Gateway 3522gz from Best Buy?

College Life
1

<p>I want to buy a laptop for school, and I am interested in the Gateway 3522gz from Best Buy. It is small and compact, but still a great price of $1199. Does anyone have any experience with this or other gateway laptops?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

2

<p>Well, Gateway’s PCs are certainly more durable than hp/Compaq’s and the Dell Inspirons. And the support is better. That’s as far as I know.</p>

3

<p>My personal advice would be not to drop below that price on a NEW laptop. If money is enough of an issue that you have to spend under 1000 on a computer, definately go desktop. Cheap laptops are cheap while low priced desktops are reasonable (or even VERY reasonable).</p>

4

<p>Since it should be available at your local Best Buy, I suggest that you go there are test it out.</p>

<p>I also recommend that you consider buying from the Gateway website… Right now, it seems like Gateway is offering a new version of that product for less at <a href=“http://www.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=m250x&seg=hm[/url]”>http://www.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=m250x&seg=hm&lt;/a&gt; Note that the brightview is not is included at that price and must be added for an additional $20. However, the computer offered at Gateway’s site uses the new Sonoma processor which is slightly faster than the old version. If you call Gateway or do the online chat, you might be able to negociate the price a little. Gateway salespersons are aggressive though, so be careful if you go that route.</p>

5

<p>In 2001 I bought a Gateway laptop for a whopping $3000 after taxes and shipping. I can’t believe I paid that much. The day I got it I had to write the hard drive to zeros to try to fix a problem. Tech support was great about walking me through it. It took 6-8 hours overnight. Then I had to drive 6 hours to college the next day for a six-week session. Anyway, the BIOS was corrupt and Gateway replaced the chassis. No problems after that. My brother had the same model and never had any problems. We also have Gateway desktops and have not experienced any serious problems. Every problem that I’ve had was fixed by calling tech support.</p>

<p>I’ve decided to stick with Gateway when buying new computers. And their prices, for the most part, seem to be reasonable, although one day I may opt to save money and build a computer myself.</p>

6

<p>How is the battery like with the Gateway portables?</p>

7

<p>Gateway’s aren’t the best in battery life, as far as I know. The M460 is supposed to be one of their top performers in battery life, but PC World got only 3 hrs 23 mins out of it. (Compare that to Dell Inspiron 6000’s 5 hrs 7 mins of battery life).</p>

<p>The good news is that Gateway’s batteries are cheap, so it shouldn’t be much of a burden to carry a second battery with you.</p>

8

<p>It depends on what battery you go with. I know that the Gateway M460 is available with a 6 cell, 8 cell, and an extended 12 cell battery. The more cells, the heavier the battery and the longer the runtime.</p>