Holding Alienware’s Area-51 m9750 is like wrapping your two hands around a beast of a machine. Our review unit came with an Intel Core 2 T7600 CPU, 2 GB of RAM, dual NVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX cards and dual 160 GB SATA drives in RAID 0. Still need more power? Alienware offers even further upgrades with solid state hard drives, 4 GB of memory, or dual GeForce Go 8700M video to bring the final price close to $6,000.

Modern games such BioShock and Call of Duty 4 simply run without effort out of the box. Usually when you think of running games on notebooks, you think about shrinking the resolution, turning off effects, or just being mentally prepared for choppiness. We had none of that with this machine. We were able to achieve smooth framerates at resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher on the above games without any tweaks.

With a RAID 0 configuration, we got 320+ GB of hard disk space. Such configurations are usually reserved for swap files and impermanent data. To consider having the primary volume under RAID 0 aggressive is an understatement to say the least. Striping will no doubt give the fastest performance the hard drives can yield, but having one small hiccup with a hard drive will destroy the array, and via extension your data. If it isn’t the primary PC this could be less risk. However, we wish Alienware would warn users more on their website about using this.

The m9750 weighs 9 lbs and with a 17” screen at 1920x1200 resolution it is not going to be mistaken for a very portable system. It comes with a black finish and the trademark Alienware logo is on the back of the notebook lid. Still the feel of the notebook is rugged and not very svelte in any sense of design, unlike parent company Dell’s new XPS facelift.

With such a large chassis, we thought the keys could be larger than normal. The touchpad definitely could have been larger but it was not until we tried a first person shooter we realized why the touchpad was such a size and placed in such a position. While using WASD controls, the touchpad is never in the way, although that won’t stop you from immediately adjusting the sensitivity and movement speed. It takes more than a few swipes to get from one end of the high resolution screen to another at default speeds in Windows XP. Forget about using the touchpad as a replacement for a mouse for any type of serious gaming. Response within Windows was snappy. We could run various desktop applications simultaneously without any noticeable disk swapping. Our version came with 2GB RAM, which is enough for Windows Vista and definitely enough for Windows XP. Compared to notebooks on sale today, the installed memory is average, although desktops are appearing in big box stores with 3GB now.

The 1920x1200 resolution and PureVideo means the notebook is capable of doing full 1080P HD video. However, unless you get the Blu-Ray drive, you’ll be forced to go out on your own to find high def material. The screen has a glossy finish to it and looks great indoors. Outdoors, the screen does not fare so well as typical with the recent slew of LCDs.

In terms of heat dissipation, the large chassis means a lot of area to let heat out. We didn’t feel any particular hotspots on our lap when using the notebook. As typical with heat build up, the more intensive the operation of the computer, the hotter the unit got. It’s too bad the unit never lasted more than 1.5 hours on battery.

With Windows XP MCE or Windows Vista, the m9750 has a built in tuner to act as a conduit for the media center. This allows you to hook it up to television and use the notebook as a PVR. This is probably good for college room dorm situations where your PC double as your movie and television viewing screen. However, you could spend a portion of your tuition, or in places like Canada, nearly your entire year’s worth of tuition on the notebook for an upgraded model.

The price of the notebook in any decent configuration is astronomically high. For the default gaming configuration you’re looking nearly $3,500 in costs. Meanwhile, the bare bones model is available for $1,699, but with 1GB of RAM and an 80 GB hard drive, it seems hardly worth purchasing. To Alienware’s credit, you won’t be able to replicate their set up with your own mobile components. So there is a price premium for that.

Indeed in this price range, there are very few competitors. The m9750 notebook has a no compromise attitude when it comes to PC gaming. Perhaps the most telling side for us while playing Call of Duty 4, we were so immersed in the action that we nearly forgot we had the notebook and mouse rather uncomfortably on the ground while testing it. It is definitely designed by gamers for gamers. Using all mobile components, it is able to achieve performance so high that it sets the standard for gaming notebooks.

Rating •••••90%•••••