Exterior Overview
The Gateway FX chassis is pretty
similar to what you see in most other 17" notebooks, with a few noteworthy
exceptions. Besides the exterior styling, the most interesting difference is
that the entire unit is "flatter" and perhaps slimmer than most of
the other 17" notebooks we've looked at recently. Understandably,
notebooks like the Dell XPS M1730 are quite large — they need to be in order to
provide adequate cooling for the dual GPUs. The Clevo M570RU chassis is smaller
than the Dell, but it has a sloped design so that the back is quite a bit
thicker than the front (22mm vs. 44mm). In contrast, the Gateway FX chassis is
much flatter: 33 mm thick at the front and 43 mm thick at the back. It also
doesn't have any thick "feet" to raise the bottom of the laptop above
a flat surface. We generally like the flatter feel of the Gateway chassis,
though other opinions may vary.
There's an unfortunate drawback to
the design, however. The battery protrudes quite a bit from the back of the
notebook, as you can see in the images below. This can make it more than a
little difficult to fit in standard 17" notebook carrying cases. What we
weren't able to confirm is whether our battery is the standard size, but
judging from the other pictures we've seen there's only one battery available. Despite
what the website says (Gateway lists a 2600 mAh battery), the actual battery is
a 7800 mAh (86.5 Whr) 9-cell design.
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We also want to take a moment to
comment on the keyboard layout. Gateway got this aspect almost exactly right. You
get a full-size number keypad, and all the keys are where you would expect them to be, including large enter and zero keys. The Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys are
above the number keypad, which is not necessarily ideal, but we had no problems
adapting to this location after a few hours. (If you try to use multiple
notebooks, it can get confusing at times remembering where some of the keys
are.) Some people might argue about the placement of the Fn key in the lower
left corner. I personally prefer to have my Ctrl key in that location, so I
would dock points from the keyboard layout; Anand on the other hand gets upset
if the Fn key is not in the bottom left corner. You also get a second Fn key
located near the cursor keys, which is unusual but not necessarily bad.
The keyboard on the Dell XPS M1730
is still the gold standard by which I judge all other keyboards. It does
everything right, and the LED backlighting option is an added bonus. If the XPS
M1730 keyboard earns an A+ grade, the Gateway FX is not far behind, garnering
an A or an A- depending on how you feel about the Ctrl/Fn key positioning.
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teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Can anyone who has gotten the T5550 proc go to Gateway and enter your serial number and then check out the documentation and let us know if they only list the T5450 info or if they give you the T5550 info?I'm trying to figure out if I've got the T5450 or the T5550 before I open the box... of course the box says T5450 and when I enter my serial at gateway I only get the T5450 documentation as well. I also called gateway tech support and that person basically told me that he showed no records of any of these laptops getting the T5550 proc... but he seemed a little "off" to me though and that's of course an incorrect statement.
TK.
teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
^^^ also though, I've read on the net (so take with some salt) that gateway released a patch because vista was incorrectly ID'ing the proc as a faster one... is there any merit to this... could we all have the T5450 but it's being miss-ID'd?Che - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
My box does say T5450, but I ran CPU-Z and it does identify it as the faster processor. I'll check the serial number later for ya.Che - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
I entered my serial # and it does state it was a T5450. Ship date March 08teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Thanks for doing that... I decided to just open my box.. figured I'd be upgrading the CPU anyway later... and... got the faster T5550. ;)So I guess there really is no way to know what you've got until you turn on the PC.
My PC has a ship date of March 13th and I got the T5550 @ 1.83Ghz... of course now my wife is jealous so we had to buy one for her as well. Her ship date was March 4th... haven't opened the box yet... but will report what she has when we do. Both computers were bought at Best Buy.
teknomedic - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
quick update...My wife's laptop with a ship date of March 4th ended up having the slower T5450 proc... Also, both laptops have a strange "buzz" or audio distortion of the right speaker while playing some games (mostly Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath).
Also, I find the proc debate mute now since the P-6860 is coming out... if you can wait a week or so everyone here should now buy the P-6860... it's still only $1349 but gets a few nice upgrades such as the faster T5550 proc, 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD with Vista 64bit.
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
ASUS makes good notebooks, and the F3kA you linked is reasonable. Still, the 8800M GTS is probably 2 to 3 times more powerful than the Mobility HD 2600. You can run the Quake 4, Crysis, UT3, and Bioshock gaming tests quite easily if you want to compare. Same goes for CINEBENCH, 3DMark, and PCMark.I think the ASUS might be a better laptop in terms of battery life (it depends on the battery size), but the GPU, CPU, and LCD are all worse than the P-6831. $900 is a fair price for what you get, though.
Fant - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
I wished Anandtech would have compared the performance of this gateway to a few other laptops such as the $1500 Dell XPS M1530 which comes with c2d, 4gb, 8600Mgt as well as a MBP running XP (via bootcamp) since it also comes with c2d and 8600MGT.ap90033 - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
Wow 8600M GT? I had one of those Dells, I SENT IT BACK. It was HORRIBLE for gaming. Seriously, it would be embarrassing for the Dell...predatorramboxxx - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
all of them now have 1.83 or 1.86 check notebook review if you do not believe me.mine came with 1.83 from bestbuy