Does anybody know the quality of Alienware products? www.alienware.com Im lookin specifically for someone who owns an
Area-51-M, i would like to ask some questions.

A) How good is this product?
B) Is the weight too much?
C) Does battery life suck?
D) Can you remove those little pegs in the back?
E) Would you choose it over a Dell Inspirion 8200?
F) Any other comments or suggestions about buying this product?

For $3000 sure its an excellent deal. I like them and have heard great things about them. Go for it!!!!

I don't know how much this helps, but PC Gamer certainly seems to like them.

Thanks pplz, keep the comments coming. i really appreciate them. pe@ce

I have and like my two Dell machines, but I can tell you that Dell does not come with the top of the line audio and video components that you will want for a gaming machine.
It is Chris Pirillo's(the host of Tech TV Call for Help) favorite manufactured computer.
Another top gaming machine is from FALCON. PC World did a review about these two products a few months ago.

Falcon usually beats the alienware in contests.

yea, PC gamer seems to like alienware. i just ordered and area-51m yesterday. i think the battery life is short and it gets hot cuz it very powerful. the fans would prolly make it heavy - 9.6 pounds wid the battery.

since i didnt get it yet i, too would like to know
A) How good is this product?
B) Is the weight too much?
C) Does battery life suck?
D) Can you remove those little pegs in the back?
E) Would you choose it over a Dell Inspirion 8200?
F) Any other comments or suggestions about buying this product?

I just ordered an Area 51-M about a week ago. Originally I was thinking about getting a toshiba satelite or the dell 8200 because they came with the new g-force 4. I personally don't like dell very much so I was leaning towards the toshiba. The toshiba was also cheaper and had better speakers, but only had a 32 mb g-force 4. I did briefly look at the alienware and decided that the video card in it just wasn't good enough. Fortunatly for me I told this to a friend whos a big alienware fan and she called alienware. They told her that everything in the laptop, including the video card could be upgraded in the future. A laptop with a video card that isn't integrated with the motherboard...was something I had never heard of so I had to call for myself. And I got the same reply, that if the g-force 4 did become available in the future I would be able to upgrade. Hmm, still couldn't believe it. Called back again a different day and still got the same answer. That's basically what made me buy the alienware over the others. I'd much rather pay a little extra for the ability to upgrade in the future than be stuck with something I'll probably want to sell in a year so I could buy something better.

I have an area-51 m and i love it to death, its fast as hell, and it is an awesome gaming machine, the battery life is horrible though beacuse of the p4, and it weights alot, but for what you get this is a small price to pay. on the other hand their customer service is aweful, completely horrible. When i bought this beauty my ac adapter died in 3 days, so i had to order a new one, and it ended up taking a month to get it cause they lost my order twice and then ran out of parts when they managed to keep it. other than that, i love it, it has the best component,s the best setup, the best options, everything. batery life btw is about 50 min with stock battery and about 2:15 hours max with the stock and the extra battery in the drive bay. i would buy it even if the customer service sucks because of all the little things that are in it, the quality heat sinks, the many fans, and the top notch parts.

did ur ac adapter break from damage or got too hot?, cuz i wanna know how long i culd use it continueously without burning it till it dies. and i wanna know does the laptop itself, get mad hot in a short while.

Equip ur system w/a p4-m proccesor and you will MUCH longer battery life and less heat.

Dont get the Alienware, the battery life is horrible, the performance 3dwise is worse than a dell with the gf4 go and mobile processor, its heavier, and what they say about being able to upgrade to a GF4 GO when it becomes availble is BS. The 2 cards use different pin assignments and tomshardware tried to switch between the 2 different cards and while they did boot up, they crashed immediatly after and there was no way to do it without changing the motherboard(the motherboard alienware uses is the same)

