Gateway NX860XL its a good deal?

I don't think this laptop is bad at all. It's fantastic. I've had mine for almost 2 years. I have no complaints about it except my battery life really sucks now. Maybe 20 mins if I'm lucky. It does run hot when gaming and I've had to clean out the fans and heatsink a couple times. It really likes to collect dust.

It is solidly built and I have had zero problems with it. I did replace all the thermal pads with arctic silver as detailed here http://www.notebookforums.com/thread104458.html

In my case it appears that the Northbridge is not in contact with the heatsink due to there being a difference in thickness of the arctic silver and the thermal pad I replaced. Yet no problems. You can probably skip replacing this pad.

I've been very pleased with this laptop. It certainly gives you bang for your buck.

 

Aside from all the MS Vista and Office 2007 issues, it's been a fairly decent machine. My only real complaint is the heat.

If you just block up the back of the unit to allow for some air circulation, it runs fine when on AC power. But in the year I've owned it, I've never been able to use it on battery power without overheating. The GPU fan stops on battery power. Common problem with this machine. Gateway replaced it and the replacement operates the same way. Seems to be the graphics driver as the fan starts on power-up, but turns off during boot. Those that have this machine are beginning to see heat-related component failures.