ArsGeek

So a few months ago, Arsgeek called me up and said “Hey, want a new laptop?” Well, of course I do! The only catch was, I had to give it back after a month of use. “So let me get this straight,” I said ”I get to use an Alienware M9750 notebook for a month, and all I have to do is write a crummy review for your website? Count me in!.” Of course, that was several months ago, and here I sit, no article written yet. Ahhh, the life of a family man, no time for fun stuff!

Back on track here, I got to spend 30 or so quality days with an Alienware Area-51 M9750 laptop. 2GB RAM, dual SLI Nvidia 8700M GT video cards, Intel Core 2 Duo T7600, yadda yadda yadda. Oh yeah, and weight of about 42 stone. Or seemingly so. It’s actually 9lbs 8 oz. or so with the battery, but felt like I was lifting a two ton heavy thing.

This isn’t so much of a tech-review per-se. You can get that data at numerous other sites on the internet. I’m going to focus more on the usability aspects of the machine, how it feels, how the features work, and overall impressions.

I got this sucker home after picking it up at Arsgeek’s place. Of course, the huge box it came in barely fit in my car (Yes, I know, Miata’s are small). It wouldn’t fit in the trunk, so it got the passenger seat. Just barely. Pulling it out of the box, I was struck by how huge this notebook is. And the weight. This isn’t so much of a ‘notebook’ as a ‘portable desktop’ machine. The power brick is just that – larger than a brick and heavier too, I’d imagine. Alienware must have needed all the space and weight to cram in the performance and features they did into this machine.

Sitting down into my comfy chair, I opened the machine and powered it on. Then it hit me. No, not the notebook – I got ‘the stare’ from my wife. This isn’t just heavy and large, it’s also fairly loud, with two fans immediately coming on, causing my wife to turn the TV up a bit. Of course, the situation lightened up a bit when my daughter walked over, pointed to the back of the laptop, and said ‘EYES!!’. It turns out that on the back of the LCD cover there is a little alien head, and the eyes glow blue. Neat effect, actually. My daughter really got a kick out of it.

I spent some time over the evening copying over my Steam information, and installing a few other games and apps that I’d over the course of my time with this monster. One of the first games I put on was Mount and Blade. If you’ve never played this game, go on over and give it a shot. Tons of fun for the short money it costs. Anyways, the game started right up, and I adjusted my video settings, and OH MY GOD! The 17” screen on the M9750 is beautiful. It has one of those shiny screens on it, giving it a bit of a cinema effect (and a bit of glare, too). But the brightness and clarity really struck me – this is a good looking display. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the evening charging down peasants with my lance.

The SLI video card performed admirably. I ran some 3dMark06 benchmarks on the system. With the default drivers from Alienware installed, it ran a respectable 7781. Some tweaking, and an updated driver later, I coaxed a score of 8068 out of the machine. Pretty impressive, actually.

I tend to use my laptops as just that – laptops. I don’t have a desk that I put the machine one. I keep them standing on edge next to my chair, and when I want to use it, I reach down, lift it up into my lap, open the lid and go to town. This works great with my current machine, a Lenovo T60p. With the Alienware, however, this did not work too well – the machine is just too heavy and unwieldy to do this maneuver with. The M9750 is really not a laptop (or even a notebook, if you are into semantics) in any sense of the word, it’s a desktop replacement. Period. I do have to say that heat efficiency is pretty good on the M9750 – it only gets about as warm as my T60p, even though it has two graphics cards and two hard drives in it.

I brought this machine to work with me one day, to play with it some more, and show it to some co-workers. Even the relatively short jaunt from my car to the building was tough carrying this laptop. If you haven’t heard by now, it’s heavy. But the reality of the situation is that’s basically the only negative I have with this machine. Sure the touch pad isn’t the best I’ve ever used, the machine lacks a mouse ‘nipple’ on the keyboard, and the volume control knob on the side isn’t sensitive enough (it took about 65,738 turns to noticeably change the volume level). Battery life on this notebook is pretty bad, with only about 1.5 hours of life with the laptop mostly idle. You don’t get this notebook to be a notebook though. Battery life should be just long enough for you to find a real power source to work from. But the performance packed into this machine is great. Team Fortress 2 ran beautifully, Mount and Blade was phenomenal looking at max resolution, and smooth as silk. The machine has so much power, even Vista felt snappy.

So bottom line is: I miss this machine. If you are looking for a desktop replacement that you won’t lug around much, this probably is the machine for you. If you are in the market for more of a notebook or laptop, I’d look for something lighter and more portable. But you can’t go wrong with the performance of this machine, that’s for sure.

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