I'm in the market for a new laptop. Being a gamer of sorts, I was drawn to the Alienware Area-51-m. However, while looking around for additional spec's I found this.

Does anyone else think that I'm looking at the same machine for hundreds less?

Almost certainly. I wouldn't be surprised if Alienware made a few tweaks (they do talk about having a lot of fans), but I seriously doubt that there's any significant difference.

I noticed the cheaper one says "no serial port" but the back of the alienware unit seems to have serial and parallel ports from looking at the photo. I could be wrong in interpreting the picture, though.

They seem to be on a similar platform, definitely Alienware and that other company are getting their parts from the same supplier. I doubt they're identical units, there's probably some differences in components (although the load-out DOES look strikingly similar).

I'm trying to get some sort of spec's on the LCD's on both machines. That's where the biggest performance detractor could be as far as gameplay (refresh rate not good enough.) No luck so far.

refresh rate not good enough

Refresh rates on LCDs doesn't matter. Response time does. Almost every LCD will support 60hz, and many support 75 for compatibility, but the key figure is the response times. This number indicates how long a pixel takes to go from black, to white, and back to black. It's measured in milliseconds, and less then 30 is excellent. Some sites may give a rise and fall number, indicating how long it took to rise to white, and fall back to black. Add those two together to get the total response time.

I am looking at a Samsung LCD right now with less then 25ms time. Thats pretty much the best time on the market right now, and should be unnoticeable in games. It may seem like a large amount of time, but most of the time a pixel is simply being bumped up a few shades of it's color, and not running the entire spectrum.

Ehhh, you're probably right. I was just leaping to a conclusion based on the assumption that he'd already looked at the obvious stuff, like comparing ports and specs and whatnot.

Yeah, that's what I meant

My intentions were good but my lingo is terrible. Thanks for the info. That helps.

You might want to check ASUS, they have some pretty good laptops (the L3000S looks to be the most powerfull).

Do you know where I can get a price on one of these. I can't find a vendor.