Alienware Area-51 m17x Gaming Laptop
Thursday July 10, 2008
Image Courtesy Alienware
Alienware is a company that specialized in producing high performance gaming systems. For a while, they branched out into more generalized systems, but since the purchase by Dell, they have shifted the focus back to gaming. The Area-51 m17x is their newest desktop replacement laptop PC designed specifically for gaming. Will this notebook appeal to more than just gamers though? Find out in my review.
I bought an Alienware M17X with the following configuration:
Video/Graphics Card: Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8800M GTX – SLI Enabled
Display: 17″ WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology – Black
Includes AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme X9000 2.8GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 2048MB
Operating System :Windows Vista® Ultimate with Service Pack 1
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Internal Digital/Analog (ATSC) MiniCard TV Tuner with Express Card Media Center Remote Control
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration – 320GB 7,200RPM (16MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
Smart Bay: 120GB 7,200RPM (8MB Cache) Smart Bay w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) w/ LightScribe Technology
Turbo Cache Memory: Intel® Turbo Memory (1GB) – Accelerate Data Transfer Speed
Wireless: Internal Intel® Wireless 4965 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card
Sound Card : External Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Card
It is truly a remarkable laptop as it runs like a desktop. The trade-off of course being the weight and size of it. It can run games like: Call of Duty 4- Modern Warfare or Need for Speed Pro Street at the maximum graphics configuration without missing a frame!
It also has a feature called “Stealth Mode” that shuts off the graphics cards which is handy for a long trip, when one tries to conserve power. That and the customisable power management through the Alienware Control Center software allows me to prolong the battery life further.
The Bad:
Runs hotter than normal laptops (expected), the really annoying thing is though that Alienware do not have a hardware temperature monitor built into the control center. Thats a must for a high spec/high powered & expensive laptop I believe, because if a problem occurs, the last thing i want to see is a meltdown.
The power supply is also huge + bulky.
Other than that it’s well worth it.
Also, there is no need to buy the external sound card as the sound quality is brilliant from the integrated card.