Gateway MT6828

I bought mine at Best Buy on clearance Sunday for $549 (not including sales tax). I'm pretty satisfied with the purchase. Other items I purchased are the HP 3-in-one C3180 printer ($50 after a $50 discount), a wired router from Linksys ($50), and an LG 19'' widescreen lcd moniter ($219).

One thing that left a bitter taste in my mouth was that right after we purchased all of this, the 20-something year old manager accused my younger brother, a high school freshman, of shoplifting. The sensors never went off, they emptied out his pockets, found only his ipod nano, but still held our family in the surveillance room for over an hour. The guy called the police twice because the police said they didn't feel the need to come. They also said that since my brother didn't have any merchandise on him, Best Buy had no legal reason to detain him. But the manager threatened my brother that if he "set foot in Best Buy again" he would call the cops. Once I get that guy's name, I'm filing a complaint against him, though I don't know what more my family can do...

15.4" WXGA TFT-LCD widescreen w/Ultrabright 1280 x 800 resolution
100GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
C2D T5200
Intel GMA
Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG
1GB PC4200 DDR2 (up to 2gb)
Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive w/double-layer
Vista Home Premium
~6lbs. I wasn't able to test the battery yet. Online it states ~3 hrs. To lengthen the battery time, there's the option of buying a battery attachment item from Best Buy for $150, but it adds an extra 1-1.5 lbs.

 

on a very random note....did you buy the samsung z5 after seeing them on the bus stop ads?

 

lol I don't remember seeing one of the bus stop ads, though if it was good enough to make me buy it, I'm sure I would've remembered it.

It was a good purchase at the time, 4gb for $125 including shipping.

 

seeing a picture of them on the sides of the bus stop while driving down lakeshore was what introduced me to the z5.

 

Thats a really sweet computer at that price, although I would rather shell out an extra $100 and go with a Dell E1505 with the Radeon X1400 graphics card.

 

I was debating a few weeks ago whether I needed a dedicated video card for my laptop so I emailed the ots for my college about it. I'm going into engineering this fall, but they said that integrated graphics should be okay unless I planned on gaming.

My parents offered to pay for my laptop so I visited this forum a lot for background info (I had never purchased a laptop before). I was very close to buying an hp dv2500t, dv2000t, Lenovo t60 during their Memorial Day sale, and an Asus f3j.

I also looked at Dell's Inspiron 1405 and 1505 since my school offered some discounts on Dell computers, but some coupons didn't end up working and the total with the student discount actually ended up being more than the current promotion. HP also offered student discounts through their APP program, which made their laptops pretty attractive.