14 DAY TRIAL // Over the last couple of months Gateway's notebook line has been growing steadily but surely, the company just announcing a new model in the NV79 line, the 17.3 inch NV79C49u catering to those users that need an affordable large screen notebook PC with a decent performance level.
As a result, Gateway went with a 2.53GHz Intel Core i5-460M dual-core processor paired together with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and Intel HD integrated graphics.
As a result this can't be considered a multimedia offering, Intel's integrated graphics being particularly slow when having to deal with games and Full HD content, although the fast Core i5 processor can more than make up for the slow graphics when video content playback is involved.
The rest of the hardware configuration features a 500GB hard drive, WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, a 1.3 mega pixel webcam, 8x super multi optical drive, a memory card reader as well as three USB 2.0 ports and a HDMI output.
Moving on to the 17.3 inch screen, this comes with a 1600x900 pixel resolution, further emphasizing the fact that the NV79C49u doesn't target heavy multimedia users, although this should prove adequate for most day to day computing needs.
However, going with such a HD+ resolution panel as well as integrated graphics means that users get prolonged battery life from the NV79C49u, as the 6-cell 4400mAh power pack used inside Gateway's offering can provide enough juice for 3.6 hours of operation, a pretty impressive feat for such a large screen notebook.
Pre-installed with the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, the Gateway NV79C49u laptop is available for a pretty low $749.99, an OK price point considering the powerful processor used, although this can't compete with some 17.3 inch Acer offerings, like the Aspire AS7741G-7017, that for about the same price also feature dedicated graphics cards. (via solidblogger)