It also has a slower HDD(only 4200 rpm) which drags it down even more.
Since the motherboard uses speed step it slows down the 2.4 ghz to around the speed of a 1.9ghz P4-Mobile, and gives you a hotter pc with a much worse battery life(2 hours with the extra battery he says, compared to 2 and 1/2 hours one one battery with the dell, and 5 and 1/2 hours on 2 batterys with the dell. ) The dell has a faster 5400 RPM drive, and the whole system costs less. Do yourself a favor and buy the dell, it will score around 600-1000 higher on 3dmark depending on what setup you get, for a cheaper price and much longer battery life and lower weight, faster hard drive, faster gpu.
The only plus of the alienware is it looks cooler and has a nicer case.
BTW If you want the alienware, dont buy it from them, the laptops they sell they dont make, it is a Sager laptop(badly rated brand) with a different case. They just have sager laptops(which cost about $1000 less than the alienware) and up the price and change the case to make it prettier and have better airing out.
Im going with the Dell Inspirion 8200 with 512 megs of ram, 1.9ghz P4-M, 40 gig 5400rpm hdd, longer battery life, and better performance. The Geforce 4 GO is alot better than the Radeon 7500 Mobile. It may not be as prettty, but when it comes to performance, ill take that, and a lower price.
If you do want the alienware, buy a sager, they are identical except for the different colored casing, same parts, and over 1000 dollars less.

Actually I did price a sager notebook before I bought the alienware. The price for the default config is lower, but the default config is not equal to the config that the alienware has. If you add all the options to make an equiv system, the price is roughly the same. BTW did the pricing on www.powernotebooks.com if you wanna check for yourself. I went with the alienware because for about the same price the alienware had a better warrenty. I would be really interested to read the article on tomshardware if you could send me a link to it. Like I said, the main reason I ordered the alienware was because I was told nothing was integrated with the motherboard and that I could upgrade in the future. Looked at the dell also but didn't go with them for 2 reasons. Well 3 actually. First I don't like the look of the system (ok ya i know it's lame). Second my dad has a dell laptop and he's always having problems. Third my friend works for dell and he's always telling me never to buy a dell. Also about the dell harddrive. Looks like only the 60 gig is 5400. The rest are 4200 like the alienware. Toshiba looks like came out with a new laptop that comes with the 64meg geforce 4. Looks pretty nice.

Hey everyone, I have been reading all this postings about the area 51 m from Alienware. And all I have to say is if you don't have one don't write anything really. Let me tell you a few things about it since I do own one and I do love it, for me I think is great for the longest time I have been battling with my self into buying either a desktop or laptop and when I heard that alienware was making a gaming laptop, that's when I decided to go for the laptop. Hey is the future and you should be able to go to your friends house and play computer games in a LAN party. Besides all of this the computer is great I have been playing like crazy with a lot of my old games that I couldn't play before on my old computers. I just got Warcraft 3 and it plays like no other. the computer it self, like a few that have written here does get hot, but I have been testing it by playing over 10 hours straight with Max settings in most of the games that I have. This include, Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Counter strike, Soldier of fortune 2, etc. and since i work with a company that owns a Internet cafe with a T1 connection to the Internet I have been playing all this games with out any laggggg. and i have also been playing a few of this games at home on DSL and is just the same, with most of the setting to the max. and that is something that i have never done or I couldn't do with my other computers because of my hardware. And kids Falcon sucks time and time again Alienware has proven to win contest in a lot of places but i guess you have to be a hardcore gamer to know this. Anyway I do recommend it AC power adapter does make a little bit of noise but you can live with it the computer not as much only when the fans turn on, it does get hot specially when you play the games but when you are just using it to browse the web its like any other laptop, but again you don't have to worry about it. Its fast that is for sure, the screen looks great, the battery does suck big time I am sorry to say but with all the power that you are carrying we have to be realistic, it is a desktop with a laptop chassis. I have not seen the other laptops that dell and Toshiba are offering but I can tell you this, I have been to many different stores around where I live and they usually have a computer playing a game and I have seen a few desktops with the same power as the area 51 m even dell and I can tell you right now, and before I forget running a G force 4 video card. My laptop was a lot smoother than the rest I couldn't even play Soldier of fortune 2 smoothly on any of them as I did on my laptop and they had the same hardware and I always thought that Gforce was the best I guess not. Now i don't know about upgrading the video card and don't listen to the idiots that are saying things about "different pin assignments" because you know what, because if you can change the video cards on a desktop to upgrade it you can surely do it on this laptop, i know that it is upgradable I don't really know to what extend but I am happy with it I haven't had any problems and I really don't know about their customer service, I was really unsure when I placed my order with them I had read a lot of reviews saying that people had had a lot of bad service but I am glad that i didn't, do know that it will take some time before you get your computer, at least 3 weeks or more. They will make sure you know this when give you your first call remember the do build it from scratch and they do test the hell out of it hey I haven't done any tests but by me having it and playing everyday and i haven't had a shutdown or an error message hey i am happy. Best part I can play my computer games on my TV cool. Do get a mouse and do get a keyboard. One last thing the heat which at on point made me worry, don't check your desktop open it and feel the heat that your processor makes and then you will figure it out that hey I have my video card and pentium 2.4g near me no wonder is hot so remember to have a well ventilated area for it.

