A few months ago I asked my friends at Alienware to send me their latest and greatest desktop computer, the Area 51-7500 ALX, and the minute I received it, I remembered why I decided to go with Alienware’s m9700 beast of a laptop for my personal computer – which I paid for out of my own pocket. It’s pretty amazing how industrial and American this machine is. No small or lightweight components here. It feels solid and runs amazingly silent thanks to its Dual-Zone liquid cooling system.
The configuration that Alienware sent me to test included Intel’s Core 2 processors running at 2.66 GHZ which means it’s running four processors. Not only is this thing fast, but it’s a gamer and video editor’s dream machine sporting 2 gigs of memory (which is actually pretty low for a machine like this) and TWO 500 Gig HDs strung together using the latest Raid/Stripe configuration. For you graphic whores, this machine sports not 1 but 2 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Graphic cards running at 768 MB of graphic memory on each card. If 4 2.66 processors are not enough for you, you can go as high as 3Ghz and Alienware will even over clock it for you, so it’ll run at a blazing 3.33 Ghz. Now that’s fast.
I fired up a couple of sample games including Oblivion and Battlefield 2142. They looked beautiful, no dropped frame rates or stutters. I even tried a simple test where I rendered a 5 minute video clip for EMTV, had a large document opened (my great American novel), IE opened, and Outlook 2007. The system multitasked like a charm. My video clip still rendered in less than 10 minutes in uncompressed AVI (I mean with 1,000 gigs of space, who cares about compression?) all that and I was able to roll some tanks over some poor sap without a stutter or frame drop, it was really impressive.
The chassis of the model that I received was slick with an all gloss black top and sleek chrome for the bottom portion of the unit. You can get it in several different color options – Space Black, Saucer Silver, Cyborg Green, or Conspiracy Blue and they even let you customize the systems lighting scheme. You have a choice of red, blue, white, purple, blue, aqua, or yellow. Why Alienware doesn’t do more product placement is beyond me. Their laptops and computers are more than simple machines; some of them are works of art.
I love the fact that all of your main ports are right on the front of the machine, I don’t have to go behind a desk to plug in my headphones, or my USB or flash hardware. There are two USB, one Firewire ports, along with a headphone and microphone jack in the front. In the back there are six more USB ports, one additional Firewire jack, and an optical Audio input/output jack, as well as two sets of Audio/Video inputs. So this machine has you covered. But where are my memory card slots? At a base price of $5,000 I expect certain basic components and this is one of them.
Also missing from this unit is any kind of software – like MS Office, the configuration I received also didn’t include a Bluetooth or Wireless networking cards. Again at $5 Gs, I expect this to be part of the base price. I’m not sure the logic of leaving off Bluetooth or Wireless connectivity and charging extra for those components. MS Office is always left off of default computer installs so I can accept that. Don’t like it, but accept it. Windows Vista Home Premium was the preinstalled operating system and it has a rating of 5.4 for Vista compatibility which basically means it can run any Vista capable software other than Vista the machine is bare bones from a software standpoint.
The review unit arrived with a couple of nifty little extras like an amazingly beautiful 24 Inch Dell monitor, Logitech’s keyboard and gaming mouse and the toping on the ice cream: Logitech’s 7.1 surround sound speakers. I tested the system by watching a bit of Independence day and the sound was almost flawless, but the base was a little too “basey” for my tastes and setting everything up was a pain in the butt, but the optical port helped the set up process.
This system comes with custom support from their Tier 1 VIP support staff. Now here’s where I have an issue, my M9700 Laptop crashed a few weeks ago and I went through the normal procedures to contact support. I was on hold for about 4 hrs on two separate occasions before I got so fed-up that I had to contact my friends at Alienware directly. They had someone from support contact me the same day and the next day a technician was at my office to fix my computer.
Now my laptop shouldn’t have crashed in the first place, but I love the service once it occurred. The question is, if I didn’t have the connection at Alienware, would I still be sitting around trying to get through to a human being? I also don’t like the idea that Alienware doesn’t allow you to transfer support agreements.
I love Alienware products and the company. But I’m a little concerned based on the negative long term experience that I’ve been having with my $3,000 Alienware laptop over the last month or so. Overall, if you have the money to spend and dream of having the ultimate Gaming and Entertainment computer you can’t go wrong with the Alienware Area 51-7500. It’s a sweet, sweet, machine.
Final Grade A-
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 10/01/07
BENCHMARKS
Doom 3
Doom 3: 179.0 fps
3DMark 2006
Customer Information:
- 3DMark Score: 10,540.00 3DMarks
- SM2.0 Score: 4,894.00
- HDR/SM3.0 Score: 5,288.00
- CPU Score: 2,136.00
- Game Score: 0.00 Points
SM2.0 Graphics Tests
I’ve always admired the looks and performance specs on the Alienware systems, even before dell acquired them. I just have a tough time getting over the price barrier. But I guess quality comes at a price. Just a reality of the technology world, or the real world for that matter.