I was looking around to replace my Gateway 450 PII that I've had since '98 and upgraded as much as I could without replacing the motherboard and wound up getting an Alienware Area-51 2.53Ghz P4 system. I've had it now about two weeks. It looks great (black) and runs games smooth as butter (right now I'm playing No One Lives Forever 2 and Neverwinter Nights). I cracked open the case as soon as I got it because I wanted to put my Zip drive in. The inside was huge and will be a lot easier to upgrade as the years go by than my Gateway was. The Zip drive went in with no problems once I figured out how to take the front cover off.

I looked at reviews and prices for a lot of other computers, including Dell, Gateway, Micron, IBuyPower, ABS, Falcon, and others. Alienware always got a great review with the only usual negative being the high price. However, I found that the Dell, Gateway, Micron and IBuyPower were just as much on the configuration I was getting and the Falcon considerably higher.

My only complaint would be I couldn't get it fast enough. It took about three weeks from the time I ordered until I got it, but to be fair I had an initial problem with my credit card and then Thanksgiving fell in the middle of the shipping. Alienware also has an online system so you can tell where your system is in the process. In addition, the sales people were very helpful in letting me know what was going on.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2332.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50