Video of 1 Beyond's Quad-Core laptop

The 1920 by 1200 screen is powered by an Nvidia 8800 card.  There’s even a built-in TV tuner on the left side of the case. Of course any video editor will tell you that hard drives are the ultimate limitation in most laptops and 1 Beyond has stuffed the GoFlex chassis with three 7200 RPM drives that can be striped for speed or RAID-5’ed for redundancy.  According to 1 Beyond reps, most users will probably opt to have a separate system drive and stripe the second and third drives for speed. 

The GoFlex 317 HD has been available for three months and this particular model sells for approximately $6000.  Imagine the shock on the faces of Starbucks’ employees as you splinter their tables!