Scolin's Area 51m 7700 Review (long)

I am typing this review on my new Area 51m 7700 laptop from Alienware. I can tell you this now: I love it. Read on to see why.

Flashback a couple weeks to 4/11. I take the day off from school just because I can. That day, I go around trying to find a new PSP, but unfortunately, no stores had it. I get very upset, and go home. My father calls from my grandmother's house and asks "What was that laptop you wanted?" I think nothing of it and tell him it was an Alienware. He asks where we could get something like that, and I tell him you can only get it online. He tells me we are going to order one. Holy... sh**.

I walk him threw the steps, choosing the parts I want. We order it. May 2nd is the estimated ship date. I was going to be an Alienware owner.

Now knowing that I was getting an Alienware, I do tons of reading up and try to find some forums that would help me get past the hard part of waiting. I stumble across a nice little forum called "notebookforums.com." Look! They have an Alienware-only section! I join up under the name of Scolin (a name I had gotten from looking around my desk and seeing a little plastic SCOrpion and a LINk lolly-pop.)

So, checking out the forums, I found a user with the name CheyenneWay. We had ordered our Area 51m 7700's on the same day, around the same time. The race was on. We both recieved ours on the same day (today) within mere hours. I won, though

My phases moved along quickly, without any problems. This forum actually did make it seem like it went past quicker, so kudos to the members here and thanks for all your help.

Oh man... the night before was one of the longest nights of my life. The minutes seemed like hours. Eventually, come 8 PM, I took some Benedryl and fell asleep in a half-an-hour. I swear I woke up about every 2 hours that night. 11:30, 2:30, 5:00, 6:30. At six thirty, I got up, saw that my package was in my state and watched the movie "May" until 8:00. I checked Fedex again. Package was on truck for delivery. Nice.

At 9 AM, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and go sit in the living room. I catche a glimpse of a white truck around the shrubs, but when I get up to check, I realize it is only a DirecTV truck. Looking out the window every couple minutes while eating my cereal, I watch the white DirecTV drive around the corner. Just as the DirecTV truck drives away, the FedEx truck drives right past it and stops in front of my house. I jump up and down in joy, and sign the electronic-signing-majig. I get some pictures snapped of me and the fedex guy.

I grab a knife and cut open the little USB box. I take the box out of the packaging and toss it out of the way, nearly breaking it. I then slowly begin to slice open the big black box. Inside I see some foam. Toss. My alienware box peeks out at me. Toss the last foam insert. I see the t-shirt on the side of the box containing my lappy and throw the shirt on. Finally, the good part.

I take the lappy box out of the larger box and put it on the ground, standing tall. I open it up and see the bare-bones carrying bag and the ass of my lappy. What a large ass it was. But ya know what? "I like big butts and I can not lie." Not really...I take it out, toss the foam things on the side of the lappy in the large box and bring the 'top over to the dining room table. Slide it out of pinky bag, open it up and take the plastic sheet s off of the lappy. I get the plug from the carry case and plug it in.

Press the power button AND..... nothing? I remember seeing on these forums that you had to hold the power button. It works. The first blue Windows XP startup screen I see, I check for dead pixels. None. None at all.

Other little extras that I enjoy is the mousepad (which I did not get in one of those metal tins for some reason) and the little Alienware ID car with my name on it. They are small things, but cool nonetheless.

As of right now, I have Max Payne 2, Half Life 2, Far Cry, and Unreal Tournament 2004 installed. They all run great. I maxed out everything on all the games, and no real slow down to speak of. One thing I noticed was that on some of the games, whenever it tried to access a sort of audio file (For example, in Max Payne 2, whenever I get near enemies and they are about to talk, I get a 1/10 of a second pause, THEN they talk. Wierd.) I am using no-cd patches (I own all of the games, don't worry.) could that have something to do with it?

I really can't think of any real complaint. The area where I rest my palms get warm, but never HOT. I have had the lappy on for more than 8 hours now and the only thing that feels hot to the touch are the little (metal?) borders around the touch pad. Even then, they are so thin, that you only notice them is if you touch the border itself.

I hope enjoyed my review, and make sure to check out CheyenneWay's review once it is put up. I have a bunch of pictures, but it might be a while before I get them up. I also had a couple questions, and I put them up in the notebook support forums here. Thanks for reading, and feedback would be great!