With a big 17 inches size screen Gateway’s laptop is available for $799 which has a processing unit with graphics chip and hard drive. If you wish to have a big screen and roomy keyboard then this would be great choice within your budget.
The laptop is coloured deep blue and the covering bear a delicate wave pattern design. Two number of chrome hinges offers solid support for the covering and gives a robust look for the laptop. Owing to its size, it weighs 7.5 pound and hence it is difficult to carry when you travel.
The outer case of NV73A10u is made of striking velvet glossy surface and has a ‘Gateway’ badge printed on it. Due to the high resolution, the laptop offers sharp pictures with great colours having natural skin tone when you keep it in front of you. The keyboard is solid and convenient to handle. It comes with a multimedia key in the top right corner which gives you access to channels like You Tube, Face book and much more. It also contains a comfortable space for placing your wrest and the inner parts also has the same blue colour. You need to clean it regularly to avoid dust particles getting accumulated. As publicly notified by Gateway the laptop does not contain number of multimedia buttons, only one key stands there in the right corner of the laptop.
The device consists of 3 USB ports and it does not support e-SATA port or Express Card port which is usually expected in a laptop. On the replacement, it has 2 video output slot, one Ethernet panel, Web camera, and a flash reader. The capacity of this model is 500 GB equipped with Microsoft works, Windows Home Premium 7, and a Power DVD of Cyber Link. Like any other brand, this also holds a trial ware and bloat ware program in it.
Gateway offers 1 year of warranty and telephonic technical support for this product. The NV73A10u from Gateway consists of triple core Central Processing Unit, along with DDR3 system (4GB capacity) and High Definition 5650 graphics chip (1GB capacity). The Vantage test is used to measure the performance of the laptop was tested for this device and the score is found to be well below average.
The instrument was tested for encoding the media file and the result indicated the speed is comparatively lesser than the standard laptops of this size. The result fell further when tested for encoding the Windows Media. The score of CPU core testing was also lower than the expectations. All these tests made us conclude that it is only a gimmick to tell that the laptop contains three cores in it.
However, the model was able to score better in the field of graphics and animation games. It was able to produce good scores when DX9 and DX10 games were tested proving that this model is good enough to support Two dimensional games.
The battery life of this model is too short and contains only thin sized 6 cell battery in it.
Conclusion
To conclude, the ratings for this laptop will be a combination of good and bad. It is inexpensive, has high storage capacity and is stylish looking. On the flip side, it does not support certain expected features of laptop, and has very less battery life. The Inspiron 17R from Dell would be a better choice which is of same price as Gateway’s model NV73A10u.