[Notcho]

I have a Gateway laptop that I bought during my freshman year of college (2006-2007). I've used it a LOT.. It's the only computer I used through my whole college career. It's traveled tens of thousands of miles with me, and I've used it to play games like Half Life 2, I've taken it to LAN parties, I've typed a LOT on it (school papers and otherwise), I've used it for browsing the interwebs, watching movies (even HD), taking it to class, etc. I've typed on it so much that the keys on the keyboard are glossy. I've ran several operating systems on it over the years too.. Windows XP, XP64, Vista, 7 (32 and 64), Fedora 8, and Fedora 9.

I've never had a single problem with it. Everything works fine, the lid opens and closes perfectly, the drives work fine, and even after 5 years, the battery holds a perfect charge, just like it did when it was new. I can charge the battery, take it out and put it on the shelf for several months, and even after all that time, it's still at full charge when I go to use it.

I bought it at Best Buy.. it was on one of their weekly sales. It was not a fancy or real expensive model, but I picked this one because it had a decent ATI graphics setup, a dual core AMD 64 bit processor (multicore was fairly new at the time), and a DVD burner. I bought it right when Vista came out.. it had Vista home premium on it when I got it. It even came with a factory restore disc AND a windows disc.



^A few years ago at college.. watching a movie on the extended desktop (Had Windows 7 on it at the time).


I never really understood how people could go through laptops so quickly... most of the ones I've seen had broken lids that wouldn't stay open, or the person had gone through 3 AC adapters in just a year. I've taken this thing everywhere too.. Maybe I'm just more careful with my stuff.

As far as what to buy.. don't buy one for the brand name, or even for what it looks like. Compare the hardware. This one (at the time) cost less than the HPs, Sonys, Apples, etc. but it had better hardware for the price point. It looks fairly simple on the outside (not as cool-looking as others) but personally, I couldn't care less about that.. I'm more interested in the stuff that's under the hood.

[TheUNZippee!]

<---has blue in hand as I write this post in your general direction

[Notcho]

Originally Posted by TheUNZippee! <---has blue in hand as I write this post in your general direction