HotHardware reviewed the Alienware's Pentium M powered Area-51 m5500 notebook. Here's a bit:

In its most basic form, the Alienware Area-51 m5500 can currently be purchased for a very reasonable $899 after $100 instant rebate. For those looking for a viable gaming platform, they can upgrade the basic Intel IGP to also include a 128MB GeForce Go 6600 for $150 or get a 256MB version of the same card for $200. Should you wish for even higher performance, you can opt for a 256MB Radeon Mobility X1600 for a painful adder of $350. At this time, these options represent the only GPU's that are available for the system. However, factoring in the MXM capability, it would not be surprising to see new GPU's become available for the system. Those looking to maximize efficiency and get the longest battery life possible would do well to spend the $99 to get a 9-cell additional battery to augment the smaller 6-cell version that comes standard.

Given the tested system configuration's current price of $1963 as of April 1st, 2006 we would recommend the Area-51 m5500 to anyone looking for a solid notebook platform with a clear upgrade path in terms of graphics. The only grip we have with the system's potential configurations is the lack of any dual-core CPU availability. With more applications and games slowly gaining dual-core support, this could put this Alienware notebook at a distinct disadvantage. However, for the time being, we are more than pleased with the performance provided by the system and are confident that future updates to this platform will address this issue. With this in mind, along with the solid bundle and highly rated support backing the system, we have no reservations recommending the Area-51 m5500. Add to that the additional stability the company's latest acquisition by Dell affords, we'll award the Alienware Area-51 m5500 a rating of 8 on the Hot Hardware Heat Meter.