Gateway M-6823 Retail Budget Notebook PC

The Bottom Line
Gateway's M-6823 is an outstanding budget notebook system with some incredible features. The extremely large hard drive dwarfs the capacity of most competing notebooks and provides plenty of space for media files. It falls short from being perfect though due to some minor but key features.

Pros

* Very Large Storage Capacity
* Built-In Webcam

Cons

* Lacks FireWire
* Labelflash Media Difficult To Find

Description

* Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 Dual Core Mobile Processor
* 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 Memory
* 250GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
* 8x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner With LabelFlash
* 15.4" WXGA (1280x800) LCD with Intel GMA X3100 Integrated Graphics and 1.3Megapixel Webcam
* v.92 56Kbps Modem, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g Wireless
* Three USB 2.0, ExpressCard/54, 5-in-1 Media Card Reader
* 14" x 10" x 1.5" @ 6.3 lbs.
* Vista Home Premium, MS Works, Cyberlink Power 2 Go, McAfee Internet Security

Guide Review - Gateway M-6823 Retail Budget Notebook PC

10/13/07 – The Gateway M-6823 retail notebook has a lot to offer for its price. Most notable of these features is the storage. Most budget notebooks tend to come with 80GB hard drives, but Gateway managed to put a 250GB drive into the M-6823. This provides three times the storage of a budget notebook and lets it have space for even large media files. The Labelflash compatible dual layber DVD burner is also a nice addition, but the media is extremely hard to find especially compared to the more common LightScribe labelling system.

Powering the Gateway M-6823 is the Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 dual core mobile processor. This is a good mix between performance and power usage that is becoming more common in budget systems. It is matched up with a full gigabyte of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory that lets it run Vista alright as long as there aren't too many applications open.

The 15.4-inch widescreen LCD display is the most common size for a budget system and does a good job. The newer Intel GMA X3100 graphics do help improve video playback on the screen and does 2D graphics just fine, but like most integrated graphics lacks any performance for 3D applications. Gateway has even included a 1.3 megapixel webcam into the bezel of the display.

All of these features add up to an extremely spectacular system, but it is marred by one major flaw. With all of these great items, Gateway failed to include a FireWire port into the system. This prevents anyone with a digital camcorder with FireWire from easily importing the video into the notebook. So if that's an important feature, you will want to look at other alternatives sadly.