Verdict: iIf you need more mobility than an SFF can offer, then the Area-51m is your beast
Desktop replacement is a term that generates mirth in certain circles. There was a considerably more apt term in use 20 years ago: 'luggable'. A luggable was a computer that could be unplugged, moved, and then plugged back in with the minimum of fuss. Normally this required someone with a strong back and a stout constitution, such as Geoff Capes, Giant Haystacks or any other superstar of early 1980s British wrestling.
Well Geoff, you're needed again, because luggable computers have returned, in the rather massive shape of the 5.7kg (6.8kg including the PSU) behemoth that is the Alienware Area-51m 7700 'laptop'. We use inverted commas for that term because placing it on your lap would probably cause both you and the computer irreparable damage, as its many vents are located on the underside. Calling it a desktop replacement is also a misnomer because, although it's upgradable, it's nowhere near as modular as a desktop. In fact, the part of your desktop it most resembles would be the surface of the table that your computer sits on.
Table-related digressions aside, the Area-51m does play games, and not, like most laptops, just adequately; in fact, it's bloody good. This was not one of our first impressions of the beast though. These were as follows:
Gareth: Rather large for a laptop, isn't it?
James: Gosh, it's awfully heavy.
Josh: Oh dear, it gets awfully hot.
Alex: My, my, it's very noisy too.
When the battery had finally charged, we hired a horse and cart to take it down to Mrs Miggins' pie and coffee shop. Under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the caffeine emporium, we saw two things. Firstly, when unplugged, the Area-51m's Pentium 4e processor drops in speed from 3.6GHz to 3.0GHz and it limps through Half-Life 2 like a lame mule. It will also only do this for a very short period of time before the battery dies. However, we then had our first positive reaction to the Area-51m. Although the highly reflective screen threatens to behave like a fun-house mirror, it's actually brilliant. Image quality at the native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 is just amazing, and colours come through with a superb feeling of warmth, although we found later that its blue was a little weak. Even more surprisingly, despite the shiny surface, dark areas of games were easy to see.
Intrigued by this positive discovery, I staggered back to the office and eagerly plugged in the beast. After connecting it to a wireless LAN, I went online to give the Area-51m and its GeForce Go 6800 graphics card a proper gaming test. The GeForce Go 6800 is one of the fastest mobile GPUs that Nvidia makes, and it's a giant of a graphics card. It has 12 pixel pipelines and 256MB of GDDR3 with a 256-bit memory interface. The core is clocked at 400MHz, and the memory at a scorching 600MHz (1.2GHz effective). Even more impressive, the GeForce Go 6800 is compatible with Nvidia's MXM interface. This means the graphics card is encased in a self-contained metal module. It can easily be taken out of the Area-51m, and replaced with another graphics module. The Area-51m is one of the first laptops that allows you to upgrade anything other than the RAM and hard disk.
Not that we wanted to get rid of the GeForce Go 6800. After a tiny bit of tinkering in the options menus, we discovered that good frame rates, with no noticeable sluggishness or stutter, could be achieved at 1,680 x 1,050 with 2x AA and 2x AF in games such as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source and Far Cry. The only problem with the gaming experience was the awful on-board sound. With a pair of headphones plugged in, we waited in vain for the sweet lullaby of gunfire to wash over us.
But instead of crisp high notes and meaty bass rumblings, gunshots sounded more like someone munching their way through a tube of Pringles. This is surprising, because the Area-51m has an Intel 915PM motherboard, so it features Intel HD audio, which normally sounds much better than this.
Crunching sounds weren't the only problem, as the Area-51m has another fairly major flaw: it's too hot. While this might not be a problem for a desktop PC, in a laptop, heat can be a major irritation. The most obvious issue it creates is that the part of the laptop you rest your wrists on gets uncomfortably hot. It's not the kind of heat that's going to strip the skin from your flesh, but there's certainly enough warmth to collect gooey, sweaty patches on the wrist rests.
The Area-51m has a 3.6GHz Pentium 4e, which is the CPU equivalent of a four-bar electric fire. Combine this with 1GB of DDR2 memory, two 60GB 7,200rpm Hitachi hard disks running in RAID 0, and the PCI-E GeForce Go 6800, and you can see why the Area-51m gets so hot. The other problem is that the exhaust blows directly onto your desk, and its furious intensity will really make your worktop sweat. We should also mention the optical drive, which can only write CDs - it's definitely worth specifying a DVD writer if you're considering buying the Area-51m.
PERFORMANCE
Although they create a lot of heat, these components offer incredible performance. In our 2D benchmarks the Area-51m managed a whopping 1.64 in the video encoding test. It's even faster than Alienware's full-size desktop, the Aurora 7500SLI. The Aurora is powered by an Athlon 64 FX-55 and scored only 1.34 in this test. The Area-51m's overall score was dragged down by its abysmal CD ripping score, which was slower than the mid-range Sony VAIO VGN-FS115Z. This aside, with an overall score of 1.34, the Area-51m is easily the fastest laptop we've tested.
Gaming is the machine's real forte though. With the GeForce Go 6800 boiling away under the plastic hood, the Area-51m screamed through our Far Cry benchmark with power to spare. It has no problem running games at its screen's high native resolution and it's the first laptop we've seen for which anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering aren't insurmountable problems.
CONCLUSION
If you want to see irresistible force meets immovable object then step right up. Performance of the kind that the Area-51m offers doesn't come cheap, especially if you want it crammed into a plastic coffin the size of a takeaway pizza box.
At nearly £2,200, the Area-51m is incredibly expensive. The 3.6GHz Pentium 4e has a couple of years in it yet, and the MXM graphics module means you'll have a limited upgrade path. But do you really need a laptop with this much power? In most cases, a SFF system offers better upgradability and performance, without sacrificing too much portability. It's not a difficult task to take a Shuttle XPC to a LAN party, for instance.
However, if you do need more mobility than an SFF can offer, then the Area-51m is your beast. And a beast it is - a hot, growling, overweight burden of a gaming rig. But you could grow to love it - we did.
