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If you read j’s review he lists everything that was in the box, and how it was packaged. For fear of sounding redundant I won’t repeat it all. Packaging was great. You could tell that this computer hadn’t moved at all inside the box. And it comes with all your programs including windows, and all that good stuff.

Intel Pentium M 740 1.73GHz
Alienware Intel 915GM + ICH6 Chipset
Alienware m-5500 15.4" 1680x1050
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go MXM 6600
40GB 5400 RPM ATA100
8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW/24X CD-RW
Intel High-Definition Audio
1-year warranty (soon to be 3)

Ok, so down to the nitty gritty. Alienware makes some of the best computers out there right? Well the Area 51-m5500 is most definitely no exception. With every system there are pros and cons, so I’ll go through the bad news first on each section, and then the wonderful glorious good news.

-The display: It’s not as bright as some others in my opinion. The screen is wonderful don’t get me wrong, but just let it be known that there are brighter screens out there. It does have a little glare at extreme angles, but is viewable from almost any angle. It can be outfitted with a near HD quality screen (1920x1200). I chose a screen at mid level (1680x1050), and it’s a sight to behold during game play. I love it!

-The Keyboard/Touch pad: It takes a day or two to get used to the position of several buttons, but other than that it’s very desirable. The keys have a very nice feel to them, and they aren’t to light like some notebooks I’ve used. You can really tell where your fingers are on the board. The touch pad is great too. After you adjust it to your liking I’m sure anyone will agree that it’s one of the best you’ve ever used. The scroll feature is very nice also. On the right side of the touch pad there is a portion dedicated to scrolling up and down in any window. This makes surfing the net very easy too, since you don’t have to move the mouse all the way to the up-down cursor on the open window.

-The battery: Battery life is better than I expected with a screen this big, and a video card sucking the juice out of my bat. When I timed it I got almost 3 hours surfing the net with the 6600 turned off. I have the 6 cell battery too, so I’m guessing that the bigger battery would get a significant increase in computing time. I get about an hour playing games. I don’t have times with wireless on times, but Guntizzle has put some up. I will be doing that soon though. Battery life is good. I’m happy with it.

-The graphics: I decided on the 128mb NVIDIA, and I’ll tell you all right now it was not a bad choice. I don’t know how much better the graphics could look. This card runs any game I want on full settings. And even with the AA (Anti-Aliasing, for those of you who don’t know) it doesn’t get choppy. I did overclock my card a bit, 351/627. It came set at 300/600. It wasn’t much but my 3d Marks jumped from 2220 to 2508. It isn’t running any hotter. I played HL2 for nearly an hour, and it still didn’t get above 72C. It’s a great graphics card. I have no bad things to say about it.
These marks are the ones that Alienware sent me.
3DMark Score: 2,215.00 3DMarks
GT1 - Return to Proxycon: 10.03 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 6.27 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 11.05 FPS

CPU Score: 3,346.00 CPU Marks
CPU Test 1: 1.67 FPS
CPU Test 2: 2.98 FPS

These are after over clocking.

3DMark Score: 2457
GT1 – Return to Proxyon: 10.9 FPS
GT2 – Firefly Forest: 7.1 FPS
GT3 – Canyon Flight: 12.3 FPS

CPU Score: 4010
CPU Test 1: 2.4 FPS
CPU Test 2: 3.0 FPS

It stays cool enough. It’s never hot, but it does get warm. FEAR runs very nice on high settings. HL2 runs like butter on maximum. I ran UT2003 on the highest settings and it was smooth as glass no matter what I did.

The Sound: The sound is mediocre. It’s better than some laptops I’ve heard, but it’s not that great. The idea behind this laptop, obviously, is to keep it light and make it perform like a champ. They did this, but they had to sacrifice audio gear to do so. I don’t really game away from home anyway, so I just plug in external speakers. It does have an equalizer, so sound is great when plugged into external speakers.

Final words and my personal ratings:

It’s a great computer. I would not change anything about it. From what I can tell the faster video card and faster processor wouldn’t have done much, so I’m very pleased with my decision. Plenty of power, great screen, very good keyboard, very nicely built. Most importantly it’s stylish beyond belief. I get comments all the time like, “dude, you got an Alienware? That’s so cool.” I give this computer 9.5 out of 10. All it needs is a Clearview screen, better sound, and improved battery would help too. This computer is a solid choice for any type of work. I love it.

great review and any pics you got

congrats!!, get some pics up =P

Pics will be up soon.

Nice review. Thanks.

Thanks for the review!

nice review congrats