My Gateway NX570X Notebook
When, after the longest couple of weeks of my life, I finally received the new Gateway NX570X notebook, my first impression upon opening the box was "oooh, shiny". The mirror polish I opted for during customization may not have been necessary, but I'm the kind of girl who will pay that extra little bit for the premium package. Call me what you will, but I like how my laptop simply looks expensive.
In fact, it's not a very expensive rig. Granted, mine was just over 2000 dollars, but I pretty much opted for the maximum in choices. More conservative budgets could easily capture this sleek notebook for under 1500, or even 1000 dollars for bare essentials, and even then, it's still a damned decent computer.
My little bundle of joy just screams with processing power. It gets plenty warm, but mind, I didn't buy it for my lap. It's a desktop replacement for my home, and so far I've taken it out to lunch a couple of times. I'm probably guilty of wanting to show it off, but honest, I did have work to do.
At the core of this notebook lies a dual core Intel Core 2 T560 (1.83GHz) monster. It's been a great performer in my games, multitasking, and even video encoding. To support this speed is a nice sized 2 GB of RAM to really help out with those larger or many programs, big games, and such.
Speaking of games. I've opted to include an ATI Radeon Mobility graphics module, 128MB graphics make Battlefield 2 and Lord of the Rings Online look oh so pretty.
I don't know about you all, but I'm still attached to my Windows XP Professional. Brilliantly, Gateway offers to equip their outbound computers with XP instead of Vista, so I'm a happy customer in that department.
I'm not really big on other Microsoft products, personally. I use other office tools when I need them. But for all of you out there who want it, Gateway has a whole slew of Office products to pick and choose from while customizing. Just watch it. They get expensive quick.
I opted for built in Bluetooth, and it functions rather nicely. I keep a wireless mouse in my bag for out-of-house use, because, and I'm sure you can agree, those finger pads are simply annoying. My phone seems to communicate well with the laptop, but I don't use that feature. Who knows, you might. Theoretically, I can send pictures I took with my phone directly to the hard drive without emailing them to myself.
The display I chose is a simply-brilliant TFT Active Matrix WSXGA+ for a large and in charge 1680 by 1050 pixels.
A few other pleasant entries in this bundle include a 160GB hard drive, 8x Dual Layer DVD-RW drive, and a 3 year warranty.
The battery is where I didn't get "The Best". I don't take the laptop places very often (a few outings for lunch so far), so I don't need much in the battery department. I decided to go with the minimum choice. A pair of 6-cell Lithium Ion batteries serve my needs. As for the choice, they offer 8-cell, and even 12-cell batteries. The big ones actually stick out the side of the laptop because they're so big. I don't know about you, but there's no way I could look at my machine with something like that poking out the side. Maybe I'm picky. Maybe there's an actual element of feng shui to this notebook that just should not be messed with.
All in all, it's a sweet little rig. Gorgeous graphics on a tight, sharp, and colorful display, fluid and speedy processing, and plenty of space for all my media are just the start of what makes this machine so great.
04.11.2007. 20:12