Alienware DHS-5

Alienware DHS 5 Review

by Carla Thornton

- From the company best known for branding its PCs with images of little green men comes the Alienware DHS 5, the most conservative-looking unit in our roundup. An imposing black box 17 inches wide, 5.25 inches tall, and 18 inches long, the DHS 5 is slightly larger than a VCR; but it's a handsome PC that would look good in any room of the house. The front features a blue-ringed power button and a slot-fed multiformat DVD burner that also supports DVD-RAM. An LCD displays the time and date or the current music CD track. Front connections--including an eight-in-one memory card reader, two of the PC's six USB ports, and a FireWire port--lie behind one spring-loaded door that blends seamlessly with the case. The rear provides the standard PC and entertainment connections, including coaxial TV, FM, DVI, and S/PDIF ports. One drawback is slow radio tuning, which plagued many of the units we saw.