Yes, it's a little late for the Holidays, but Gateway has a gift for gamers and media professionals looking for portable graphics power. They’ve ported over the design and engineering concepts from their FX desktop line to its P-series laptops, creating the P-series FX edition. We got our hands on the flagship model, the 17-inch (1920x1200) P-171XL FX, and Gateway’s first designed specifically for gaming.
The gray metal and polished black shell is très classy while the copper orange accents add a bit of youthful edge; it’s stylish but not ostentatious. Inside, there’s enough hardware to give almost any game or media app a whole world of hurt. The high-end specs include a 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo X7900 (which can be overclocked for more performance), 3GB RAM, two 200GB 7200rpm hard drives, and the ultra-powerful nVidia 8800M GTS. Sure, any PC maker can cram high-end hardware into a box. But making it cost-effective is something most makers (especially boutique companies) consistently fail at. Try to configure a comparable system from any other big name manufacture and you’ll see how cost-effective this laptop really is. Our gaming benchmarks (see below) show the P-171XL FX shredding PREY with ease. But the graphical-whore Crysis, with its minion DX10, yielded marginally respectable results. Nevertheless, Gateway’s foray into gaming should be heralded by price-conscious, media savvy gamers everywhere. —Claude McIver
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WIRED __Full keyboard with number pad. Font on keys are edgy, neigh futuristic. RAID 0 Drive array. Three USB, one FireWire, eSATA, and HDMI ports. HD-DVD ROM drive. Fingerprint scanner. SD/MMC/MS/MSPro/XD card reader. ExpressCard slot. Touch sensitive volume slider. Bluetooth. 1.3MP webcam.
TIRED Media keys look cool but are a bit hard to press> And what about touch sensitive keys, guys? One USB port too few. 2.5 hour battery life is slightly dissapointing.
$3,000, gateway.com
