Ready to be Alienized?

It was early 2006 that Dell bought over boutique PC manufacturer Alienware. Since then, a lot of gamers I know have been salivating at the thought of getting themselves one of these prized machines. But it wasn't to be. For some reason, the Alienware brand is not shipped to India, even though it has always followed the same direct selling model as Dell. But the distinctive design sometimes becomes too much to resist, and when that happened, I promptly went and got one from the US. The Alienware Area-51 M5550 notebook isn't a very high-end gaming machine, rather it's one of the most basic models they sell. But it still has drop-dead gorgeous looks and the cool backlit Alien head staring at you. It has a 15.4” widescreen LCD and is covered in glossy silver and black. Nine indication LEDs placed right on the hinge can tell you the status with the lid closed or open. Configured at about $1050, it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic, a T 5500 Core 2 Duo Processor @ 1.66GHz, 1GB RAM, 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD, a 128 MB ATI 1400 Go graphics card and a DVD writer. You can add as much as you want, provided your wallet allows.

Other specs include a lot of standard stuff: mic, memory card reader, Wi-Fi, 3 USB ports, FireWire, DVI out and S-Video out. I was itching to try out some games, so before any benchmarks, I loaded Bioshock on and it played pretty well at medium settings. Then I tried Call of Duty 2 and it managed a healthy frame rate even on high settings. I liked that you can easily turn off the touchpad. The palm rest was very warm after about an hour of playing, but that's something you'll have to live with if you get dedicated graphics.

To cool the notebook you can simply run the fan by clicking on a button above the keyboard. There are also some quick launch buttons for Media Player, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. Now for the bench tests. It scored 894 in 3D Mark and 2551 in the PC Mark benchmark. With BatteryMark, the battery lasted for about 2 hours 20 minutes. Overall, I guess you'd probably buy this notebook more for it's amazing presence rather than anything else.