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.