Alienware Area-51m

WHAT ELSE: Big, green, and gilled might be your first impression of the Area-51m, which sports a remarkable number of air vents for dissipating the heat generated by its desktop processor. But beneath its alien skin, the Area-51m is a serious notebook. If you like the convenience of dual optical drives, a feature frequently offered on desktop PCs, you'll appreciate the Area-51m's side-by-side media bays. The bay on the right holds your choice of optical drive, semifixed with a removable screw. The other bay is modular and accommodates a floppy drive, a DVD-ROM drive, or a second battery. (Our review machine came with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive and a removable floppy drive.)

The Area-51m's 15-inch screen has a native resolution of 1600 by 1200 pixels--nice for graphics work. The setting isn't much of an advantage for playing games, though: They slow down significantly and gain little detail. On the other hand, games look and run great on the Area-51m at 800 by 600 resolution.

For offices with legacy peripherals, the notebook retains all of the older notebook connections except a serial port. Our review unit stuffed with 1GB of RAM had neither memory slot left open; but if you're order the Area-51m with less memory in just one slot, increasing the memory later should be relatively easy. The slots lie beneath the keyboard--not in a compartment accessible from the bottom like most notebooks'--but we had no problem reaching them. You release the keyboard by pressing two latches at the top with the flat end of a screwdriver; then you remove the exposed shielding plate by extracting one screw. Almost all of the Area-51m's connections, including parallel, PS/2, FireWire, and an S/PDIF speaker port for surround sound, reside on the back. That makes it easy to remember where to look, though a bit inconvenient to reach everything.

We liked the translucent keyboard, which includes three quick-launch buttons. A good key layout and the slight slant provided by the Area-51m's big rubber feet permit comfortable typing. Dedicated audio buttons on the front make playing music CDs a snap, even when the notebook is turned off; but the Area-51m's built-in sound, channeled through speakers at the top of the keyboard, is only so-so. A hardware switch for turning wireless scanning on and off would have been nice, too. Alienware provides a good user's manual in both print and electronic formats, an all-too-rare convenience. Unfortunately, both versions lack indexes.

UPSHOT: We admired the UFO-crash-site-inspired name and the Martian green case. But this Area-51m is otherworldly expensive, and plenty of other desktop replacements have the same gaming chops for less.