Gateway, Toshiba roll out new notebooks

Gateway is launching a slew of wide-screen notebooks with enhanced graphics capability, the company announced Thursday.

One of the new offerings, the M680, features a 17-inch wide-screen display, Centrino Mobile technology, PCI Express graphics with 128MB of video memory, an Intel 915 Pentium M processor, memory expandable to 2GB and a dual-layer multiformat DVD-RW drive, the company said. The notebook, which weighs 7.7 pounds and is 1.24 inches thick, comes with Wi-Fi connectivity.

Gateway said the M680 is designed for games, graphics and DVD movies. Prices start at $1,399.99 for entry-level models. The M680XL model with a 60GB hard disk, 8x DVD+/-R/RW/CD-RW recorder and 128MB video memory, is priced at $2,864.99. The machine comes loaded with Windows XP Professional Edition and Microsoft Works 8.0.

The M360 notebook with a 15.4-inch wide-screen display features Celeron or Pentium M Processors, Wi-Fi connectivity and a selection of hard drives, memory configurations and optical-drive formats. The pricing for this model starts at $849.99, the company said. The computer, with 512MB of DDR2 memory, a 60GB hard drive and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive will sell for $1,149.99.

Toshiba, meanwhile, announced the Satellite M35X-S163 notebook with a 15.4-inch diagonal wide-screen display priced at $999. It features a FireWire port for transfer of files from a camcorder, a 1.4GHz Celeron M processor 360, three USB 2.0 ports, a 60GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity and a fixed-bay DVD/CD-RW player.