2. Alienware Area-51 M9750

Alienware has been custom building performance machines for as long as most of us care to remember, and a later partnership with Dell has only improved the firm’s availability and buying power. Their alien-esque face and lid designs may have become "old hat", but at the same time, their familiarity has made these a status symbol with many buyers and onlookers.

A 17" widescreen display is enormous by traditional notebook standards, and this one supports 1920x1200 resolution for accurate 1080p (1920x1080) video playback. This high resolution makes desktop displays look grainy by comparison, as you’d need a 24" desktop panel to reach the same pixel count. On the other hand, reading small fonts at native resolution will require a bit of squinting or close-up viewing for those without eagle eyes - this is the tradeoff involved in all high-resolution notebook displays.

A full-sized keyboard with number pad assists the transition to this desktop-replacement notebook for desktop PC users, and can make games that use keyboard/mouse controls easier to master. Of course you’ll still need to carry a mouse to your LAN, since touchpads are ill-suited for the task.

Alienware seems acutely aware that anything protruding from the front of a notebook becomes an obstruction, and so places all its connectors on the rear and side edges. That leaves little room for an optical drive, so the DVD burner ejects from the front. Anyone who actually uses this device on his or her lap should be careful not to punch the eject button with their rock-hard abs, belly fat, belt buckle, or other attire.

The most frequently-used connectors are handily placed on the right edge, including the headphone (with volume control dial) and microphone jacks, and a single USB 2.0 port that’s perfect for adding a mouse. Left-handed people will barely be inconvenienced, though most lefties have probably grown accustomed to adapting to a right-handed world.

Also found here are the multi-channel audio outputs typically used in home theaters and for presentations, which might have otherwise been placed on the rear edge next to the video outputs (since they are generally used together). This is likely a concession to users of multi-channel headphones.

On the left we find a Gigabit network port, two USB 2.0 ports, and one IEEE-1394 FireWire port. Once again, Alienware provides the most commonly-used connections on the sides for easy access.

Next to the left-side ports are a "4-in-1" media card interface and a full-width (54 mm) Express Card slot. Based on the PCI Express interface, Express Cards have all but replaced those that use the old and slow PCMCIA interface, so users of older cards will unfortunately be required to upgrade.

Rear edge outputs include S-Video, DVI and VGA for connecting a wide variety of larger displays. To the left of these are another USB 2.0 port and the power adapter connection.

Rear inputs include stereo audio, TV tuner cable, S-Video, and a phone line jack for the modem. The TV tuner is an optional component that Alienware only sells with Windows Media Center Edition and Windows Vista, so its presence on this Windows XP Professional configuration seems questionable. The S-Video input has three extra holes typically found in Composite break-out/break-in cables, but these additional functions are undocumented.