Gateway MX6920 PC Notebook

Found this machine on an incredible sale at Best Buy, and it has most of the features I most wanted, so I decided to get it. I am "mostly" happy with the purchase, but there are a couple things missing that weren't obvious, and I overlooked them at purchase time, to my chagrin.

First of all, there is no internal microphone. That was a total surprise to me, since every laptop I've ever owned (this is the 6th one in 10 years) had one, and I just took for granted that there would be one. Secondly, although there is a button on the keyboard imprinted with the bluetooth icon, there is no bluetooth on board. This is less of a problem, but I was very surprised to bring home a machine marked so obviously for a service that was not offered. Okay, enough whining. Those things are my bad for not doing better research. The price blinded me. :-)

Now for the things I love -- they are many:
* The screen in large and beautifully clear. DVD's look fabulous!
* The keyboard layout is wonderful, intuitive, and key touch is perfect.
* In comparison to others of this size, it is quite light.
* It came with software interface called "Big Fix" that gathered all the necessary updates and presented them in one spot to be downloaded and installed. This made the initial setup very painless.
* Operating system/initial setup CD is included.
* Trying to get some things set up initially, I was able to go to the Gateway site and have an immediate chat with a polite and helpful technician. BRAVO! Thumbs up for that!
* It is EXTREMELY quiet.
* Processor very capable of intense graphic work I throw at it.
* LOVE that it has DVD +-RW included, and software to operate the burning function.
* 4 USB ports, located conveniently on the right side.
* Microphone and headphone ports located conveniently on the front.
* S-video port on left side.
* Monitor port on back corner.
* Touch pad includes a scroll section -- convenient and easy to use.
* I can work comfortably with this machine on my lap. While the bottom gets mildly warm, it's nothing like my last machine (a Dell D-800) that got hot enough to burn, and very uncomfortable on my lap.

This machine gets two thumbs way up from me. The missing components can be easily added if I want, and you can see that the positives totally outweigh the negatives.