That's all guys to all of you harcore gamers late.

If anyone has anymore questions about Area 51 m here is a link to an interview done by HomaLan to David Strada the laptop manager at Alienware. http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=6256

THANK YOU! That article answered a lot of my questions...

One thing though, in the interview, he seems to say that the PC can get a total of about 3.5 hours of use with dual batteries... Is that an outright lie??? From what I've read in this thread, that seems to be the case...

Am I wrong?

I think dual batts last 3.5 hours if ur not playin games, just typin or doin other stuff that requires less energy.

Ah... I see. Thanks...

Have you gotten yours yet? If so, what do you think of it?

I haven't gotten it yet but I think it'll come later today or someday soon.

I recieved it but I would like to know if the Audio "DJ" CD Player Control Panel On/Off switch could be clicked and stay in the "Off" position. Cuz mine could only go near the middle and then slide back to the left, it cant be locked to the "Off" position.
And i was wondering if the people that got it recieve a manual for ur operating system cuz I didnt get one.
The AC adapter and the disc your using gets a little hot but everything else is fine.

Forget about the On and Off button thing. I didnt read the manual. I would want to know how to use the CD-RW cuz everytime when I try to open its programs theres a few error messages that pops up. And I want to know if anyone received a mouse pad cuz i dont think i got one but its not a problem. THANKS

Hey everyone its me again el diablo and for all of you hard-core gamers and not to be an ass, maybe some of the things that you guys are having problems are really not working and just call customer service for that, other than that here is a little more on the Area 51 m.

The on and off switch on your DJ thing is always on the on position, why? When you slide the button to the right or the off position for a second or 2 the DJ will turn on so you can play your CDs without having your computer on and only when is not on. When you slide it again it will turn it off and every time you do this it will go back to the left why? Its the design and because there is a spring which makes it go back.

Now to the CD-RW thing you might be having a problem if that is happening, first of all before you do anything RE Install everything with your recovery disks that came with your Area 51 m. they should be in your black folder. Make sure you follow the instructions. If the problem is still there then call customer service and make them do it right, you didn't spend that much money to have a problem right out of the box. by the way I am using Roxio easy CD creator 5 basic. Remember you can only use some of the options in the program not all because it is kind of a shareware that comes with your CD-RW. and do please use a RW CD. that is the first thing to have before you use the program.

To the battery, it only last about 1 hour of game play I don't know about extra batteries I can't afford them :) not much power but then again my DSL modem is getting power from the laptop and the mouse also and you don't have a gay 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 M. you have a 2.4Ghz full desktop chip in this laptop which a lot of your friends will kill for. Again the G force 4 mobile for laptops is GAY sorry guys test scores have told the truth ATI mobile is kick ass and for all you AMD lovers the chip is GAY to sorry new test are already out there and P4 is the best for a lot more things.
Anyway if you guys have anymore questions feel free post I will try to answer some of the questions regarding the Area 51 m. just check your manual and then write, oh! yes I did get my manual is the book that said "Notebook" not the black folder and i think you only get a mouse and a pad when you buy and only buy a desktop but i am going to ask when i call this upcoming week since I didn't get the right bag, they told me to wait 2 weeks or more because they were out of stock. I think I am going to exchange it for something else. if you think you are missing something just call customer service they are really cool people.

