Gateway - FX Edition Laptop with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology

I got this and fell in love with the screen when I opened it up. Running at 1920 1200 resolution it looked great, till my brother noticed a light spot in the screen. When viewed from the side it has a light spot about three by three inches big. I tried to ignore it at first but it drives me nuts! I'd return it, but there sold out at the Best Buy near me. Other then that it's a really cool computer. Runs all my games on full without a problem. If it wasn't for that dang spot.....

Excellent processer as well as the graphics card. Good HD Screen For the games. Best gaming laptop that Best Buy offers. Best Bang For Ur Buck

This is a great buy for a "Gaming" notebook, especially for the price. The Vista Experience Numbers are: Processor - 5.2 Memory (RAM) - 5.9 Graphics - 5.9 Gaming Graphics - 5.9 Primary HD - 5.7 Overall - 5.2. That's outstanding for a notebook priced under $1200 especially when you add that the monitor is not WXGA (1440 x 900) as it says on BB website and on the box, but it the much higher WUXGA (1920 x 1200) which is just a bit higher than "true HD". As of this date, you can not register the Gateway Model P-7805u on line since it has a 22 alphanumeric serial number and Gateway hasn't re-programmed the site to accept 22 alphanumeric length Serial Numbers. However, you can register using their 800 number. You will have essentially the same problem when you try to look up your exact model on the Gateway site - the P-7805u isn't listed in their pull-down menus. Their Techs tell me the current driver downloads for this model can be found here: http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=p-78&st=kw A more detailed "spec" page for the P-78 series is here: http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2009/PSeries/P-78/P-78sp24.shtml (Note that the specifications only show the Nvidia® GeForce® 9800M GTS with 512 MB GDDR3 , however I can verify that Vista reports it with 1 G GDDR3 RAM.) Of interest is the fact that this unit is upgradeable to faster Core 2 Duo processors and Intel® Extreme Edition processors (Quad Core). It will also take Up to 8 GB DDR3 800 MHz/1066 MHz memory when the 4 Gs become available, can accept a Blu-Ray drive in place of the DVD drive, and will take a second HD. It's good to know that it has this growth potential. Otherwise, I am in agreement with what the other 4-5 star reviewers have posted so far. For a "gamer" who absolutely must have a notebook PC and is on a tight budget, the Gateway P 7805u FX Notebook will certainly get them "into the game" and it has enough capability and future expandability to keep them in the game for awhile, in my opinion. Even if one isn't on such a tight budget, you get plenty of bang for the buck here, rivaling notebook systems costing hundreds of dollars more.

I was lucky because: - Bought the last one in the store - Was about to buy an asus with half the video memory of a light video card, half the hard drive space with slower read write times, a smaller screen and lower resolution and an older cpu model for $700. - For roughly $350 more I got a high end can handle anything you throw at it video card at 1GB, a larger hard drive space with faster read/write times, a larger screen and more a recent cpu model, which will run cooler and save more battery life - Gateway made a mistake in labeling this as a WXGA screen; my screen has a WUXGA 1900 x 1200 screen. While screen resolution is a personal preference, I tend to use it so that I can view multiple applications side by side when I'm working (word on one half of my screen, excel on the other half) without sacrificing the amount of data I can see at one time. What does all this mean? - You CANNOT get something similarly built like this at this price point. Alienware (dell), VoodooPC, Asus or any of the boutique laptop stores like xoticpc or xtremenotebooks do carry laptops with these internals but at the cost of $1000 or more. If you look under gaming laptops here on bestbuy.com you can compare it with the other laptops they have and take a look at how much more it costs for those models compared to this. - I never have to worry about making the minimum requirements for any application/software I buy as this can handle anything I throw at it. It's future proof...for at least 6 months. I am using the laptop for occasional gaming (CnC3, Company of Heroes, etc) and work. The keys are responsive and good. Keyboard has no flex. Numeric pad doesn't feel squished in and I can type pretty accurately and normally without having to give myself carpal tunnel or relearn a new layout. While Vista is a resource hog, this laptop handles it, running symantec, burning a dvd, encodes in itunes without slow downs or lock ups (to see actual benchmark numbers go to notebookreview.com). While I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, if your just looking for a laptop to use at home (work while in bed or go room to room) and want good if not the best your money can buy at a lower cost than what everyone else is selling, then this is your laptop. Specifically, if your about to spend $600-$800 dollars on a laptop, I would try to find the extra couple of hundred dollars to get this as your not going to get something like this at this price point for a while (ok maybe 6 months). This is my first gateway pc so I don't know what the build quality is since I've only owned it for a couple of days, but I'm not taking it out of the house that much and I got the extra warranty they offer so that I have peace of mind when I use this. While I don't believe this should be a problem now, when I purchased this laptop it took me going to three stores to find it in stock. This is either due to low initial supply delivery or everyone is rushing out to get one.

