ASIDE FROM THE DENT the MJ-12 will put in your wallet, be prepared for a good workout from this mobile workstation's hefty weight. As one would suspect from a unit with such advanced specs, this notebook is heavy! The transformer alone weighs well over two pounds. It's also a trend now days to give consumers a choice of color with high end electronic equipment. Apple has been doing this for years with iPods and iMacs. The MJ-12's bright cobalt blue finish (they call it Conspiracy Blue) gives it a striking, rich appearance. Even though the case is made entirely of plastic, it has a look of strength and beauty. With its black fins, blue-backlit logo and alien head logo, it stands out above just about ever other laptop.
The MJ-12 has four USB 2.0 ports on the side, plus DVI and S-video connections and fire wire port, it also had an easy to configure Atheros integrated wireless 802.11b/g Wi-Fi device and an all important 10-1 card reader that supports all the important card formats. Another indication of the sheer horsepower this unit packs is that it houses 4 fans to cool down the powerful AMD Dual-Core processors. Be aware that the exhaust opening on the left side can get very hot if the unit is on for long periods.
This unit came with a 17-inch widescreen UXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with a 1.3 mega pixel built-in camera. The NVIDIA cards were very easy to set up for dual display and Alienware shipped the unit with an adapter for a CRT monitor. The keyboard is full size and has a number pad next to it. Navigation is made easy through a track pad with two buttons as well as a scrolling track surface pad. Under the large wrist rest is a digital clock with several button controls for the CD/ DVD player. On each side of the buttons are a set of speakers. Another set of speakers are housed on either side of the keyboard and a subwoofer is seated on the bottom of the unit giving amazing sound quality, especially for a notebook.
After loading several graphics programs (i.e. Photoshop CS2, several plug-ins, Adobe Lightroom, and more) it was possible to work on multiple high resolution images at the same time with none of the bottlenecks and system freezes encountered with other laptops and desktops. The bright wide screen makes working on images a pleasure and the fast graphics provided by the NVIDIA video card make it just that much easier. The MJ-12 boasts NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M graphics with 512MB of video RAM, just a few of the included features.
In fact, Dell was so impressed with Alienware that they recently purchased the company. However, the MJ-12's hefty price tag seems hard to justify at first, but performance and speed suggests it might be money well spent, especially for professional users. Unfortunately, the available upgrades easily tempt you to spend even more!
www.alienware.com
