Gateway Goes Low-Cost With New TC Laptops Bethlehem PA

Under the hood of this entry-level model lurks a decent amount of juice, courtesy of a 2.00GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core Mobile T4200 processor (with 1MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz frontside bus), 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 667MHz memory, an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M (boo on the integrated graphics choice!), an 8X multiformat dual-layer DVD-RW with DVD-RAM drive, a 320GB hard-disk drive, and a six-cell lithium-ion battery. That said, be prepared to double-dip into your wallet for additional goodies. According to spokespeople, buyers will be able to doll up future configurations with a Core 2 Duo CPU, HDMI-out, a Blu-ray drive, and a dedicated nVidia GeForce 9300M GPU. For my money, plopping a 9400M GPU directly on the motherboard would've been smarter design decision from the get-go--but hey, I haven't actually played with these notebooks yet.

Otherwise, the primary goal of these style-minded machines--available both in burgundy and in black--is to hit the value sweet spot. You'll find a 1.3-megapixel Webcam on board, plus 802.11b/g/n support, a five-in-one media card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, and xD) and three USB 2.0 ports. You also get illuminated multimedia touch controls; if they're anything like what the UC series uses, the controls are pretty basic, but they get the job done. A final strong point: This TC notebook weighs just 5.3 pounds--almost exactly as much the smaller UC7807u weighs.

As soon as these TC-series units show up in-house, our PC World Test Center will run them through our benchmark test suite, and we'll combine that hard data with our hands-on impressions of these budget-friendly laptops.