Well, great gaming guys and I hope you are having fun I know I am. I love it and not one crash since I got it and I have install aver 10 games that I couldn't play before.

El Diablo

OK... First of all, as far as desktops are concerned, I would say the Athlon XP is a totally kick ass processor and is most definitely not a homosexual.

As for the laptop flavor, you're right, it's a piece of crap. (though I question your assumptions about it's sexuality)

Anyway, I've recently read some bad things about alienware support... You're saying they're awesome, yet I read that they're slow, and not terribly helpful... Eh?

Somewhat confused here......

As far as I know, battery life sucks. If you get one with a Pentium 4 processor with 2.4ghz, I dont think you can even get 3 hours with 2 batteries even if your not doin ANYTHING. It's like a portable desktop. 3½ hours with dual batteries isnt really true.
So if you want to bring it everywhere and being able to play with it for a longer time, I suggest you get it with a Pentium 4-M processor. It's more expensive and doesnt perform as well but you'll get much longer battery life and less heat.

Hey everyone... Im planning on getting a Area 51 - M or a Dell Inspiron 8200. The only thing that is leaning me towards the Dell is the fact that it a Geforce 4 and also I was affected by the Pentium 4 M processor. But now Alienware is offering the pentium 4 M so that pretty much settles that. Now my question is, people are saying that the Area 51 M gets hot if its using the Pentium 4 desktop processor. Does it get hot to the point where it ruins gameplay, or does alienware have enough fans in there to cool it(the thing does weigh 9.6 lbs).
My other question is now someone said something about the 1.9 ghz Pentium 4 M ending up performing just as well as the 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 because the 2.4 gets bogged down from all the heat and stuff. Is this true, and whether it is or not I just wanna hear some opinions on whihc one I shhould get because I really wanna make the best possible choice.
My last question has to do with the fact that it has only one PC/MIA slot, Im going to college next year and I need to have a 802.11 B wireless card in that slot. What am I gonna do If I have no open slots and I end up needing one... or is that not a big deal. Because I thnk it comes with everything else.(ie ethernet...) Well guys thanks a lot... hope to hear from somoene soon.

Well, I can answer a few of those questions for you...

First: You probably won't need the extra slot, I've only used one pc-card on my current laptop... (actually I have 2 slots, and opted for a xircom type-3 nic, so it does take up 2 slots, but an 802.11b card would more than likely block a second slot with it's transciever anyway, so unless you're using a type 2 pc-card harddisk, your second slot would be useless anyway)

Second: Why 802.11b? Why not a? I didn't think people actually went out of their way to buy 802.11b stuff now that a's out... hrm...

Third: I've read that the cooling is ample for the system, but the heat that's disipated from the chip is transfered to the keyboard and drive bays... Not sure this is a good thing, but the performance supposedly doesn't suffer.

Fourth: Go read reseller ratings' reviews of alienware. No one seems to care that these guys get HORRIBLE reviews for their service. That's the ONLY THING holding me back from buying this system...

I honestly think that this money's just burning a hole in my pocket, because I'm thinking I might just buy a titanium powerbook g4... hrmph... I've written emails to alienware asking questions about everything, and have gotten TONS of specs and info about hardware and performance, but NONE of my questions and concerns about service have been answered or acknowledged... This is a tad disconcerting. hrm....

Alienware usually dont reply to emails for some reason so I always call them.

AAARGH... OK. I DID call them, and all I get is sales crap about specs, benchmarks, pretty colors and whatnot. I want some written assurance that when I pay an extra amount of money for my service plan, I'm going to get my money's worth.

