2. Gateway NV5214u

Gateway NV5214u

$529.99, Gateway.com ($499 at Best Buy)

Big and Beautiful(ly Priced)

Some have criticized the sub-seven-pound student-targeted NV5214u as being impractically heavy. Seriously? If you can get through gym class, you can haul around seven pounds of PC, especially when it means getting decent all-around performance for just over $500.

Now, in a 15.6", 1366x768 wide-screen design at this weight level, you often expect desktop-replacement-level performance, so adjust your expectations more to price than weight. Gateway pairs a 2.1 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 processor with 4 GB of DDR2 memory. Nearly half of this memory can be shared with the integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics engine. Not so long ago, dual-core processors and HD 3200 graphics were considered pretty impressive, and for non-gaming student needs they remain very decent. The caveat we’ll add is that with all of the multimedia handling, ripping, and transcoding that typical students need, this machine is a better fit for audio than video. Expect a roughly 5:1 or slower encoding time for Blu-ray-quality content.

Still, considering the NV5214u costs what you’d expect for a high-end netbook, you get a lot of good features, including 802.11n wireless, 320 GB hard drive, 8x DVD-Super Multi drive, Gigabit Ethernet, card reader, SPDIF audio output support, a Webcam, six-cell 4400 mAh battery, and an HDMI port. You might get 2.5 hours out of the battery, the LCD quality is decent but not stunning, and we’ve seen faster optical drives. But again—500 bucks!

Gateway’s “coffee brown” styling is impressive in a business-class sort of way, although the glossy exterior is a dust and fingerprint magnet. The keyboard is spacious and comfortable, but be warned that the numeric touchpad shoves the regular keyboard off-center to the left. Do you need a numeric keyboard on a notebook? If you’re an accounting or math student, perhaps.

Another curiosity is Gateway’s MyBackup application, which launches via the dedicated MyBackup Button. On one hand, the presence of this button is good for reminding people that they need to protect their data and should do so regularly. On the other hand, backups should be set to run regularly to external storage (flash drive, external hard drive, etc.) without any intervention. Students should also know better than to backup critical files at only one location. 

Speaking of storage, the only troublesome omissions on this unit were the lack of an eSATA port or ExpressCard slot. But in all other ways, the NV5214u is an excellent value. The notebook is spacious, reasonably fast, solidly built, and even includes Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) SP1.