I've been playing ES1 recently and racked in over 40 hours in just over a week... and now my gaming laptop seems to be dying. I'd really love that Alienware setup.
As far as ES2 is concerned, I'm really looking forward to any kind of device that can be upgraded to change its functionality. in ES1 if you build, say, a drone disassembler, you can upgrade it to make it faster or use less energy, but it'd be awesome if you could upgrade it to attack other ships before disassembling. Or upgrade a weapon booster, to also cause projectiles to sap energy back to you, vampirically.