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Gateway P-7809u FX Edition 17" Notebook PC Review from Dave. Great value gaming notebook with decent build quality, It’s hard to argue with the specs on this computer. Gateway is continuing their tradition of one-upping the competition by giving you a little more at the same price point. It’s not perfect, but if you want a gaming notebook it’s a great value.

17″ screen 1440 x 900 WXGA+ Ultra-bright display. It’s glossy which is ideal for indoor home use but hard to see outside in sun light. It’s also pretty power hungry and will impact battery life.

Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz Processor 3MB cache – this is one of the faster notebook CPUs on the market today. Most of what is faster is much more expensive. To me this is the best price/performance CPU choice for someone looking for a higher-end notebook.

4GB RAM. A good choice. A gaming computer could stand a little more, but it’s enough to tackle any game on the market today at playable specs and it’s a good use of your computing budget. If you want more you can always spend more.

NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS graphics. To me this is good and bad. These are serious graphics for a notebook. You can actually do some real gaming with this. The down side is it eats a lot more power and Nvidia has had reliability issues with its high-end graphics line. They are supposed to have fixed the problem but they’ve not been up front with users or OEMs about what parts are defective which makes me a little reluctant to recommend them. Still if you want to do gaming on a notebook, this is one of the few choices you have.

500GB HDD. Plenty. Perfect. 5400RPM. Okay, for most people this is what I suggest for a notebook. 5400RPM is a much more reliable drive for notebook users (who often move the computer while it’s running) than a 7200RPM drive. But this is a performance notebook. High-end CPU. Fast RAM. Fast memory bus. Fast graphics. And the slowest HDD on the market. To me that doesn’t quite add up.

The build quality on this model is pretty good. I wouldn’t rate it the best, but it’s far better than what you will see in the sub $500 market. If you need something rugged, this isn’t it. But it’s solid enough and Gateway’s reliability has crept back up to good levels after taking a fall two years ago.

9 cell Li-Ion Battery. Much better than the standard 6 cell, however gaming laptops very power hungry so don’t expect great battery life.

Overall a good gaming notebook for those on a budget, however if you are not a gamer I’d suggest you look for something with more relaxed specs, better build quality, and better battery life. I’m partial to the mid to higher-end HPs and Toshiba notbooks for non-gamers (just stay away from the E-machines and Compaq lines).

To check price or purchase Gateway P-7809u FX Edition 17" Notebook PC.

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