For the money this laptop is probably the best deal out there with the features involved. The 1 gig 9800M GTS video is a quite surprising addition for a laptop at this price point, and it does actually get some amazing framerates in games (Crysis set on High settings, and being put out through HDMI to a 1080p HDTV was simply amazing, and got a consistent 30FPS. Excelent Sound quality out too). For all those World of Warcraft Players out there. I have it set at 1920x1200 with the 8x oversampling all settings Maxed, and in crowded areas of Northrend and Dalaran I've not dropped below 30FPS, and with the oversampling droped down to 1x or 2x it goes even higher. While the box advertised a 1440x900 display, the display model and one I purchased included a 1920x1200 display, and this coupled with the video card give Photoshop CS4 all the room and horsepower it needs to run quite smoothly. Every Adobe production app I have thrown at it so far runs great. This Laptop is a great desktop replacement. The lack of bluetooth can be easily fixed with a simple plugin and forget Bluetooth adaptor, however it does take up one of the 3 USB ports. (as a graphic designer it came in handy with the bluetooth table input I use, and makes setting up a bluetooth keyboard and mouse quite easy.) A SD card can be plugged in to the SD card slot and is only exposed by 1/16", and works pretty good with ReadyBoost for a little extra performance boost. While not the best for an extended road warrior, this thing is a dream for occasional LAN parties, and gaming as mentioned before, and has great WiFi response. The keyboard layout is a bit awkward first, but after a while of use it seems to work just fine. Make sure to check your laptop bag first as the battery protruded about 1 inch behind. Many backpack style or sleeve style cases will not hold this laptop. The power brick for this laptop is a good bit heavier than the standard brick and larger too. The laptop itself is about 9.8 pounds alone. The Laptop can accommodate 2 hard drives, but only has one 320GB 7200RPM(!!) hard drive. This is great if one is needing to expand storage in the future. The DVD is also easily replaceable for a upgrade to blu-ray or other drives later. Overall it's a fantastic Laptop, and would recommend it without hesitation

I was a bit sceptical about buying a laptop made by Gateway as my experience with them in the past has been nothing but trouble. However this was over seven years ago and I decided to believe that they have improved over time. It seems that Gateway has really pulled there act together and now makes reasonable products. The big selling point for this laptop is the 9800 GTS Graphics Card with 1GB Memory. This is one of the best Graphics Cards out in the current market and will permit this laptop to play any game currently with no speed issues and even do so while playing at the highest settings. It's an excellent Card and it is what you're paying for in this laptop. The 4GB of memory is DDR3. That is a nice bonus since most laptop still sell with DDR2. With this much memory multitasking and gaming will have a hard time slowing this laptop down. It also makes the heavy using Vista Operating System. I was a bit scared about the operating system that came with this laptop. Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I've heard so many horror stories about Vista that I wondered why it was that every computer came standard with an OS that was glitchy and non-user friendly? After a few days I can say that Vista is ok. It has alot of bells and whistles. It is very fancy but at the cost of navigation ease it can be frustrating. Vista changes alot of simple things such as searching files, navigation, and quite a bit more. However it doesn't remove these features just changes them. Be sure to try Vista with an open mind and be sure to play around with it to make sure you you're familiar with it's setup and you should find it's usable. The Processor is a P8400 with a speed of 2.26 GHz and 3mb Cache. The small Cache size on this Processor is low for a gaming laptop and could have used a stronger processor. Thankfully you can upgrade the Processor to give it the boost you need. You can also upgrade the RAM and Hard Drive((There is a second unused Hard Drive slot that you can use without replacing the original Hard Drive.)) The screen an astonishing 17". For a laptop that's crazy to say the least. It has 1440 x 900 resolution. For this size of a screen it's more than enoough to get you a clear picture. For an average user you won't be dissapointed. If you're a hard core gamer that wants the best screen resolution possible this one may dissapoint you. Also, because of the massize screen this laptop is fairly large and heavy. This won't be an issue if you're not on the go every day but it is a bit too large for anyone looking to take this with them to school or meetings. If size isn't a problem then this is a minor thing for you to consider. Overall the Gateway FX 7805u is a great value. It's not the best of the best but if you take the specs of this computer and try to get another laptop with the same specs you will be spending a fair more money to match what this laptop is able to do. ((Roughly $400 more or even more depending on brand)) So if you want a good priced laptop for gaming and don't mind size and weight then this one is for you. If you want a gaming laptop but need it to be super portable try a small laptop as this one is large and heavy. Hope this overview helps you decide on whether or not you might like to try this laptop out.

