Gateway's new M-151X laptop computers are available in four different colors for the same price; you can choose from the traditional silver model or be a little more conspicuous with a bright red, deep blue or fanciful Arctic Bloom color scheme.

Regardless of their external adornments, however, these computers pack a lot of power inside. They're built around a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor and a full 2 gigabytes of swift 667MHz DDR2 memory; as such, these systems work great for multitasking and running applications that require large amounts of RAM such as photo and video editors.

Storage space starts out at a respectable 250GB on a 5,400rpm hard drive, which gives you a decent amount of room for housing multimedia files and installing applications.

If you need to back up any data, the multi-format DVD writer comes in handy. It supports burns to traditional CDs and DVDs as well as high-capacity Dual Layer media and DVD-RAM disks; the former can house up to 8.5GB of data on a single disk, and the latter can be rewritten to up to 100,000 times, which makes it great for scheduled backups. What's more, these laptops ship with Spare backup software, which helps you set up local backups and comes with a free 1GB of online data storage.

The 15.4-inch widescreen displays on these laptops offer lots of screen space for watching movies or having multiple applications open at once. Its 1280X800 resolution makes images and text quite crisp, but graphics on these laptops are integrated, so they aren't great gaming machines.

Gateway has also integrated a 1.3-megapixel webcam into the top of the display, so these laptops are ready to go for videoconferencing with the office or with your messaging buddies.

Connectivity is extensive. There is built-in Bluetooth for hooking up wireless peripherals or synching with your PDA or cell phone. There are also three USB ports, an ExpressCard /54 slot for hooking up devices and a 5-in-1 media card port for transferring photos from your digital camera.

You can hop onto the Internet via the integrated modem or Ethernet ports, as well as the built-in 802.11a/b/g/draft n wireless.

These laptops weigh in at over 6 pounds, so they're not thin-and-light models; they are, however, easy enough to carry around for most users if you've got the right laptop bag.

The M-151X laptops ship with Windows Vista Home Premium, which includes all the multimedia tools of Windows XP Media Center edition. You also get the basic Microsoft Works 9.0 set of office applications and 1 year of warranty coverage.

If you're looking for a well-rounded multimedia laptop with some unique color schemes, the Gateway M-151X portable computers are an excellent value for the money.


Pros: Great price, powerful core
Cons: Integrated graphics

Warranty
1 year, limited