Chassis layout, Keyboard, etc

The Area-51 m9750 has a full-sized keyboard with dedicated numpad and arrow keys. The keys on the keyboard are fairly quiet while at the same time they still provide solid tactile feedback for a keyboard on a notebook – thankfully there are no mushy keys here.

Located above the basic keyboard, right above the function keys are a set of touch-sensitive buttons for quick launching apps like Internet Explorer and your email. Meanwhile, pressing the “DVD”, “TV”, and “Music” buttons on the right-hand side launches the appropriate apps within Windows Media Center. Alienware also provides media buttons in the center for stop, rewind, fast-forward, etc.


The keyboard is well built, there are no signs of flex and overall we were quite pleased with it. Critical buttons you’ll use frequently when gaming (WASD, shift, space bar, ctrl, etc) are appropriately sized and placed. Typing enthusiasts may be disappointed by the lack of dedicated pgup, pgdn, home, and end keys, and we wouldn’t mind if the tab key were a touch larger, but frankly these aren’t major criticisms in our opinion.


The touchpad is nothing to write home about, at nearly 3” wide it’s wider than most touchpads on your typical notebook, but we wouldn’t mind if it were a little taller. As you can see it’s flanked by one large button instead of dedicated left and right mouse buttons. We’d prefer dedicated buttons but this isn’t a major gripe on our part.



One weird quirk we did run into with the mouse was its inability to respond after waking up the system from suspend mode. 95% of the time the mouse would fail to work within 10 seconds of coming out of standby mode: the rest of the system’s components would work fine, we just couldn’t navigate with the touchpad or even a USB mouse attached to the system. This problem occurred after we changed a few of the power settings within Windows. Once we changed the power settings back to default, the problem went away. How the two are related is unknown to us.


The chassis design of the Area-51 m9750 is typical Alienware. At the top of the case, you’ve got their signature alien head with eyes that glow blue when the system is powered on. Meanwhile, the sides of the lid have a ribbed design, giving the system a sleek look when the lid is closed.

Alienware says their chassis is made from a magnesium alloy to provide the strength and rigidity of steel while saving weight. Based on how rugged the system is, we believe it. Alienware then wraps this magnesium shell with hard plastic that is designed to resist fingerprints and scratches. After a few weeks of solid use, we can testify that Alienware’s chassis is indeed resistant to fingerprints, although we just couldn’t justify testing Alienware’s latter claim that the system is scratch resistant, we do have to return the system after all. We’ve had the system for over a month now and still haven’t seen a single scratch though. Over the course of day-to-day use, smudges do pop up from time to time, especially around the palm rest area, although these can be wiped off rather easily.

With proper maintenance, we feel pretty confident that this system will look just as good on day 900 as it does on day 1.


The layout of the chassis itself is has its highlights and lowlights. The good is the aforementioned optical out, which is located on right hand side of the notebook, right next to the audio connections for surround speakers. Here you will also find a USB port and jacks for headphones and mic. Another neat feature you will find here is a volume control knob.

At first, you may think this is a bad idea, as you could easily bump the knob accidentally, but the knob is slightly recessed to prevent this from happening. In addition, the knob has lots of resistance built-in; brushing your hand along the side of the chassis won’t adjust the volume.


On most laptops, you’ll usually find the optical drive on the right or left hand side of the chassis. Alienware doesn’t do this for the Area-51 m9750 however, the optical drive is located on the front of the system.

In our opinion, this location is less than ideal, as this can lead to issues opening the drive on your lap. Alienware has taken steps to prevent this from occurring, but it can still happen occasionally. On the left side of the notebook Alienware includes a pair of USB ports, an Ethernet jack, security lock slot, mini-Firewire jack, a media card slot and Express card slot.


Around the back of the unit, Alienware provides an audio input, S-Video input and output, RJ-11 jack, coaxial input (for TV tuning), 1 USB port, and DVI and VGA connections. It’s important to note that the DVI connector is single-link DVI and not dual-link.

Alienware also mounts a 1.3 megapixel webcam on the chassis, just above the 17” display. For added flexibility, the webcam can be rotated slightly.

Battery life

As you’d expect in a system packing this much horsepower, battery life is lower than your typical notebook. We only got an hour and seventeen minutes out of our Area-51 m9750 system while wirelessly surfing the web. We then were able to run 3DMark 06 (including the CPU tests) looped for 55 minutes before the battery was completely drained and the system shut off.