I don't want to pay for a 3 month battle or to buy a DOA system, and not get my money back for months and months, or keep getting the same DOA system back... That's more trouble than it's worth, I'd rather have a slower computer that works, than a high speed paperweight that cost me nearly double what I would pay for a Dell or Sony...

I prefer AMD, but their mobile solutions suck, and a laptop with a desktop AMD chip would just get TOO Hot, so I am obliged to buy intel when getting a laptop (AMD needs better marketing). But that's not what we are talking about, is it? let's get to the point,I don't really own an area 51-m, but I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 with a rather old processor (pentium 3m, 1 ghz, and 256 RAM), but I bought it with the mobility radeon 7500 video card, I wanted to be able to play games perfectly, and as we all know this is the same video card that the area 51-m comes with, and until now, I play my games at maximum resolutions and they all fly; warcraft 3 runs smooth even at 1600x1200, 32 bit colour and max detail, except when playing on LAN with 8 whole armies battling, but at 1024 it runs smooth no matter what; the UT 2003 demo ran ok, not perfectly but very good, certainly very playable, just not "like the gods" ,Serious Sam runs perfect (like the gods)even with over a hundred monsters on the screen, and here's an important fact, the brohter of a friend of mine got the dell 8200 with a 1.7 ghz p4m, but with a 32 meg only geforce4go, and only 128 mb of ram, he isn't really a hardcore gamer, so that's why the specs might not be all that good, but we tested it, and it sucked, sure the 3d mark 2001 SE score was about 1000 marks higher than mine(4500 marks, mine is nearly 3700) but warcraft 3 and other games run extremely choppy on his DEll, however it would be real nice if someone tested the same inspiron 8200, with 250+ ram, and a 64 meg geforce4Go, I always thought that the geforce4Go was the absolute best mobile gpu, but now I'm not so sure about it, but cannot really say it isn't, I need more testing to really prove it, or be proven wrong. About the slow 4200 RPM hard drives in the area51-M, yeah that kinda sucks, the one in my dell is also 4200 rpm, though it doesn't really bug me (except when loading the game), if you're a hardcore gamer, it's never enough!!!, but with about $230 bucks you can get a blazingly fast external firewire 7200 RPM, 80 GB maxtor hard drive, and problem solved (I'm planning on doing that, even though it sounds extreme, a friend of mine did it, and games run incredibly, even if the HD is external, because of the firewire connection, and the 7200 rpm speed of it). By the way, the Geforce 440Go which comes with the inspiron 8200 does not have all of the Geforce3 or Geforce4 Ti series Components, that is, no pixel shaders, etc. so you're really getting a much faster geforce2 MX, and NOTHING more, NO geforce3 goodies. I'm planning on selling my Dell system and getting the area51-M, but my friend keeps saying that the inspiron 8200 is a better buy, but I still think the alienware outperforms the dell notebook. about battery life, with a p4 desktop 2.53ghz processor, yeah battery life would really suck, but my laptop is always plugged in, so battery life doesn't really matter to me, I got a notebook because we Lanparty about 3 times a week and it sucked moving monitor and case, we usually lost about half an hour connecting the systems, now we're playing in 5 minutes, and I'm at university and when I go home for summer I need my computer, that's when we all get back together to Lanparty for 3 months straight. By the way I wasn't sure if the area51-m had a TV out S-video port, someone said it did, can anyone confirm that? cause that is vital, I love connecting my laptop to the TV and watching downloaded movies, and anime DVDs. Besides the new colour cases now offered by alienware are just love at first sight. However I don't own an area51-m... YET, so all that I can help you with is with telling you that the mobility radeon 7500 video card has given me no problems at all, and performs extremely well, even with an old 1ghz p3m processor and only 256 mb RAM, so it should perform perfectly, outstandingly, absolutely ("like the gods") with a blazing 2.53 GHZ desktop p4 and 512+ RAM on the area51-m. PD. Does anyone have any area51-m 3dmark 2001 SE scores and most of all, compare URLs, that would be extremely helpfull? Thanks, -Chris

