6518GZ from Best Buy for $899

Hey all, I just picked up a nice new Gateway 6518GZ from Best Buy for $899 (in this weeks ad). So far I love this machine, it even came with a singe 512 meg dimm, leaving a slot free! It runs pretty cool, fan isn't coming on much at all. I returned an HP L2000 because of heat, noise, and primarily the sad battery life from a supposed 'centrino killer' chip and chipset. The 6518 has the older 855 chipset, but that is fine with me, plenty fast enough. Here are the specs of the machine, if anyone has any questions let me know.

Pentium M 1.7 2mb cache 400 fsb
1 512 meg ddr pc 2700 dimm (1 slot free)
Integrated Extreme 2 graphics with up to 64 megs shared ram
15.4 inch widescreen with Ultrabright
6 cell battery (so far average surfing use looks like at least 3 hours)
Double layer DVD +/- burner
60 gig 4200 rpm drive, hitachi in mine
4 usb 2.0, 1 firewire, 4 in 1 media slot.

 

Oconus,

I also ordered the Compaq V2000Z (same as L2000, practically), which is on its way to me very soon. What is your L2000 spec making you think it was slower than this Gateway (GW)? Lastly, what about the weight of this GW for student carrying it on a daily basis?

Thanks

 

Well it was slower, I had the ML-37 2.0 GHz Turion and ran various performance tests (super PI, PC Mark, and of course general use) and while it was fast, the 1.7 Pentium M in the Gateway is faster in everything I throw at it. I admit the graphics system is faster in the L2000 but I do not game in any way with my laptop. Both play DVD's just fine. As for weight, the L2000 with the 6 cell battery had a sad 2 hour battery life, so I got a 12 cell for it but it stuck out as you have seen in the pictures and made the weight about 6.15 pounds, as confirmed by my postage scale. The Gateway on the other hand has a 6 cell battery, I get 3 - 3.5 hours out of it (general web surfing, email, word proc with wireless on), and it has a 15.4 inch bright widescreen display and it only weighs 6.25 pounds, and to me seems overall slimmer than the L2000. I travel around by car every day doing PC support and love the Gateway over the L2000 for it. Also, I think the GW screen is far superior in brightness and vertical viewing angle compared with the HP. Hope this helps. Dont get me wrong, the L2000 is a nice machine, I just dont think the Turion processor is all it is hyped up to be at this point, once the MT procs start rolling out that may change, who knows. I feel the Gateway was a much bettery value. As everyone who frequents these forums can attest to, a laptop is a very personal experience and purchase, no 2 people will agree on what they like best about a particular machine. Whenever I buy a laptop or suggest one to someone, I alway say to make sure you buy from a place with a good return policy (which HP has by the way) and have fun trying them out.

 

Oconus,

Is the A/C adapter large comparing with HP's? What is your thought on a new longhorn OS? Would this machine be short-lived when this os's released?
Now you made me hesitated ;-) I may have to come back to GW camp. Please feel free to update us more on your use experience with this solid machine. I would love to hear it.

 

Hi there, well the AC adapter is very small, smaller than the one that came with the L2000 I had for a short while. It is light too. As for longhorn, I think this machine will run it, but who really knows? Of course now it is called Vista. Everyone will speculate how different laptops will run and and to be honest, no one will know for sure until they get their hands on it. There could be many laptops from many vendors out there that might be able to run it but wont be able to because of vendor support for the OS. As for the 32/64 bit issue, I have an Athlong 64 desktop at home and have it dual booting Windows XP pro and 64 pro and to be honest, I only use the 64 bit edition from time to time to test and try things out. There is very little driver support for it right now and while there is no real performance loss running non 64 bits apps in it, there isnt a gain either. Oh and dont forget, Microsoft stated they will release a 32 and 64 bit version of Vista at the same time. Remember regardless of the brand you are interested in, there will always be something new and faster and different on the horizon. If you are looking to buy something, dont wait and buy it when you want it. I learned many years ago not to bother waiting forever or trying to buy a machine now to 'future proof' it.

And yes, I still love this machine, I used Centrino Hardware Control to underclock the processor, man the chip is pretty stable at low voltages. I still can not get over this screen. It has a really nice picture and good color even at dimmed brightness levels. It also has an incredible vertical viewing angle. I don't have to adjust for the 'sweet spot' like I did with the HP L2000. :gateway:

 

that's a good price...except it would b better if u had at least a 5400 RPM hard drive...and everything else is great for that price

 

i also purchased this laptop from best buy....great deal overall i think...i also bought a 2nd year of warranty from best buy mainly for the free battery replacement when it dies(and it will die as all laptop batteries do within a year and a half) only 100 extra

this was supposed to be for my dad to work at home...he prefers the portability over working in the office room at the desk but i ended up taking it to college at least for the time being

the specs are great(i won't repeat them as the original poster already layed them out)...my only gripes are:
1) integrated video card - this i think is by far the biggest downfall to the system...its based on a very old integrated gfx solution that only supports directx 7.0 also i haven't tested this yet but according to the graphics properties the resolution of the card is limited to 1280x1024 when plugged into an external monitor...thats crap...i have a 19" that can do 1920x1440 and i wanna run in 1600x1200 on it....but neways...opengl support actually isn't that bad...i tested my mini-gladiator game i wrote for graphics class and it actually ran decently well
2) screen resolution - the screen is a 15.4" widescreen WXGA screen which means 1280x800 resolution....i am a programmer...this is the area that really hurts me...for such a large and spacious screeen you would think they would have WUXGA as the native resolution(1920x1200 baby!) oh well...
3) size - altho the weight isn't that bad and the depth isn't bad either the overall length and width are quite large and makes it inconvenient when finding places to rest it while in use...its not gigantic like a 17" screen laptop but its quite big nontheless ... not the best for a student taking it to campus...especially considering the resolution is one they use on 12" widescreens

overall i think the laptop was an excellent deal and considering my dad needs a big screen wit low res to be able to see it i think its perfect for him...especially since he will work wit it around the house mainly so the size isn't a big deal and he isn't a gamer or graphics programmer so the video card is a non-issue...so for him this would be perfect...for me as a college student its still really nice altho i think i would prefer a dell 700m or possibly the 14" widescreen thin and light gateway series(forgot the number)...oh and it looks a million times better than the dell laptops...i don't like dell's design currently...but the gateways look damn sleek and nice...silver and black with blue lights..can't go wrong wit that

oh one other thing...buying retail lets u c the system first and gets it to u quick but u can't customize so in my case i can only ghost the system...restoring their original install wit the ghosted system backup partition and all the crap preinstalled(like norton quite possibly the biggest piece of spam/spyware/adware/virus ever made...god i hate norton...and all other "protection" software...just take over ur system and slow it down)...but neways bak to my point...even after burning the recovery media its just to ghost the system...i do not have an xp home edition cd so i can't format it and get rid of the stupid backup partition and just install plain xp w/o the other crap software...kinda disapointed about that...

all in all for most ppl this would be a great laptop and a great deal...gateway at least from my experience in the past makes quality products...for me its still pretty gud but i think im gonna give it to my dad soon and buy myself something a little smaller in the next few months

oh and also as mentioned by the original poster....the screen is damn nice...so sharp and vivid especially with the ultrabright...dvds look really good on it....