Holiday gift guide: Laptops

With the wide variety of laptops available, your lifestyle -- or the person you're shopping for -- should be the starting point in determining what you buy. 

Video: 5 great tech gifts under $100

Do you travel a lot? Ultraportables can weigh less than three pounds these days or last on battery more than six hours. Prices are falling too, with more great configurations falling below the $2000 mark. Speed and performance can be the trade-off, though. Want an elegant alternative to your clunky monitor and PC combo? A variety of powerful, elegant 17-inch models come with cool entertainment features such as a TV tuner, Blu-ray Disc drive, or HD DVD drive. Are you rough with your stuff? Consider a laptop with a solid-state drive; be prepared to pay more for less storage space though. And if you're an environmentalist, laptops with LED-backlit screens are energy-saving and Mercury-free.

All-Purpose Laptops

Gateway E-475M

If a 7.2-pound laptop with a 15.4-inch screen isn't too bulky or heavy to carry in your estimation, you may well find Gateway's new business laptop ideal for toting in a satchel or backpack. It has a durable smudge-resistant exterior, a shock-mounted hard drive, and a close-fitting lid to keep out debris. Equipped with one of Intel's latest mobile dual-core processors, the $2270 (as of 5/9/07) E-475M is also one of the fastest notebooks of the moment, and it has terrific battery life.

The E-475M's classic matte-black case has a more business-oriented look than the two-tone M-465E it replaces. The rounded, clamshell lid keeps paperclips and other small items from working their way between the screen and keyboard, making this the perfect laptop for stuffing into a grubby bag.

Equipped with 2GB of RAM and a new 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, the E-475M is the fastest Vista notebook we've tested to date. It bested our previous top WorldBench 6 Beta 2 scorer, a Micro Express NP5760 running an older 2.33-GHz Core 2 Duo T7600 chip and Vista Home, by 1 point -- 83 to 82. Our new speed champ is powerful enough to handle any application, even 3D gaming. (The speakers are no great shakes, however.) Wireless-communications fans get the bonus of the chip set's support for five-times-faster draft-n Wi-Fi. The Gateway aced our battery tests, as well, lasting 5 hours, 17 minutes on a single charge.

The screen has the more conservative matte finish rather than the glossy sheen so popular these day, so it's not blazingly bright -- but neither does it reflect office lights. The WXSGA resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels makes icons small, but that's the necessary trade-off if you like being able to open a lot of windows or to see all of a big document at once. The rest of the design is good overall, if a bit spartan. The keyboard is classic Gateway: plain, with no quick-launch buttons, but comfortable. Case connections are also modest but cover all the bases, including a front-mounted wireless switch. The 100GB hard drive could be bigger, but at least it's a high-speed, 7200-rpm model. The E-475M is one of the rare Gateway systems to offer a modular bay. Though the bay's release is awkwardly situated on the bottom, and is stiff and hard to work, being able to swap out the dual-layer DVD burner for a second battery or hard drive is a valuable expansion option.

For more PC news, visit PC World. Story copyright PC World Communications, Inc.