Razer's highly anticipated Blade gaming laptop won't make it to market in 2011 after all, according an announcement posted on the company's Facebook page. Apparently the delay was caused by the recently announced upgrade of the laptop's 320GB HDD to a 256GB SSD. Because this change was made 'at the eleventh hour', the company says it was only able to secure limited quantities of the SSD in question and thus won't be able to fulfill their initial launch orders of the Razer Blade before the holidays.
The company now expects to start shipping its 17-inch gaming laptop in mid to late January to customers in North America. To make up for the delay, Razer is offering a coupon code for a Razer Orochi Blade Edition mouse to anyone who signs up to receive a notification when the Blade starts shipping in January. The coupon is redeemable only when you purchase the Razer Blade, of course, which is already a hefty $2,800.
As previously reported, Razer's gaming machine offers a 17.3-inch 1080p display, a 2.8GHz Core i7, 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GT 555M with 2GB of VRAM and Optimus, an HD webcam, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, HDMI-out, and Bluetooth 3.0. Its standout feature is a unique "Switchblade UI" that's adjacent to the standard keyboard and offers 10 customizable hotkeys above a multi-touch screen. The latter serves as a trackpad when you're on the go, but it can display handy in-game data if you're using an external mouse.
This is the second Razer product to be delayed in recent weeks. The firm's Tiamat 7.1 surround headset is also being pushed back until late January due to some finishing touches that still need to be made.