m460

I have been looking for a lower budget laptop w/ centrino + graphics card for a while now... needless to say the options are slim.

A couple of basic questions (feel free to add anything can):

1) Is the screen ultra-brite (or whatever gateway calls it - when is this useful spec going to get an indurstry term rather than a marketing one?[ !])

2) What's the battery life like?

3) There's no bluetooth option, does it come w/ bluetooth standard?

4) What's the x600 graphics card going to do for me vs no card?

5) Does anyone actually like gateway? It seems like all I ever hear are horror stories about dealing with the company.

Thanks tons for your help

John

 

the m460 looks great on paper.

1) I too, had questions about the "ultrabright" option on this model. on the gateway site, they say that for the m460 series there is an optional ultrabright screen, but nowhere in the customization pages is there any mention of it. i do know that there is a 15" and a 15.4" wide screen version. it might be that the 15.4" is always an ultrabright, while the 15" is a standard TFT.

2) according to the website, the battery life is great (4-7 hours, i believe).

3) don't know about the blue tooth option

4) no card is only good if you plan on not playing 3D games.. it will also save you some battery life time. the x600 is a particularly nice card for mobile notebooks, though. it has enough power to run the newest games (on medium detail settings) yet is energy-conservative enough to not deplete the battery after an hour and a half.

5) I bought my current computer before freshman year of college in 2001. it was the first release of the P4 for desktops, so it was mighty expensive. looking back, i probably got ripped off since i didn't wait an extra month and could have saved a good $500. i hear a lot of complaining about gateway's customer service, which may be deserving of the critiscm. but i would not know, because my gateway has had absolutely zero problems with hardware or software over the last 3.5 years. keep in mind, i went through the XP update and the SP2 with no problems.

In my estimation, this m460 is one of the premier deals out right now if it does indeed have an ultrabright screen. so if anyone knows about this, please help us out.

 

OK, so I've done a little bit of following up on my own, but have yet to actually talk to someone who owns a gateway m460xl.

On the list of questions I had: According to a gateway rep, the screen has an ultra-brite coating by default. This is not an option on the machine. The 6 cell battery is good for 3-4 hours. There is no bluetooth option. The X600 seems to be a nice card, until you read about the X700[:X]

From general buzz and from what I can tell general emachine carry over - the geeky geeks who deal w/ these companies have come to the conclusion that gateway seems to be building better machines these days, but their service and support is still the joke of the industry.

I'm really torn because I want this machine but I'll probably end up buying a dell due to lack of information. BTW, the Inspiron 6000 won't have a graphics card, the processor is 1.6 vs 1.8, the screen is not ultra-brite, and it weighs 1.5 lbs more (on paper) - but this weekend it will cost $1150. If I hadn't read such terrible things about gateway this would have been an easy $250 to spend.

All the best,
John

p.s. if you own this machine, help a brotha out and give me the friggin low down!

 

I wish this machine had an ultrabright coating, but it doesn't! I called Gateway, and actually they told me this machine doesn't have the coating and it isn't even option. The reason according to the sales rep, is that the machine alreay has a "really bright" screen--though he couldn't provide a single spec to back up his claim like the brightness rating.

How could Gateway overlook this option, when the ultrabright type of screen coating has become so popular?[?]

 

Can't get a BMW at a VW price! Heck...spend the money and get the 7422GX and be happy!!!!

AMD64 will run the 64Bit XP PRO version now out on Beta testdrive From M.S. and your notebook wont be out of date by next XMAS...[8D]

Weldwirez[8]

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by weldwirez