I have been looking for an upgrade to my Advent 7014 Laptop and was recommended to Alienware. I had a look at there website and was surprised with the spec of this machine. The machine in question was an Alienware Area-51m 7700 Laptop. There are a lot of different specs and you can customize your own machine. The lowest CPU choice is a 2.8Ghz P4 with 800FSB and the highest is a massive 3.6Ghz P4 with 800FSB. You can have upto 4GB DDR2 4200 Ram. You can have a choice of 1 or 2 DVD Re-Writers which are Duel Layer. Choice of 1 or 2 SATA Hard Drives upto around 100GB Each Drive. There is a choice of a 17" WideXGA+ 1400x900 LCD Display or 17" WideSXGA+ 1680x1050 LCD which comes with a built in web camera. Comes with the following features: Externally accessible:
Parallel: One parallel port
Serial: One serial port
Video: One DVI connector
TV-out: One S-Video out connector
TV-In: Video-IN Ports (TV-Tuner required, not included)
Keyboard: One PS2 connection
Mouse: One PS2 connection
IEEE 1394: Two mini IEEE 1934a (4-pin) ports
USB: 4 Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports
Headphone: 1 headphone jack
Audio: 5.1 channel out (SPDIF) / Line-in, Microphone in
Network: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45
Modem: Integrated 56K V.92 modem RJ-11
Infrared: Infrared port for Data transfer
There is 1 PCMCIA slot and also a 7 in 1 internal card reader.
You'll be surprised as to how big the box is when you receive it, its big enough to get a 21" TV inside it. You have a choice of an nVidia 6800 or ATI Radeon x800. I went for the nVidia 6800,
When you receive it you get a personnal portfolio of the machine which comes in a nice black folder which also comes personalised with your name on. Comes with all drivers and windows CD, modem cable and a FREE Alienware T-Shirt.
Now down to the performance.
When i first turned it on i was amazed with the speed of the machine and how quiet it was. It has a lovely crisp screen which really shows off this machine. The first game i installed was Doom 3. I wacked the settings of the game up very high and the machine played it without a hitch. The graphics looked superb and ran as it should do. The machine does get a bit hot but you would expect this considering the size and spec of it.
I then installed Half Life 2, what an amazing game, i could not believe how good it looked and played. I put the settings on as high as they would go and it played like a dream. The sound of this machine is also superb. It has 4 speakers and a built in subwoofer to give your music and games some oomph. On the front of the machine there is a small LCD screen which displays the time when the machine is on. When you turn the machine off you'll be surprised what this screen does. On the left there is a power button, press this button and you now have a CD player. Just pop in your CD and you can listen to it with the laptop turned off. You can skip trackes, pause, stop etc, its such a clever feature. If you do purchase this machine i would recommend the Alienware respawn CD as this will re-install your machine in about 20 minutes. The price has just come down on this machine but prices will vary depending on the spec. I got a 3.2Ghz P4, 512mb Ram, 2x 40Gb Hard drives in Raid Mode, Geforce 6800 VGA, 17" screen with webcame, 1 DVD Drive and much more and it came to £1800 with delivery. It does sound expensive but its an amazing machine. Its a great machine and one i can recommend highly.