Imagine my delight when I, a mere Earthling, had the opportunity to compare technology developed by aliens with that developed here on good old terra firma.

At first blush, they resemble two standard notebook computers: An Alienware Area-51 m5500 ($1,049 base price) and the new Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 ($1,449.99 preconfigured). But then you notice an eerie blue glow coming from the alien device (the alien logo lights up when you turn on the computer).

The first thing you notice on the Toshiba notebook are the system control buttons along the left side of the keyboard, which include buttons for power, Internet/CD-DVD access, play and pause for the media player, skip and previous track.

Truthfully, you can't go wrong with either computer, but there are a couple of things, aside from the glowing alien, that set them apart from each other.

The first thing I noticed was that images were brighter and clearer on the notebook from outer space, although the average consumer would have a tough time telling the difference. I believe that was due to the reflectiveness of the glass protecting the Toshiba's LCD screen.

But the Toshiba's built-in Harmon Kardon speakers blew away the sound system that came standard on the Alienware computer (high-end Klipsch ProMedia speakers add $120 to the base price). In fact the price of the Alienware notebook increases to about $1,700 when you upgrade to all of the features included with the Toshiba.

Of course fully decked out with all the bells and whistles (high-end graphics, sound and faster processors), you can spend as much as $3,000 for either of these notebooks.

Here are the essential details of both notebooks, for those of you that thirst for such things:

Alienware Area-51 m5500

• A 15.4-inch wide-screen LCD display.
• It weighs in at only six pounds.
• Up to three hours of battery life.
• Graphic performance can be changed from Intel Media Center Graphics to a GeoForce Go 6600 at the flip of a switch, depending on the needs of your specific application or game.
• An Intel Pentium M Centrino processor (choice ranges from 1.6 to 2.13 gigahertz).
• A basic 60 gigabyte hard drive which can be upgraded to as much as 160 gigabytes.
• Up to two gigabytes of DDR2 SDRam at 533 megahertz.
• A 4-in-1 media card reader
• An S-Video out connector, allowing you to hook it up to a TV set.
• Three high-speed USB 2.0 ports.
• iLink.
• Intel high-definition 7.1 sound outputs.

Toshiba A-106-361

• An Intel Pentium M Centrino 760 2 gigahertz processor.
• A 15.4-inch wide-screen LCD display featuring TruBrite technology.
• One gigabyte of 533 megahertz SDRam memory
• A 120 gigabyte hard drive.
• A SuperMulti double layer DVD writer.
• A 5-in-1 Bridge media Adapter.
• Four high-speed USB 2.0 ports.
• iLink.
• An S-Video out port to connect it to your TV set.
• An ExpressCard slot supporting ExpressCard/34 and 54 media.
• An Intel graphics media accelerator with up to 128 megabytes of shared graphics memory.

More details on these and other computers from these manufacturers can be found at www.alienware.com and www.toshiba.com.

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