Gateway MX3410

So, just played around with a Gateway MX3410 (don't bother looking it up on thier site, not a word about it for some reason). It's available at Futureshop in Canada with the following specs;

Turion 64 X2 TL-50 Dual Core 1.6GHZ
512 DDR
80GB 4200
DVD +/-RW Dual Layer
Nvidia Go 6100 (128 shared)
14.1 Ultrabright XGA
6-cell Li-Ion

$849 CDN

Found the new Turion to be VERY fast. Benchmarks apparently exist that rank it below the Intel variant but, from a basic computer user viewpoint, I couldn't tell.

Screen is lovely. For a $850 laptop, it's quite bright, has great uniformity and good colour quality. Looks very, very similar to the Macbook 13 inch screens.

The Nvidia 6100 is a nice touch. Obviously not a gaming card (outside of Solitaire) but it performed much better than the ATI 200M. I love installing my trinity (GTA:SA, BF2, and Oblivion) on these low end systems to see what happens. GTASA was very playable at 800x600, BF2 did well online at the same res. with all options set to low (with max draw)..thinking about 20FPS, and Oblivion ran at low settings, 800x600, with some chop but, surprisingly, did better than one would think.

Build quality on mine was mediocre. My laptop had a pronounced warp on the bottom right hand side and, as a result, sat about 2-5mm off the table at that corner. Other than that, it's very light and has a pleasing design and colour scheme. Looks much more expensive than $850.

Came boxed with reinstall of XP Home and an AOL coaster.

All in all, I really love this little guy. Pretty good muscle, nice video card (had HD playback features), and looks great. If I return this and get one without a warp, it's a 9/10...easy.

More info here...

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pro...gon=&langid=EN