Alienware Area-51 m9750 Review

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There are really just three types of notebook users in the world: those that want the most battery life, those that want a mix of battery life and performance and those that want portable computing powerhouses.  Alienware has been an expert on the third type of system, even though they have attempted to offer some mid-range products as well.  But let’s not kid ourselves – Alienware’s name is all about the niche market, for the user that has money and isn’t afraid to spend it. 
 

There was a time when if you wanted to play games you didn't buy a notebook. Notebooks were fine for spreadsheets and shopping lists, but fire up an up-to-date 3D game and you were entering a world of painfully slow frame rates. It's all different these days of course, with everyone from the likes of Rock, Evesham and Dell offering pimped out powerhouses designed to give you portable gaming pleasure that you can easily slip into a cupboard when you're done. If that's the sort of thing that appeals then you really can't buy without considering Alienware. It prides itself on producing gaming PCs and notebooks for the masses and based on previous efforts, we know it does a pretty darn good job. Inevitably, a fully loaded Alienware system is going to cost the proverbial arm and leg, but it's still always going to be more affordable than truly custom boutique suppliers of true exotica such as Vadim. After all, this is a company owned by Dell.
 

Good news then that Alienware has launched a new top-of-the-range gaming notebook. The system we were sent was pretty loaded specification wise, which accounts for the full on £2,462 price tag, compared to the rather less eye watering £1,198 that the system starts at. Coming under the Area-51 umbrella, our sample m9750 features an Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 running at 2.33GHz, backed up with 2GB of 667 RAM. This is combined with nVidia SLI graphics. Just to be clear, SLI is nVidia's dual graphics card technology, so you're not just getting one GeForce Go 9750 GTX in this notebook, you're getting two. In case you're not up on your graphics technology, that’s a good thing, potentially offering up to twice the performance in certain games. Along with this you're getting two hard disks, which can be set up in RAID 0 or 1 configuration offering either 250GB of secure storage or 500GB of ultra fast storage. You also get a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution display, which is quite something on a 17in display - you won't see this resolution on anything smaller than a 23in external monitor.

Today we are looking at the Alienware m9750 notebook; a 17" screen beast that boasts more than a few features that your desktop probably doesn’t have.  A dual-core Core 2 Duo processor, SLI graphics and RAID 0 SATA hard drives are the stand outs. 

Let’s take a quick look at the system specifications, from the Alienware website:
 

Dell Latitude D430 Review

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Dell’s Latitude range of laptop computers are targeted squarely in the mid range business user segment. Also known as D-Series, the Latitudes come with reinforced magnesium alloy frames, water resistant keyboards, a dedicated phone support queue and the essentials 3-year Next-Business Day warranty. Dell Latitudes now also come with an ExpressCharge feature that charges your battery up to 80% within 1 hour. Common to the D-Series is the D-module bay which allows for easy swapping of a variety of optical drives, spare battery and second HDD.

The Latitude D430 is Dell’s road warrior machine that is highly portable and lightweight, sporting a 12.1 inch widescreen XGA display and weighing only 1.4kg. The full magnesium allow frame offers strength and rigidity to the D430, and is further enhanced by Dell’s StrikeZone protection under the HDD area. Powering the D430 is Intel’s Centrino Duo platform with a lowe-voltage U7600 Core 2 Duo CPU running at 1.2GHz at its core. This also means that the graphics are powered by a standard embendded Intel GMA950 chip.

Like all Dell computers, you can specify a variety options when ordering the Latitude D430. The standard feature include Bluetooth, built-in phone modem, Gigabit Ethernet and a decent 1GB of DDR2-667 RAM built-in. There is one available slot for memory expansion, and our review unit was configured with another 1GB in this slot for a total of 2GB of RAM. For storage, the Latitude D430 has the option of using a Solid State Drive (SDD). The SanDisk UATA 5000 SSD is a mere 32GB in size, but offers increased reliability and durability thanks to no moving parts. Otherwis, you can can order standard hard drives from 80GB to 120GB.

Wireless LAN is pretty much a necessity for a mobile computer like the Latitude D430 Here you have the option of the old Intel 3945 a/b/g adapter or the new 4965 a/g/n adapter. The new adapter should simply be standard, so look out for this option when ordering online.

The Latitude D430 has three USB ports and IEEE3945 (Firewire). There is also an Integrated SD-card reader and the option to have a fingerprint reader below the touchpad. For external displays, you can connect via the VGA connector. The D430 is also compatible with Dell’s D-Dock which give you ore connectors and video outputs.

Being a highly portable laptop, the keyboard layout squeezes many buttons like key arrow keys and function keys, but manages to maintain full sized keys for the main QWERTY keys. The Latitude D430 comes with both a touchpad and nipple-pointer in the layout.
 

NVidia GeForce 8400M GS is the DirectX 10 capable successor of the GeForce Go 7400 for laptops and technologically a slower 8400M GT video card. The performance is slightly above the 7400 and therefore it can represent current games fluently with reduced details / resolutions. For people who play occasionally, it may be sufficient.

The particularity of this video card are the "Unified Shader". Pixel- and vertex-shaders do not exist any more but 16 of the so called stream processors do the graphic work.

Total Score

Dell goes full-throttle with its latest XPS notebook, the M1730, which packs an Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor, dual Nvidia graphics processors in an SLI configuration, and Ageia's PhysX controller, which theoretically makes games look more realistic than before. Although the whole experience is still a work in progress, at $3,824, the XPS M1730 is ready for whatever you can throw at it

The latest revision to Dell's flagship line, the massive XPS M1730 features a redesigned case that combines familiar touches, such as flashing LEDs beneath the speaker grills, with newer elements, such as the integrated Logitech GamePanel LCD and 10-key numeric keypad. But, as with any gaming-oriented system, the most important features are inside the case. Like its predecessors, the XPS M1730 offers the highest-end components available--in the case of our review unit, a top-of-the-line Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, Nvidia SLI graphics, the first mobile PhysX processor, and two massive 7,200rpm hard drives. All that adds up to strong performance scores on our mobile benchmarks and chart-topping frame rates on our games tests--though a similar system with DirectX 9 graphics from Alienware did post higher scores on our F.E.A.R. benchmark. Still, when it comes to all-around features and technologies that can handle the latest in emerging games, the XPS M1730 is the best gaming rig on the market today.

The tanklike XPS M1730 may be the first Dell laptop that obviously has been influenced by subsidiary company Alienware. At first glimpse the glossy black plastic case (you can also choose white, blue, or red), patterned to look like the surface of a liquid, reminded us of the Alienware Aurora mALX we reviewed more than a year ago. And while the M1730's lid includes the familiar XPS branding from previous iterations, Dell has added a glowing logo as well as an LED-lit sculpted ridge that echoes Alienware's sculpted alien eyes. Also glowing: the touchpad and speaker vents, which can be programmed with your choice of 16 color shades and four light effects (or turned off, if you're the ascetic type). It's all a bit over the top, which frankly we like in a $4,000 machine. What we don't like in such an expensive machine: creaking hinges and a squeaky plastic sound that we heard every time we moved the lid.