HOT HOT Deal!!! Gateway laptop M-6862 $425 After IR!!!!!! YMMV

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
I bought one at Gurnee IL BB. It was $525, there were 12 left according to them.

LOL, I almost bought one of these on a splurge 1½ weeks ago for $700+tax. Well, maybe I'll swing by the Gurnee store after work and take a look-see.

 

[TinMan2]

Boo Boo,
There were 3 or 4 left at the Everett (Everett Mall Way) and Marysville stores on Saturday. The Marysville store only had the ones that had been upgraded by the Geek Squad, though.

 

[gonwk]

Hi folks,

Has anyone in the West Coast been able to buy one this low!

G!

 

[ghost recon88]

According to the Gateway site, this actually has the 2600XT in it. Link

Clockwise, the XT is 700 core, 700 shader, and 1500 RAM.

The normal 2600 is 500 core, 500 shader, and 1200 RAM.

 

[PanduDada]

Hawley Lane BB in Connecticut had 6 in stock clearenced at 579.99. I used one comcast coupon(from previous post) on Friday. 475 OTD.

One Interesting thing is that on Friday none of them was inspected by Geek Squad or fuctimized but on Sunday 4 out of the 5 were already fuctimized and 5th one was being unpacked. I just insisted upon buying the one being unpacked.

After 15 min of arguing they finally agreed to sell it un-fuctimized. Cox coupon(from previous post) worked on Sunday and scored the second one.

BB employees took about 1 hr each time to figure out how to apply the coupon.

They would not price match to 525 price to the NJ stores. Also BB in Orange Connecticut also had 4 of them clearenced for 599.

 

[Boo Boo]

northgate had 6 they would proicematch it , then they find out the dick squad installed their crap on it. told me i could have it for 554.99 but then they refused to honor my 100.00 off comcast offer.

what a group of thieves

 

[ClemsonJim]

Just picked up one in Charlotte for $530 at the Independence Best Buy...they have 4 left. They wouldn't go for the $100 HSI coupon and said that it was for online purchases only. They didn't even attempt to scan it. Oh well. I needed a new laptop anyway.

 

[wizzack]

Originally posted by: Vonkhan

Went back to the fat f*** and asked him if he was sure & if any other stores had any

He didn't say a word and walked off

Stood around behind the counter sneaking glances at me - I kept looking at him

He disappears and reappears a while later with the laptop

I was there too, and think I dealt with that exact guy. He was BSing me about having to go look for it. Pretty sure he was trying to hoard em.

 

[vincechillemi]

I picked one of these up at the West Palm Beach Best Buy for $425 plus tax. It came out to around $450 otd. I printed up the coupon for the $100 from the previous post and it worked like a charm. They supposedly had 9 more of these.

Thanks for the hot deal!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
I bought one at Gurnee IL BB. It was $525, there were 12 left according to them.

LOL, I almost bought one of these on a splurge 1½ weeks ago for $700+tax. Well, maybe I'll swing by the Gurnee store after work and take a look-see.

Finally swung by the Gurnee store after work today. They had four left, at $525. I got two and someone else got one (they were going to get an inferior notebook for $300 more, but I corrected the error of their ways), thus leaving one. My two are for my wife and myself. The $100 coupon was only applied once, which was fair enough.

I haven't powered it on yet but do have my first impressions. It is almost identical in size to my 4+ year old Dell Inspiron i6000 which it is replacing. It is thicker but smaller length/width than my wife's Acer notebook. The feet on the bottom don't seem to grip at all and the notebook slides on my table and counter, which is irritating. No BT, which the Acer had, so I'll have to buy a mini USB dongle for my wife's BT mouse. Hopefully doesn't stick out much. The Acer had a slot load optical drive which we love... too bad these are normal tray and have non-standard bezels. Gateway lists a 9-cell battery for a steep $200. I'd buy it in a jiffy if I can find a 2-for-1 deal, haha. Anyways, says it is for M-series but doesn't list this exact model, so I'm not positive.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll do some quick/easy benchmarks (probably 3DMark of some kind) on three notebooks, this new one, the Acer and the Dell.

new Gateways - Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, Radeon HD 2600 XT 512MB
old Acer - Core Duo 1.66Ghz, Radeon x1600 128MB
old Dell - Pentium M (Dothan) 1.6GHz, Radeon x300 128MB

Should be interesting.

