Gateway just officially announced their new ID series, a line of aluminum-clad thin-and-light notebooks that stirred up a little buzz when they were showed off during Computex with glowing multitouch trackpads. Again, a glowing trackpad shouldn’t be a major factor when you’re buying a notebook, but it looks nice if you’re into that. We would have loved it if it had a backlit keyboard instead, but hey, this is at least unique.
Never mind our misgivings on having a glowing touchpad instead of a backlit keyboard though; the new LT models look pretty solid if you’re into laptops that look cool without screaming “look at me!” Clad in aluminum alloy panels on the surfaces that count, the material also helps keep the line portable despite the mainstream screen sizes: (the 14-incher weighs just around 5 pounds, while the 15.6-inch model is listed at 5.5 pounds). Both models are also pretty slim at a little below—or at just around—an inch thick.
Two new models are available: the 14-inch ID49C and the 15.6-inch ID59C. The 14-inch “Road Warrior” packs a 2.26GHz Core i3 processor, 4GBs of DDR3 memory, and up to 500GBs of hard drive space, with graphics options that includes Intel or Nvidia-based chips with Nvidia’s Optimus switching graphics tech. The 15.6-incher comes with a faster 2.26GHz Core i5 processor and similar specs.
Prices start at $680 for the ID49C, topping out at $850 with a 2.4GHz Core i5, 500GB hard drive and GeForce GT 330M graphics, while the ID59C is available in a single configuration that costs $800. Both feature a 6-hour battery and come preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
Related Entries
-
Palmrest Touchpad | Laptops & Netbooks
