Gateway Laptop - good deal?

[rathma155]

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10107930&catid=20354#

The only thing i'm looking for in a laptop really is;

Small (14" is about right)
fast processor
lots of ram


The graphics card i'm not too worried about. I have a desktop PC that can handle my gaming needs.
I am also not worried about the hard drive space. I have a 700GB external.


Does this seem like a good deal? I'm worried that maybe the "back to school" laptop deals have not fully kicked in, and I could find a better deal one week from now or something..

 

[killernotebooks]

Looks like a pretty good deal. You didn't mention your budget, but let me also link you to this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220303

It is a little more expensive, but let me give you my thoughts here:
■ASUS's warranty for their laptops is incredible. 2 years, and they pay shipping both ways, they don't screw around, they just get it fixed, and fast.
■1 year ASUS Accidental Damage Warranty - Drops, Fire, Spill, Surge
■Five star rated by independent people that bought the system.
■I know you said the GPU wasn't important but take a look at the 1GB of dedicated GPU memory and the ATI Radeon HD 3650 card compared to Intel's integrated x3100 robbing your system with shared memory.
■Vista home Premium compared to who knows what in the Gateway, it just says, "Preinstalled OS". Not very helpful considering that if it is not 64 bit the 4 GB of RAM is going to be seen as 3 GB and wasted.

It's about $150 more, but I think the extra expense is justified and let's face it, Gateway has been going down the tubes for years. They just announced they weren't even going to be selling configurable systems on the internet anymore!

 

[rathma155]

Looks pretty nice, newegg doesn't ship to Canada unfortunately.

And $1000 is a bit of a stretch.

Thanks for your input either way. If I see a Canadian retailer carrying it around the same price, I may consider it.

 

[killernotebooks]

Stupid NewEgg!

 

[lostandwandering]

actually, if you can wait newegg is creating a canadian store: http://www.newegg.ca/

Here's another laptop from Asus, different version of the F8. Only downside is a slower CPU (1.66 vs 2.00): http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=29517&vpn=90N-SLRAE1332ABCQL0Y &manufacture=ASUS

or this one: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=31008&vpn=90N-SFEA143288ECQL0Y&manufacture=ASUS

 

[rathma155]

To be honest, the $750 mark is even pushing it for me.

Is the first one a fairly good deal? So I know the GPU is bad, but will it be a problem for anything besides gaming?

 

[lostandwandering]

To be honest, the $750 mark is even pushing it for me.

Is the first one a fairly good deal? So I know the GPU is bad, but will it be a problem for anything besides gaming?

You mean the Gateway? Yeah, it's not bad. Besides the GPU, I don't see anything wrong with it. It's got a decent CPU, 4gb of RAM and plenty of HDD space. The Intel X3100 will be fine for web-surfing and movie playing.

 

[killernotebooks]

Just make sure it has a 64 bit OS like I said. I can't find the actual OS listed anywhere on that machine.