I've been using the Alienware Aurora m9700 for practically a year now and I've come to the conclusion that it's just too damned big.
I admit—this was pretty obvious when I first got the machine. But I figured I'd give it a shot for a few months and would try to make the machine useful despite its gargantuan dimensions.
It turns out that it's just far too large to use, even when it's used as a not-quite-laptop luggable monstrosity. The base is so wide that the keyboard sits inside a big plastic threshold, which makes switching between the mouse and keys far too much of a journey. And despite the full-size keys and unused space, the damned thing doesn't even have a full-sized escape key nor dedicated page keys whatsoever.
That's right. Anytime I want to hit page-up or page-down, it's a two-handed maneuver to hit the left-mounted Fn key and the right-mounted undersized arrow keys.
It's big and it's heavy and although the screen is absolutely beautiful, I'd much rather have a good looking small screen that doesn't take forever to mouse across. The touchpad is painfully unaccelerated, which means that if you didn't happen to pack a mouse, you'll spend all year scrolling your cursor around the hugeass display.
Yes, it's convenient to have the power of a real computer in a laptop, but since I have to TS into another machine anyway to manage my local network stuff, the novelty is lost.
Give me a smaller machine, or give me ... well, you know, a desktop.
maybe it'd be worth it if they gave you a full key board with a number pad y toda.
That was my single criteria in purchacing a new lappy - one taht I can actually take with me.
So, are you interested in selling it?
Raven-
The Alienware does have a full numberpad—but the inverted-T arrow keys are all half-sized. Personally, I don't find the number pad all that useful (even for arrowing) but if you're into that sort of thing, I'm sure it's really useful.
Justin-
Not unless I want to lose my job. It's a corporate laptop.
--Dan