In a week when full-sized notebooks have wrenched back the focus from their budget ultraportable brethren, we’ve had Gateway’s M-152XL on the SlashGear test bench. With a 15.4-inch widescreen display, Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor and separate ATI Mobility Radeon graphics, packed into a 6.2 pound chassis, Gateway’s latest is really looking to take pride of place as a desktop replacement. It’s a competitive niche in the sector, though, so is the M-152XL up to the task?

With no pretence toward extreme portability, the M-152XL has to earn its keep with affordable grunt. The sticker price of $1,299 puts it firmly in amongst Dell’s M1530, Toshiba’s A305 and HP’s Pavillion dv6700, all of which – on paper at least – seem very similar; however, as of writing, Gateway are offering $300 off the notebook, bringing it down to just $999. Gateway have packed the M-152XL’s broad casing with Intel’s Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4GHz CPU, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 with 512MB GDDR3 dedicated memory, a healthy 3GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM and a 160GB 7,200rpm SATA HDD courtesy of Seagate. The 15.4-inch WXGA Ultrabright display runs at 1280 x 800. Otherwise, there’s a slot-loading 8x DVD burner, 5-in-1 memory card reader and a 1.3-megapixel webcam in the screen bezel. Connectivity is via WiFi a/b/g/draft-n and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, as well as three USB and an HDMI port.
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