DH Review: Alienware Area-51M Laptop

Zardon

Read The Review Here
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Performance laptops have been around for some time now and one of the leading lights has been Alienware. In my time at Driver Heaven I have been lucky enough to test several Alienware systems and have seen their products mature from their first generation model, the Area 51m to the latest M5550. It is fair to say that Alienware always try to pack as much high end kit into their notebooks as possible and when I think back to the 51m I fondly remember the 3.0Ghz Pentium 4, 1Gb of DDR-400 and Radeon 9600 impressing everyone in the office, in fact that specification was actually better than many desktops at the time (2003).
That original machine received a glowing review when we tested it and the last time we spoke to the person who originally ordered the system it was still working, albeit with a replacement battery. Unfortunately not every experience we have had with Alienware systems has been the best, some have had major issues with build quality such as failure to remove protective plastic from heatsinks or damaged graphics cards which display corruption when gaming. But with each release we have to put these issues to the back of our minds and view each product as if it was our first, which brings us on to today’s review sample.

BlueMak

Nice review. Powerful laptop, but still don't understand why they have SLI of 7950 in it.

In fact, is it me or modern laptops are not as powerful, compared to desktops, as they were 4-6 years ago, at least in terms of graphics and CPU.


Also, dugg! (first too :-p )

Matth

Well, browsed around Clevo to see if I could figure which one it's a rebrand of, and yes, Clevo DO have SLI laptops, it's not a scoop for Alienware. Couldn't find an exact match, but the article says 945 chipset and the comparable Clevos are 965 chipset, so maybe the Alienware is an older Clevo model rebrand - maybe things have changed since Dell, but Alienware laptops always used to be Clevo rebrands with a minor cosmetic makeover.

Really, especially since being taken over by Dull (Dell), Alienware is just a branding exercise with no real substance.

Clevo Laptops (SLI)
CLEVO - Products (D900C & 901C)
CLEVO - Products (M590KE)

BlueMak

Clevo? Never heard of them before. Any good? Do they sell in Europe?

Matth

Not usually in their own name, but a lot of smaller brand laptops will be Clevo, actually not even sure if Clevo are the actual root of them, or if it goes further back to some nameless tech sweatshop in Taiwan, but Clevo seems to be main name that comes up when hunting down info for almost any "unknown" laptop.

BlueMak

So as a consumer you can't actualy buy anything directly from them.