• We hope you have a fantastic holiday season to close out 2025! Thank you all so much for being part of the Tom's Guide community!

Solved! Laptop question - which one is better of these 2?!?

ahc44

Distinguished
Aug 17, 2010
1
0
18,510
Hello! Any advice would be great! I have narrowed my laptop search down to two candidates. Each are very similar. The price is exactly the same ($600) What are my deciding factors here? What should i do?!?

The Gateway NV5929u ,
Intel® CoreTM i5-430M Processor1 2.26GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.53GHz (1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 Cache)
4GB DDR3 memory,
Blu-ray disc drive, n-wifi, 6-cell battery, 15.6″ laptop computer, Windows 7 64-bit, b / g / n Wi-Fi, 10/100/1000 networks, multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader (Memory Stick ™, Memory Stick PRO ™, MultiMediaCard ™, Secure Digital ™ , xD-Picture Card TM) Fax-Modem port (RJ-11), integrated webcam, 5.84 pounds of system, size: 1 02 “-1. 46″ (H) x 14 66 “(W) x 10 19″ (D), HDMI output.
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD with 128MB of dedicated system memory supporting Microsoft® and Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset

or

MSI™ S6000-017US 15.6" LED-Backlit Widescreen Laptop Computer With Intel® Core™ i5-450M Processor With Turbo Boost Technology

Item # 541572
Manufacturer # S6000-017US
processor brand Intel
processor model Core i5
diagonal screen size 15.6 inches
memory 4 GB
hard drive capacity 500 GB
screen resolution 1366 x 768
weight 4.7 lb
optical drive DVD±RW/DVD-RAM
operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
processor speed 2.4 GHz
memory type DDR3 SDRAM
maximum memory capacity 4 GB
wireless connectivity 802.11b/g/n
network connectivity 10/100 Ethernet
webcam with microphone
numeric keypad yes
ports 2 USB 2.0; 1 eSATA/USB; 1 HDMI; 1 Ethernet; 1 VGA 15-pin D-sub
memory card reader yes
video graphics Intel HD graphics with shared memory
integrated speakers yes
audio hardware Windows-compatible audio
Energy Star qualified yes


And the winner is...?
And why? (also, I don't really care about the hard drive differences)

Thanks for the help!


 
Solution
Hello and welcome to the forums
I checked the Gateway model in Gateway's site and in the specification page,it reports that this notebook has a DVD RW,not Bluray
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668585.php
But if you are 100% sure that its has Bluray,then the main difference between them is the optical drive and HDD capacity,so it depends on whether you prefer Bluray or more HDD.
Hello and welcome to the forums
I checked the Gateway model in Gateway's site and in the specification page,it reports that this notebook has a DVD RW,not Bluray
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668585.php
But if you are 100% sure that its has Bluray,then the main difference between them is the optical drive and HDD capacity,so it depends on whether you prefer Bluray or more HDD.
 
Solution



I wouldn't touch the gateway with a ten foot pole: those laptops are junk because they just can't deal with the heat.

Get the msi