A notebook computer with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood processor...

[Random Variable]

Alienware Area-51-M

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Battery life....15 minutes.

 

[MisterMe]

I didn't even realize Intel released a 2.4 Ghz mobile chip yet.

 

[AGodspeed]

It's not the P4-M by the way. There are no P4-M processors beyond 1.7GHz at the moment, let alone one at 2.4GHz...

Beware of P4-M notebooks that use desktop Pentium 4 Northwood processors instead of the Northwood P4-M processors!

 

[BD231]

Battery life....15 minutes.




I didn't even realize Intel released a 2.4 Ghz mobile chip yet.

They havn't, it's a desktop chip.

 

[Random Variable]

<< It's not the P4-M by the way. There are no P4-M processors beyond 1.7GHz at the moment, let alone one at 2.4GHz...

Beware of P4-M notebooks that use desktop Pentium 4 Northwood processors instead of the Northwood P4-M processors! >>


Other than battery life, why?

 

[AGodspeed]

<<

<< It's not the P4-M by the way. There are no P4-M processors beyond 1.7GHz at the moment, let alone one at 2.4GHz...

Beware of P4-M notebooks that use desktop Pentium 4 Northwood processors instead of the Northwood P4-M processors! >>


Other than battery life, why? >>

Well that's a pretty big "other than". Most people care about battery life when they're purchasing a notebook. That's like saying "Other than battery life, does the PIII Tualatin offer anything else?"

If you don't care about battery life though, this is the best high-end notebook you can get. Although it's pricey obviously...

 

[CubicZirconia]

Is the battery life really 15 minutes?

 

[Random Variable]

Alienware seems to be promoting the Area-51-M as a replacement for a LAN system, rather than a notebook that you would bring onto an airplane.

 

[m1ke101]

why doesn't this thing have a geforce4 go?

 

[Derango]

it looks nice, at least

 

[WilsonTung]

This machine has a very nice design, but I'm afraid the inclusion of a 2.4 GHz processor is little more than a gimick.

Look at the hard drive options - your only choices are slow 4200 RPM drives. This machine is going to chug on some things no matter what...

Overall, I'd say this laptop is not very well balanced. It has relatively slow memory, hard drive, and video for a processor of its class. DDR-266 and the Radeon 7500 may be the best you can get for a laptop, but for a 2.4 GHz P4 they aren't good enough.

 

[SgtZulu]

you could build one hell of a lan box for $2857

 

[Rand]

<< Is the battery life really 15 minutes? >>



No, but it's going to be pretty damn short. A desktop Northwood @ 2.4GHz running at 1.5V without the benefit of SpeedStep is going to be eating up battery life pretty quickly, not to mention it'll be difficult to adequately cool in such a small environment.



<< Alienware seems to be promoting the Area-51-M as a replacement for a LAN system, rather than a notebook that you would bring onto an airplane. >>



Perhaps, but their still passing it off as easily portable and great for use anywhere...

<< From LAN parties to business meetings to classroom lectures, this system can go virtually anywhere. >>

.

In any case, personally I find it the notion of a processor that dissipates an average of 60W in a notebook a ridiculous prospect to say the least.



<< why doesn't this thing have a geforce4 go? >>



Perhaps they wish to use save battery life?
In which case it makes singificant sense to use the R7500 Mobility over the GF4 Go considering performance seems to be close enough that who holds the lead jumps back and forth depending upon the individual benchmark and whose doing the testing.
But then, I somehow doubt their particularly concerned about battery life judging by the processor in use.

 

[FishTankX]

I say just swap out the P4 2.4 for a P4 1.7m and double it's battery life.. 40 watts is nothing to laugh at. As in savings. The P4M 1.7GHZ is nearly as powerful as the 2.4 (You won't miss it's power very much as long as you turn off speedstep.) And the extra few hours at a LAN meeting would be good. What I really wanna see is a notebook with Micron's new "Flash DIMM". Keep a 512MB Flash DIMM (Would only really add 200$$$ to the price) and you have a fast as hell harddrive. Cold boot from Windows XP faster than a desktop.

And the Geforce4 Go's drivers aren't really up to par.. lemme just put it this way. The Geforce2 Go's drivers can be as nasty as the Radeon8500 second generation drivers.

 

[John]

<< It's not the P4-M by the way. There are no P4-M processors beyond 1.7GHz at the moment >>



The Dell i8200 uses a P4-M 1.8GHz cpu.