Gateway's notebook lineup under Acer starts to gel

In the interest of keeping the individual identities of the whole family of Acer properties alive, Gateway has announced an expansion of its notebook lines.

During the launch of Acer's Gemstone, analyst John Spooner of TBR remarked to BetaNews that the company looked to be positioning itself at the high end of the market, above Gateway and Packard Bell. If that is the case, then today's announcement makes Gateway look appealing to the "top 2/3" gamer/enthusiast market. All models will include Windows Vista SP1, with some offering an upgrade to Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition SP1.

Some new FX edition notebooks were announced: the P-172X, M-6850FX, and P-6860FX.

The P-172X has an Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor, NVidia GeForce 8800M GTS with 512 MB GDDR3, 4096 MB of memory, 2 x 160 GB RAID HDDs, a slot-loading DVD-R/RW/RAM drive, fingerprint scanner, 1.3 megapixel webcam, and a 1920x1200 17" WUXGA TFT display. It is available for $1,999.99 directly from Gateway.

The other two FX models announced today will be available at Best Buy beginning this weekend. The M-6850FX comes with an Intel Core2 Duo T5550 processor, ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphics, 3072 MB of DDR2 SDRAM and a 320 GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD, while the P-6860FX comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor, NVidia GeForce 8800M GTS with 512 MB GDDR3, 3072 MB of DDR2 SDRAM and a 250 GB 5400RPM SATA HDD. Retail prices for these are $999.99 and $1349.99 respectively.