My wife will use it to play WoW when she's away from home. She uses her Acer for that right now, at full resolution and everything on medium-ish plays okay but could be smoother. Strangely Warcraft III seems a bit choppy on it.

I'll probably use mine to play everything... when I'm on the road or when I have to fly to go to a LAN party. Well, hopefully I can play everything... COD4, TF2, SupCom, etc. I'm okay with lowering settings. My Dell with the wimpy Radeon x300 can play (on low settings) WolfET, WoW, C&C Generals.

EDIT: My initial thoughts and comparison info...

LIKE:
- Textured touchpad.
- Volume control touch slider is neato.

DISLIKE:
- Touchpad buttons feel flimsy and glossy finish makes for terrible feel.
- Fn key is on the bottom left corner of keyboard, which should be Ctrl (and is such on other two notebooks).
- Slides around on desk way too much. Other notebooks stay planted even if I try to push them. With new one can't plug in a USB device, eject the optical drive or even close the optical drive tray without notebook sliding. UNACCEPTABLE! However, probably an easy fix with some stick-on feet or something. Terrible, terrible... as if the notebook designers never had to use one of these...

My old notebook specs:
Dell Inspiron 6000
Windows XP Home SP2
Pentium M 730 (Dothan) 1.6GHz single core 2MB cache 533MHz FSB
i915PM chipset
DDR2 533 2GB dual channel
ATI Mobility Radeon x300 128MB DDR RAM 300MHz core 216MHz memory "M22" core
(I suspect memory might be 432MHz because I've noticed sometimes GPU-Z reports external memory speed and sometimes it reports the "effective" speed)

My wife's old notebook specs:
Acer Aspire 5670
Windows XP Home SP2
Core Duo T2300E (Yonah) 1.66GHz dual core 2MB cache 667MHz FSB
i945PM chipset
DDR2 667 2GB dual channel
ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 128MB DDR2 RAM 475MHz core 375MHz memory "M56" core
(I suspect memory might be 750MHz "effective")

New notebook specs:
Gateway M-6862
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1
Mobile Core 2 Duo T5750 (Merom) 2.0GHz dual core 2MB cache 667MHz FSB
PM965 chipset
DDR2 667 4GB dual channel
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT 512MB GDDR3 500MHz core 600MHz memory "M76" core
(I suspect memory might be 1200MHz "effective")

I'm getting 3DMock03/05/06 installed on all three notebooks, will post again after I get some "numbers." Pretty basic for benchmarks, but I expect gameplay experience should show similar differences.

 

[Zap]

PERFORMANCE RESULTS
Default settings/resolution for all 3DMock.

Radeon x300
3DMark03 - 2821
3DMark05 - 1251
3DMark06 - 313
-SM2 - 146
-SM3 - N/A
-CPU - 676

Radeon x1600
3DMark03 - 4806
3DMark05 - 2823
3DMark06 - 1239
-SM2 - 353
-SM3 - 536
-CPU - 1407

Radeon HD 2600XT
3DMark03 - 9253
3DMark05 - 7125
3DMark06 - 3625
-SM2 - 1233
-SM3 - 1587
-CPU - 1732

THOUGHTS:

Dell with x300 stayed rather quiet and cool on top, bottom underneath right side of keyboard got really hot but only a bit warm above. It picked up some more noise after a while, but not nearly as loud as the Acer.

Acer with x1600 got really super noisy and exhausted really hot air, and got hot over right side of keyboard as well as underneath. It was the loudest by far out of the three systems, partly because the fans seem to be either low or high, with nothing in-between.

Gateway with 2600XT got loud but not as much as Acer, and exhausted really hot air. Got pretty hot above and underneath left side of keyboard. It did go louder after it warmed up, but seemed to adjust fan as needed.

You wouldn't want any of these notebooks on your lap when running 3D apps. Dell stayed coolest from a keyboard standpoint while the others warmed up a lot. The Acer was a bit better in this respect for typical "AWSD" games because the heat was on the right side, while the Gateway was better for arrow keys.

Comparing this to a desktop system in 3DMark03, the x1600 is just below an overclocked GeForce 8400 GS PCIe while the x300 is probably below a GeForce 6200 PCIe/AGP (but above PCI version). The 2600XT was just below 9500GT (DDR2 version) performance. In 3DMark06 the 2600XT was still reasonable and occasionally was in double digit framerates. The x1600 stayed within the bottom single digits while the x300 (no SM3 support even) stayed pegged at either 0 or 1 FPS, LOL.

