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Gateway NX860XLA huge screen and potent graphics make this Media Center a good buy for power users. Price: $2,344
By Jamie Bsales 
The Gateway NX860XL is a desktop replacement powerhouse that delivers excellent performance and a gorgeous 17-inch widescreen. It lacks some of the higher-end A/V features of competing HP Pavilion and Toshiba Qosmio models but offers smooth multitasking and good gaming performance for a reasonable price.
Cutting-edge industrial design has not been Gateway's forte, and the NX860XL doesn't break the bland silver-and-black design mold. And make no mistake: This laptop is extra large (16.1 x 10.9 x 1.4 inches) and is suitable at most for shuttling from room to room and maybe for occasional travel. The platform starts at 8.4 pounds, but our unit tipped the scales at more than 9.5 pounds-not including the one-pound power brick. Once the glossy display springs to life, you'll almost forgive the bulk. The NX860XL's screen is crisp and clear and provides an expansive view. The 1680 x 1050-pixel native resolution makes multitasking a snap, as you can work on the task at hand in one window and keep your e-mail program in view off to the right. Even with a screen this large, though, that resolution results in rather small default fonts. The panel's viewing angle is excellent side-to-side, but like most other widescreens we've seen, the image washes out when viewed from above. Our only real disappointment with the display is its response time: DVD playback revealed noticeable motion blur. The sound quality from the front-firing stereo speakers was rich and distortion-free, though a higher maximum volume would be appreciated, especially for room-filling music playback that users might expect from a multimedia-centric notebook. The large screen allows space for an expansive keyboard deck with a full-sized keyboard and a full-sized number pad to the right. The design is clutter-free, but where are the multimedia-control buttons? The keyboard is comfortable to use and delivers just the right amount of tactile and audible feedback. The touchpad has a dedicated vertical (though not horizontal) scroll area, but we found the mouse buttons small, given how much room there is for them. The included Windows Media Center Edition OS looks great on the big screen and will let you organize and enjoy your music, video, and photo collections. We were surprised not to find an integrated TV tuner option on the NX860XL, although you can configure it with a $199 external USB tuner from Adaptec. Unfortunately, there's no remote control option, so even though you can easily see the Media Center menus from across the room, you need to walk back to the machine to control media playback. The port selection is standard fare. You get four USB, plus FireWire, VGA, and S-Video, but this system doesn't offer the more robust A/V outputs found on other multimedia portables. On the plus side, we're happy to see the 6-in-1 media card reader. Clearly, Gateway put its money into the NX860XL's core components. The Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 processor, 2GB of high-speed RAM, and fast 7,200-rpm hard drive (100GB) combined to deliver a strong MobileMark 2005 score of 283. And the NX860XL won't shy away from 3D games. Thanks to the Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GS graphics card, the NX860XL delivered 81 frames per second on F.E.A.R. when we let the game pick the optimal settings, and a very playable 54 fps when we pushed the settings to the max. Battery life was also good for this class, at just shy of three hours. The only performance oddity was low wireless throughput; 7.4 Mbps at 15 feet and 5.8 Mbps at 50 feet are low, even for a desktop replacement. Our NX860XL included a good selection of software, including Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003 (a $139 upsell) and the preinstalled BigFix diagnostic utility. Our unit totaled $2,344. It's not cheap, but it's right in line with the competition, such as the Dell Inspiron E1705. If you want a big screen and big performance and won't miss extras like a remote, the Gateway NX860XL is worth a look. The screen is beautiful, and the speed a delight. Gateway NX860XL Specifications
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