American laptop maker Gateway, which now is part of the Acer group has released two new portable computers for the Indian audience. The Gateway ID 59C is a fairly attractive and slim-looking (judging by the 23mm thickness and 2.3 kg weight) desktop replacement. The 15.6-inch HD display would have a typical 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. While the looks do seem to suggest so, if the keyboard on this thing is anything like its predecessor, then you're in for a treat. Now, a highlight feature of this laptop is the NVIDIA Optimus technology, which we've been seeing on laptops and netbooks alike from ASUS. This lets you automatically switch from a powerful (and thereby, power consuming) graphics chip to a low-power on-board GPU. Now, they claim a magical 8 hour life which we'd like to see if we get in real life since a similar-claiming Acer laptop hadn't quite touched that mark. The ID 59C's more serious graphics duties are handled by the NVIDIA GeForce GT420M, which we believe should run modern games smoothly with medium detail, while run older titles in full glory swiftly. The Core i5 processor should also ensure that there's enough number-crunching power under the hood.

Gateway has tweaked this laptop a little by adding a one-touch social networking button (which we'd guess would open an content aggregation websites like this or an application like this one). An aqua blue glowing touch-pad adds to the 'Ooh' factor. Lastly, there's also a simple backup tool to ensure your data's safety.

Their LT23 Netbook measures an inch thick and weighs just over a kilo. From the pictures at least, the design on that top seems a little tacky (let's hope it ain't so). It's got a 10-inch LED backlit screen typically seen in most netbooks today. An Atom N450 1.66 GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard-drive sound fairly adequate. A multi-touch track-pad allows two fingered scrolling, which we think is a necessity for every laptop in general. It also quotes an 8-hour battery life, and we wouldn't actually argue too much after seeing many netbooks touching 7 hours straight in real life.


The Gateway ID 59C will cost Rs. 49,000 while the LT23 netbook should be yours for Rs. 20,500.