Gateway’s MC Notebooks Go For Entertainment

Gateway's new MC-series notebooks focus on entertainment, offering 16-inch widescreen displays, ATI graphics, HDMI output, and plenty of RAM and storage.

Gateway has taken the wraps off its new MC notebook series. With a 16-inch edge-to-edge WXGA glass widescreen display, ATI graphics, HDMI output, and reasonable price tags, the MCs want to be the entertainment notebook of choice for the upcoming holiday buying season.

“Gateway’s new MC-Series notebook PC line delivers an immersive entertainment experience by combining the latest in technology with features that are easy to use and give customers quick access to their digital media,” said Gateway senior product manager Ray Sawall, in a statement. “Plus, the MC-Series was inspired by modern automotive design, so it has an elegant, modern look and feel that is both subtle and distinctive.”

Gateway can’t quite seem to articulate the line: the company is definitely offering the MC7801u, but also talks about an MC7803u as the “high-end” of the line, while the MC7804U will apparently be on offer in Canada. In any case, the line boasts Intel Core 2 Duo processors (starting at 2 GHz, apparently), a 16-inch 1,366 by 768-pixel widescreen LCD display, 4 GB of RAM (already maxed out), a 320 GB hard drive, a 5-in-1 media card reader, HDMI 1.3 output, an 8× DVD±RW burner with LabelFlash, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi networking, four USB 2.0 ports and an ExpressCard/54 slot. The MC7801u uses Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, while the high-end MC7803u sports ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics with 512 MB of video memory. Both ship with WIndows Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

The units will be available in two colors—black and burgundy—and weigh a heft 7.1 pounds. The cases feature a synthetic leather branding stripe, silver accents, and palm rests: brushed metal for the burgundy model and synthetic leather for the black edition. The units also feature an ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness, and LED backlit keyboard, and an integrated 1.3 megapixel Web cam.

The MC7801u will start at $949.99, while the MC7803u will start at $999.99; both should be available this month from Gateway’s retail partners.