So, still pretty far from typical "desktop" performance, but IMO a nice step up from our older notebooks.

I can't believe I still gamed on the x300.

I'll have to see if I can keep the aspect ratio. The other notebooks are set up so that if the picture isn't widescreen, there are black bars on both sides. The new notebook just stretches the picture out. I prefer keeping the aspect ratio.

 

[corwin]

Awesome deal, just confirmed the $525 clearance price at my local BB and they have several in stock, so long as they honor the IR this should be sweet! Thanks!

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Has anyone been able to get Windows XP to be fully functional on this? How much crap is installed by default?

 

[Sutareteiru]

my friend has xp-64 installed on it, I am going over to his house tonite, i will update what the process involves later

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Please do, I'd also like to know if he had anything missing.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
Has anyone been able to get Windows XP to be fully functional on this? How much crap is installed by default?

Not too much crap. I uninstalled Norton and am planning to uninstall the Gateway BigFix utility (auto searches for updates) since those run in the background.

MS Office trial and some misc sample stuff are also installed. Everything seems to be listed for uninstallation, so no worries.

Vista 64 with the 4GB RAM seems pretty snappy to me, so I don't see a reason to not keep it.

Mobile Roundup: A Trio of Midrange Laptops

Anyone read that article? It has the Gateway M-152XL in it. This is the same notebook as the M-6862 except for minor differences, being:
- 2GB RAM instead of 4GB
- 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo instead of 2.0GHz
- 160GB 7200RPM HDD instead of 250GB 5400RPM
- Bluetooth
- M-6862 doesn't seem to have a mini Firewire or fingerprint scanner
- M-6862 comes with 6 cell battery instead of 9 cell (though Whr of that 9 cell doesn't look too impressive)
- M-6862 is less than half the price

 

[subzero1011]

Originally posted by: Sutareteiru
my friend has xp-64 installed on it, I am going over to his house tonite, i will update what the process involves later

I too would like to know the drivers and process involved in making this switch

 

[corwin]

Just picked one up here in Temple, Tx, $460 with tax...have to wait for them to remove their craptacular "optimizations"...TW only asks for name address and phone, can use anything you want....

Anyone try to load XP on one of these yet?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2228124&enterthread=y

I started searching for drivers. I assume the touchpad is generic. I don't know much else I haven't opened mine up yet.

 

[Shining One]

He's right.
The exhaust does get pretty hot during demanding games. And the area left of the touchpad warms up considerabley (But certainly still within the bearable realm).

Play HL2 and TF2 at max settings for 2-3 hours and it's smooth. I'm guessing it'll play Left 4 Dead just as well (when Valve releases it).

And the other poster was right as well. The feet on the bottom are just hard plastic, so you perfectionists out there... plan on getting some rubber feet, or a full rubber pad to prevent sliding. (I'm not)

There is far less crap installed on this thing compared to what HP does with their notebooks. The drive has a 15 gig recovery partition.

There's a Gateway branded OS disk in the box, but I'm not sure what else they've got on it.

Thought about doing a full reinstall to wipe off any remnants of Gateway stuff and reclaim that partition...but since the crapware load was really light, did a few simple uninstalls instead. The recovery partition is relatively small enough that it doesn't bug me too much right now.

My very antiquated desktop took it's last breath about a week before this deal came along. For $425 OTD, I just couldn't say no. I can't recall a better laptop deal than this in the last 12 months.

 

[teddyv]

I am in for one from the Leesburg, VA store for $525. The stores in VA inside the beltway were all at $675, a very nice and helpful clerk at the Bailey's Crossroad store looked around and told me the Manassas store had them for $599 and Leesburg for $525. I needed some things from the outlet so out I went.

EDIT - if you don't bother filling out the thing to get the coupon and just print out the coupon mentioned on p.3 of this thread, will Comcast still sign you up or otherwise bug you (I already have them).

 

[lurk3r]

Auburn Hills MI has 5, all at full price. Got the "red" one on closeout for $549, only 3 gigs ram, intel x3100 vista home premium and the T7200 c2Duo. Minus the HSI was $449.

 

[DrunkenSano]

There's a HDMI port for this thing, does that mean that I can plug it to my HDTV and use the TV screen as a monitor to watch movies?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

I think so.

 

[vincechillemi]

Originally posted by: DrunkenSano
There's a HDMI port for this thing, does that mean that I can plug it to my HDTV and use the TV screen as a monitor to watch movies?

Yes you can.