Last week, Gateway jumped into the fray via Best Buy with their Gateway MT6707 Last week it was $699, this week it's $749, it's a value at either price. Gateway has been so-so in quality the last year or two, but this is one very solid laptop. The wrist rest area is brushed stainless steel and makes for a very durable feel during use. The hardware ain't bad either, just between the Acer and HP in the first Price Bustin' post. I've had the XP version of this laptop with 1 gig in my hands, as well as two of these, and I have to say that IMO Gateway has the best Vista pre-load of any laptop I've setup. very minimal load with no "special" drivers for Gateway specific hardware. There are no shortcut buttons (or shortcut button resource hogging utility) to slow things down. Gateway uses only the BIOS level controls (Blue FN key next the start key with the specific blue function key highlight) which does not waste precious processor usage time or memory. For power usage, video setup, and wireless usage, Gateway lets Vista control them (no overlay drivers or apps) and has the default settings almost exactly as I would set them (things like turning off the ability of Vista to shutdown the wireless to conserve power).
As much as I like the Gateway...
Lenovo (thinkpad) this week (via Office Depot) added their Lenovo 3000 N100 (The link is the 1 gig version, the sale (in store only) is for the 2 gig model). The Lenovo is almost hardware identical to the Gateway, the setup is also just as good as the Gateway....except that they do have their app to run their multi-media buttons (which are almost identical to the Acer buttons and app). While something inside me likes the Gateway more, It's hard to compare with Lenovo's excellent keyboard and better reliability record.
I SUPPOSE, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Dell has been mailing out $300 off coupons making several of their Inspiron models with similar features to all four budget Laptops I've mentioned for about the same price. The downside is the basic model specs; Dell often packs much smaller (and slower) Hard drives into its low end laptops, as well as the dreaded Broadcom wireless chipset. The upside is you can get a ultra-long life battery for an extra $80 (go for the larger primary battery, not the second battery, it's heavy enough already), and you can pop a few bucks extra for the Intel ProWireless internal card as well as a larger HD. Probably the single most attractive thing you can do when buying a Dell is still opt for having it loaded with Windows XP (until recently this was a business buyer only option, after many Vista complaints they recently added it back to the Home/Home office site). On very similar Gateway and Acer models, I can tell you that for STANDARD usage of most business users, that these machines are faster under XP than Vista....so it is still something to think about for many.
Happy Tech Shopping!
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