Netbook Review: The Gateway EC1430u

Looking for a lightweight powerhouse that you can tote on the road without paying a portable premium? HardwareCentral.com has the in-depth details on Gateway’s EC1430u netbook.

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Netbooks are great. They're light (less than three pounds), low-priced ($300 to $400), handy traveling companions that are great for surfing the Web and checking e-mail and adequate for light productivity work.

But a lot of people dream of a netbook-plus: something with the speed and storage for more serious work, the muscle for multitasking, the oomph for image editing — but not anything much bigger and heavier than a netbook, and certainly not something priced more than $1,000 as fancy ultra-portables are. A netbook on steroids, you might say. A notebook in netbook's clothing, so to speak. The Gateway EC1430u ($550), to be precise.

This glossy black member of what Gateway calls its EC14 series (there's a cherry red, but otherwise identical, model EC1437u) is slightly larger than most netbooks, measuring 8.0 by 11.2 by 1.2 inches and weighing 3.2 pounds. That's due to its 11.6- rather than the usual 10-inch display — a 1,366 by 768-pixel panel with sunny LED backlighting.

Read the full Gateway EC1430u netbook review

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