Hey everyone,
Thanks for the input... I was gonna go with the Area 51-M and then I went and read the reseller ratings and wow they blew me away. So many stories of people getting crappy stuff that didnt work, problems with support, and waiting for months on end to get their systems. I just can't afford that crappy support and I need my comp soon cause Im going away to college. I decided on a dell. By the way everyone, the dell inspiron 8200 has been out for a while so anyone in the market who is willing to wait till like the end of august can wait for the 8300 which has to be coming out sometime soon. My friend bought the 8100 last year and then like one week later the 8200 came out and he was pissed! All in all, however, he was really happy with his system. He has 1.0 ghz and he still hasnt found a game that doesnt work with his comp... The only thing was that he skimped on ram and only got 192mb so he ended up having to get and upgrade from Crucial.com BUt honestly when it comes to the difference between lets say a 1.9ghz P4 M and a 2.4ghz P4 desktop processor. What is .5 ghz gonna do for you... I mean my friend runs games like Elderscorlls III: Morrowind (which for those of you who don't know use a lot of resources!) he runs them beautifully at high resolutions, and he's only got the 32mb Geforce 2go. So in the end I think as we get farther into the future the things that are gonna keep your comp from becoming obsolete, at least form a gaming perspective are RAM and Video Memory. So the moral of the story is that I am going with the Mobile processor, and in turn I am going with Dell becasue of their MUCH better support. The battery life is better, it doens't get as hot (fewer long play game crashes), and the processor isnt't the main thing to worry about. Im just definitelty not skimping out on RAM and video memory, thats what my friend did and all games fly at high res. on his comp (1ghz, 384mb RAM (upgraded from 192), and a 32mb Geforce 4go card).
Oh and as for the 4200 RPM 40 GB hard drive alienware is offering dell offers the same thing, or you can just get the 5400 RPM one for 99 bucks more to completely forego that problem, and the price of the Dell still comes out a little under the Area 51 M, even though your getting a better HD, better screen ULTRA SHARP uxga+ (awesome screen, a friend has it), and don't forget that awesome support dell has compared to the crap that alienware gives. Read about alienware support at the link below... hell ask questions if you want...

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1650-p1.html

OK. First of all, I've owned 2 dells, (one for work, one for home) and they have HORRIBLE support too. Unless you work for a large corporation, you pretty much don't matter at all to them... (I called for support on my work machine, and got it in minutes, then called for my home machine and took almost 3 months to resolve an issue with a bad ram module...)

Anyway, you say "honestly when it comes to the difference between lets say a 1.9ghz P4 M and a 2.4ghz P4 desktop processor. What is .5 ghz gonna do for you... "... To that, I say, have you READ the differences??? The mobile P4 chip performs VERY poorly in comparison to the desktop... A mobile 1.9 is outperformed by a desktop Duron 900. Whereas the desktop P4 2.4 beats more or less all competition (Athlon 2000+ and up beat it in a fair amount of benchmarks)...

I'm sorry, but you sound like one of those people who think that "mhz" is the only way to measure performance. If that's the case, I'm sorry to inform you that there's a lot more to performance than how fast a chip cycles... hrm... that's not the case... sorry dood.

Are you that thick headed... the one main point I made in the whole thing I wrote is that MHZ isnt the only way to measure performance. As for all that benchmarks and all that... I don't trust any of that crap... I go by what I see and I know my friends computers run games awesome no matter what it is. I also was not imposing my opinion on anyone... just tellin people what I think. As for the 2.4ghz I'm not ONLY using my comp for gaming... Im using for school to... and I cant afford having heat and low battery life.

Er... No, in fact, I'm NOT that thickheaded. I was just wondering if you were implying that the performance difference was going to be minimal only because the numbers in front of the "mhz" were close together.

My point is that the p4-m's get lower performance in gaming. It's a proven fact. But if gaming is less important to you than battery life, then that's completely fine, and the M is a much better choice for you. That's all.

So no, I'm not being "thick headed" at all, thanks though.