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Review of the a51m-5500


First Impressions

Let me remind all of you this is my first Alienware. I am simply amazed at its features and speed. I have owned many laptops, and being a computer hardware technician and avid gamer, buying this Alienware was a no-brainer. Other choices were Dell, IBM and Sony.

Ordering

One of the better sites to order something from. Alienwares layout is pretty nice, comparable to Dell. I ordered my system in less than 10 minutes and had an order confirmation about 5 minutes after ordering.

The Infamous Phase Game

We all know about this. Pretty much felt like a crackhead feening for more crack. I never even saw one yet, so my thoughts were mixed; curious yet nervous.

Finally, It's Here!

Nothing better than seeing that big huge beautiful black box. Shipping and packing job was done perfectly, and everything was in the box. I carefully opened each supplement to the laptop, awaiting the moment of truth. Finally it came time to open the smaller box in which the laptop was held. I have to say the shipping guys do a great job to make sure no laptop arrives damaged by shipping. I carefully placed each part out, carefully inspecting. It was like a dream come true. A better way to describe it is like the first time you have sex.

The Case

Case is awesome, beautiful design, crystal clear screen, nice feel on keys, touchpad is a dream, especially with the scroll bar.

Features

Pretty basic stuff, nothing super exciting, but enough to make me happy. Instant ON is awesome I have to say. Havent used it much, but definitely cool stuff. Wireless is great has really good strength. The built in card is very good and if you don’t have one I suggest getting the intel 2915.

Upgrades

Well as with any hardware tech, I just had to open the bitch up. So first thing was the memory. I replaced the shipping 512MB (2 X 256MB) with Transcend 2GB (2 x 1GB) Samsung memory chips. Next was the hard drive. I put in a Hitachi 7200RPM 80GB in place of the standard 40GB. The last mod I have done is pop in a Pentium M 725 Mobile CPU, instead of the stock Celeron M 1.5GHZ. I pinmodded it which allows the FSB to run at 533MHZ instead of 400MHZ. It does kill battery life slighty, but not as bad as you would think. The current CPU clock is at 2.24MHZ. Stock is 1.6MHz for the Pentium M 725. The Celeron M is 1.5.

Other Tweaks.
I used nVidias own Coolbits to run the GPU Memory clock at 745MHZ and the Core at 372MHZ. I could of went a little more but this is what the best config for longer battery life and increased performance is. I also used Prime95 and RMclock to undervolt the CPU so it is not using that much power but still running the at 2.24MHZ


Last Impressions

i love this laptop. it is by far the best laptop i have owned. i do wish i had gotten the m5700 or 7700 but they are a little large for my taste. i like this laptop because its light, fast, and didnt kill my wallet.

as a gadget geek, i couldnt be more happy with the features. the graphics control technology is simply awesome, though i was missleaded because i thought it was on the fly graphics switching, but its ok, its such a great feature that prolongs battery life.

Great review i likely
hey, can i pinmod my 2.0 to run at a higher FSB? i really have no idea what pinmoding is, but im a good computer tinker'er and i can soder really good 2, so enlighten me


btw: wtf is InstantON n e way i know our laptops have it but i still have no idea what it is/does

no quntizzle. You have to have a 400mhz bus processor to pinmod. You cant pinmod 533 bus chip.

Nice review fizzle. Thanks.

correct max, you need a 400MHZ FSB to do the pinmod which is why i opted for the celery. though i think you can pinmod one of these i have never seen it done.

guntizzle, you can use intant on for watching dvds but not boot up to windows
it boots up to a linux version of a media center. its pretty cool i suggest you try it...

nice review =D

hey i dono if this happens on any1 elses m5500 but on mine sometimes i got these like blueish green lines running down the screen, not major but you can see em. Someone esle let me know if you have this problem or how to fix it.

Mine doesn't do that, it doesn't sound right to me. This might be related to the quality of your AC power (ground) - does it also happen when running on battery? Maybe you should start a new thread in the support area!

... and nice review fizzle, it seems that you are as happy as I am

yea bigpimp, i dont think that THAT is normal. try taking apart the unit and reseating the LCD cable, or run your finger along the hinge cover, like a wiping motion...see if anything changes, you could have a bad LCD cable.

nice review

thanks h1tman...

how do you change between the different graphics cards?

there is a switch on the front of the laptop, you must shutdown though before switching.