This review doesn't go into technical specs, because if you understand the importance of components, you don't need a review to tell you how good the ones on this system are, and if you don't know the first thing about RAM and video cards, you probably don't want to hear a bunch of technical jargon anyways. So on with my story... Not long ago I was in the market for a laptop, and I wanted one that was going to get me as far as possible for the best price. I'm the type of person that a) can't afford a desktop and a laptop, and b) dabbles in intense gaming every now and then, so I needed a powerful system that could multi-task as much as I needed. This laptop not only got me everything I wanted, but then went above and beyond by doing it at a price that no one else offered. After shopping online for a few weeks, I decided to try out Best Buy to see what they had to offer, and you can imagine how happy I was to find a system that OUTPERFORMED others that were more than double the price! I'm talking systems direct from Alienware, Dell, etc. Ok, so you've got the picture, I was a happy camper with my great find, but now that I'd found it, I was nervous that I'd discover it wasn't all it was cracked up to be once I got home. I built up my courage and got it on the spot, and after more than a month of having it here at home, I'm more than satisfied with my purchase. The built-in webcam is a nice add-on and it's a blessing to finally have a laptop with a separate number pad (gamers and accountants know exactly what I'm talking about). All that said, if you're looking for a powerful laptop to play some power-hogging games, or if you just want a system that can do it all with memory to spare, then this is your system. As far as price goes, you can get this system at Best Buy, or you can get it somewhere else for nearly $1k more. I don't know about you, but especially these days, I'll go with saving the extra money. Either way, best of luck to you and your purchase.

The laptop does not come with the restore cd's. Gateway give you the option to make them with a disc restore creating utility listed in the program files menu. I find this a plus, cuts down on cost for gateway and the end user. I am a longtime windows guy (since 1991) that switched to Apple/MAC's a year ago this past November. I love the OSX OS. But I found it becoming more and more difficult to play games on the unibody 2008 Macs as they are locking up all the time with windows games now, This prompted me to buy a machine mainly to play games on and use my Mac for photography as originally intended. All though this is fully capable of serious work as well. Gateway website does not do a good job describing the laptop. The screen you get is a actual WUXGA 1920 screen not a 1440. Also there is a slot to add a second HD which is real nice not mentioned on gateway or best buys website. Lightscribe dvd burner would have been much nicer than lableflash. I tried the new Asus 15.6 inch laptop couple weeks ago and too it back as it did not perform very well in my opinion. This thing so far is much more responsive in Vista. It cuts through COD4 and 5 like butter. I am sure the 1gb video card has a lot to do with this. The 7200 rpm drive adds punch and responsiveness to loading games and general use. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. The 1920 resolution is very sharp and the colors are vibrant and smooth. It calibrated pretty well with my monitor calibrator. For a windows machine I am overall very happy with this thing and that is a hard pill to swallow after using a beauty of a Mac everyday.