Ports and Layout of the M9700

On the left side of the laptop the m9700 has two USB 2.0 ports, a 4 pin firewire port, the 10/1000 ethernet port, the 4 in 1 Media card reader (SD/MS/MSPRO/MMC), and the Express Card Slot (54mm). The right side sports the headphone jack, mic jack, volume control knob, surround sound ports (center, surround, front), optical port and a single USB 2.0 port. The backside of our test unit had the VGA out port, DVI out port, S-Video out port, a single USB 2.0 port, power-in port, the 56K modem, S-Video in, the Coaxial port (even though this unit had XP MCE, our unit did not come with a TV Tuner which we found odd) and the audio in port. The provided Coaxial port is not a normal cable-ready connector interface we discovered, so make sure to ask Alienware if they are suppliing an adapter cable for it, otherwise we do not recommend purchasing the TV tuner with your unit as it would be useless (reference this forum thread regarding this subject http://www.notebookforums.com/thread165916-5.html). The coaxial port appears to be a custom OEM one that is not easy to find. It would be nice if Alienware had provided a small interface/adapter cable that would allow you to connect to standard cable connectors straight into the laptop.