If you unbox as many machines as we do, you start to develop a weird fascination with product packaging. Typically, a box is just a box, but once in a while, a product's container actually adds something to the experience. Dell's Alienware laptops come wrapped in heavy foam eggshell padding cut to the machine's form. It's not as visually appealing as the premium cardboard that ships with Razer's Blade laptops, but it makes for a secure briefcase. It's reusable too: Alienware's packing material could make for a nice carrier the next time you take your rig to a LAN party.Unpacking the laptops, we find a brand-new generation of Alienware notebooks, built from the ground up with better materials and a fresh design. Both the 14 and 17 feel incredibly solid, thanks no doubt to a sturdy magnesium alloy chassis. The metal overhaul extends to the keyboard support brackets, screen hinges and LCD assembly too, although it isn't readily apparent under the soft rubber coating that stretches across the machine's face. This matte surface dulls the laptop's angled edges, which are decorated by a plethora of LED lights. In a nod to past Alienware designs, the laptop features 10 distinct lighting zones that can each be customized with one of 19 colors
Those diodes are everywhere, by the way -- multiple places on the lid, underneath the keyboard and along the edges, with a thin, glowing line ringing the front and sides of the chassis. The light stretches across the entire surface of the trackpad too, a bold departure from last year's model, which only had lights around the perimeter of the touchpad. Overall, it's a subtler design than we saw last time, but it certainly isn't boring or modest. It's also surprisingly uniform, not just in aesthetics, but also in port selection. With the exception of an additional USB port on the 17-inch model and some slight changes in location, the 14- and 17-inch Alienware laptops offer identical connectivity. The left side of both machines houses two USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports (not colored blue this time), HDMI and a Mini DisplayPort. There are also audio jacks for line-out (with headset support) and line-in for microphones. On the right edge lies a slot-loading optical drive, a multi-format memory card reader, an Ethernet jack and one or two more USB ports, depending on the model.
