Gateway NX500X
In my quest to find the best deal on a laptop during the 2005 holiday season, I now turn to Gateway. The Gateway NX500X is not their cheapest model, but very comparable to the Dell Inspiron 6000, with a couple of hassles. Since we are assuming that you want to find the best deal on your next notebook and are willing to jump through a couple of hoops to do so, I'm going to recommend this featured computer.
The Gateway NX500X notebook offers an Intel Pentium 4 M(mobile) processor with 2Mb of level 2 cache! This is a fast processor with the added benefit of Intels speed step technology. Speed step technology enables the processor to run slower when full speeds are not needed, which in most cases doubles the battery life. The machine offers 512 MB of 533MHz DDR RAM allocated on two 256MB chips. This poses a bit of a problem when doing RAM upgrades; the computer only offers 2 RAM banks, which is standard on most laptops. The main problem arises when you decide that you need more memory for the machine. With both banks full, you're going to have to get rid of one, or both chips. If you are leaning towards this machine, I would definitely recommend upgrading to the single chip, you'll thank me later. The laptop also features a 40 GB hard drive, which is pretty standard for this price range. Remember, there's no such thing as too much memory and it's better to have too much than not enough. Also included is a CD rewrite DVD player combo drive, an 802.11 G wireless network card, and a decent graphics card.
I would put this machine up against the DELL any day of the week, with the only drawback being a $100 mail in rebate. If you read my last post, you know how I feel about mail in rebates. It’s true that I don’t like them, but 100 bucks is 100 bucks and in my opinion the money outweighs the hassles. During my years as a computer salesman I would fill my customer’s rebate forms out for them, and all they had to do was mail it off. Every rebate I filled out was repaid and I never had any complaints (when I did the paperwork). This means that as long as you read the instructions carefully and make sure all the required paper work has been mailed by the required date, you’re going to get you money back. That being said, I hate mail in rebates!
For more info or suggestions, feel free to leave comments, or visit the websites advertised to the right.
posted by Paul @ 2:52 PM
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