Alienware Area-51 m15x 15.4-inch Gaming Notebook

Vote: Thumbs Down or Thumbs Up Our Rating: 94%       Manufacturer: Alienware

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Like all of the systems that Alienware makes, the m15x can be had in a wide variety of configurations depending on how big your budget is and how much performance you want. Prices for the machine start at a mere $1,099 but quickly run more than double that when you start adding options to the machine, of which there are plenty as shown below.

My test machine has the following specifications:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz w/ 800MHz FSB

RAM: 4GB DDR2 667MHz

Storage: 500GB 5400 RPM HDD, Secondary 500GB 5400 RPM HDD in Smart Bay

Optical: Smart Bay Blu-ray drive

Networking: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Audio: Onboard HD audio

Case Design: Ripley Case

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX w/ 512MB RAM

Lighting: Alienware AlienFX Lighting System

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium

Keyboard: Illuminated

Among the myriad of options for the machine that you can choose from when ordering are 64-bit OS versions, 7200 RPM HDDs, SSDs and up to an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8GHz CPU. The machine is available directly from Alienware and as tested, my notebook carried an MSRP of $3949 at the time it was ordered. Prices have dropped since then, so the current configuration today may cost a bit less than the price as tested.