Two months ago I purchased a Gateway M-6319 laptop at Costco. After waking up out of sleep mode, the system would not recognize a memory card if it was inserted. I thought I could live with it, but you really don’t want to have to reboot the machine just to copy pictures off your SD card.
I went to Costco and stuck my SD card in the demo model they had on display. Same problem. I called the Costco “Consierge Service” and was told they did not have a solution. So I decided to return the laptop and get something else.
That ended up being a HP Pavilion DV9823cl that they had on sale (clearance?). It has a gig more memory than the Gateway and a 17″ rather than 15.4 inch screen. Since I will be using this as my primary home computer and rarely lugging it around, the large screen will be nice. It also surpasses the Gateway by having a firewire port, s-video out, and an HP Expansion port, though I may never use them. Oh, and the card reader works all the time.
Here are the specs:
- Microprocessor: 2.0 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile
- Microprocessor Cache: 2 X 512KB L2 Cache
- Memory: 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) (Max: 4GB)
- Video Display: 17.0” WXGA+ BrightView Widescreen Display (1440 x 900)
- Video Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M
- Hard Drive: 250GB 5400RPM HDD (1 x 250G, second slot available for upgrade)
- Multimedia Drive: LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±RW with Double Layer Support
- Network Card: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector)
- Wireless Connectivity: 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN
- Fax/Modem: High speed 56k modem
- Sound: Altec Lansing
- PC Card Slot: ExpressCard/54 Slot (also supports ExpressCard/34)
- Media Reader: Reads Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, and xD Picture cards
- USB Ports: 4 USB 2.0 ports
- Firewire: 1 IEEE 1394 port
- Webcam: Built-in with integrated microphone
- Headphones: 2 jacks; 1 w/SPDIF Digital Audio & 1 stereo
- Microphone: 1 jack
- Expansion Port: HP Expansion/Docking Port
- Weight: 7.8 lbs.
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
Of course the real fun was removing any and all personal data from the Gateway before returning it. I deleted all the cookies, passwords, and temp files in Internete Explorer and uninstalled any program that may have contained personal data. I then emptied the recycle bin and used a program to ‘scrub’ the empty space on the hard drive. Now I have the ‘joy’ of reinstalling all the software onto the new machine….