Dell may have stolen some thunder yesterday by announcing a spate of brightly-colored consumer-friendly notebooks, but Dell subsidiary Alienware aims to prove it still has a few tricks up its sleeve, announcing its high-end Area-51 M8750 gaming notebook, which the company claims is the first to combine Intel Core 2 Duo processing with dual Nvidia SLI graphics.
“The new Area-51 m9750 builds upon the best-in-class performance that pulsates throughout Alienware’s mobile line by delivering the most powerful combination of graphics and processors ever seen in a 17-inch notebook,” said Alienware’s Frank Azor,senior VP and General Manager for Alienware’s Worldwide Product Group, in a release. “Add to that a vast array of media capabilities, ample hard drive capacity, and a head-turning design and you have a notebook destined for greatness among gamers and digital media enthusiasts.”
The Area-51 m9750 can be custom configured by customers to include any (or all!) of a variety of high-end features. Perhaps the flagship feature is support for dual 512 MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics cards with Nvidia SLI technology, giving the system super-fast frame rates and outstanding image quality—just the sort of thing gamers care about. The m9750 also offers Intel Core 2 Duo processors (up to 2.33 GHz with 4 MB of L2 cache), support for up to 4 GB of RAM, single and dual hard drive configurations offering up to 500 GB of storage, a selection of optical burners (from 8× dual layer DVD through dual layer Blu-ray burning), plus 802.11a/b/g/pre-N Wi-Fi networking, Bluetooth 2.0, and gigabit Ethernet. If you need to connect to other gear, the system offers 4 USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire port, an ExpressCard/54 slot, a 4-in-1 media card reader, plus a headphone jack, separate jacks for front and surround speakers, and a TOSLink audio output—and let’s not forget S-Video and co-ax video inputs (did we mention the integrated television tuner?), plus VGA, DVI-D, and S-Video output. Customers can also select from a 17-inch 1,440 by 900 pixel display, or a 1,920 by 1,200 pixel display with Clearview. The 9750 is just 1.5 inches deep, but weighs about 8.5 pounds. Alienware will ship the systems with Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate, but customers can also opt for Windows XP Media Center Edition or XP Pro.
The Alienware Area-51 m9750 starts at $2,099, but can hit prices over $6,000 with all the bells and whistles—and that’s without a carrying case or vehicle adapter.
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