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Gateway's bargain gaming monster even cheaper

Gateway's P-7811FX laptop on sale.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
Best Buy

We don't normally concern ourselves with what big retail stores put on sale every week--after all, they spend enough money to advertise their wares, they certainly don't need our help.

But while flipping through the Sunday sales circulars in the New York Times, we spotted the recently reviewed Gateway P-7811FX laptop in the Best Buy ad. We loved the latest version on Gateway's bargain-priced gaming rig enough to give it an Editors' Choice award--but we did grouse that at $1,450, it was about $100 more than previous versions.

For this week, at least, the P-7811FX is on sale for $1,249, which is a great deal for an Intel P8400 CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 1,920x1,200 17-inch display, and Nvidia's new GeForce 9800 graphics card.

The ad even promises a free PC game (up to $49.99), so you can show off Crysis on a laptop that can actually play it. That being said, we'd avoid the PC game bundled in the newspaper circular--we probably don't need a GeForce 9800 to play James Patterson's Women's Murder Club.

Watch this: Gateway P-7811FX