When the first 7 inch netbooks hit the market, one of the most frequent complaints I heard was that the bezel around the screen was just too big. Sure, an Asus Eee PC 701 has a 7 inch display, but the big black bars on the sides make the laptop a lot bigger than you might expect from a device with such a small screen.
These days it’s rare to see a notebook with a screen bezel that’s quite so large, but the black border around the screen is a constant presence on mobile computers, often leading people to wonder why PC makers can’t just make the bezels smaller and the screens larger to make better use of the limited space on portable laptops.
Gateway apparently has the answer: no reason at all. The company’s latest notebook packs a 14 inch widescreen display into a laptop case that’s normally used for 13.3 inch models. The Gateway ID47 Series measures 1297″ x 8.95″ x 1.13″ and has a starting price of $700.
While the laptop has a 14 inch screen, it has the same 1366 x 768 pixel resolution that we’ve come to expect from most portable notebooks. It’s also not exactly the lightest 13.3 inch/14 inch notebook. It weighs in at 4.6 pounds.
The Gateway ID47 has an Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge processor, Intel HD graphcis 3000, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB hard drive, HDMI, 3 USB ports (including a single USB 3.0 port), and a 6 cell, 6000mAh battery.
The folks at Laptop Magazine have some hands-on photos.
Im very surprised to see this review and no mention to the Packard Bell EasyNote NX 69-HR-073NL? These two laptops are exactly the same, i don’t really understand if Gateway has bought the licence to build and sell this model now?
Acer owns the Gateway and Packard Bell brands. We regularly see identical laptops and tablets released with Acer, Gateway, or Packard Bell names.Â
Reduced border screens have been in development for awhile, and it’s nice to see some progress in that area that isn’t just for multi-screen desktops finally.Â
Though these would benefit the netbook and smaller devices the most and that’s what I think most are waiting for…