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3
Can one of the current crop of high-end Notebooks
replace a Desktop?
Part 2, the welterweight $$ class
Staff Review, written by Keith Benicek
December 31, 2002
keyboard response, but many keys are in non-standard locations. The \ and “insert” keys are next to the “space” key, which is shrunken. Mistakes galore! Also, there is a “Windows Menu” key where a second ctrl key is usually at and the drop down menu key is to the right of that. On the left bottom, Fn and ctrl are reversed.
After a couple months of testing and use, Windows XP started acting up with frequent “crashes” and freezes. Programs like Office dropped like flies to a severe case of Redmond Washington OS flakiness. Networking was also unbelievably slow to connect and transfer, a lot of “things” were acting strange for a new computer. We had no choice but to use the restore disks and reinstall everything. That was the beginning of the end. Windows XP upon reinstallation would not recognize the 802.11b Multi-port, and the reinstallation disks documentation was horrible.
We called Compaq and after wadding through the “if your have, push number 2” maze we finally had a technician after 22 minutes! We agreed that the Multi-port had failed.
They bungled the service return box shipping and it arrived three days later. Then things got very irritating. Compaq service center in Houston Texas has the unit for 15 days before finally “installing some software” and returning it. During those 15 days we called four times and got the same story, “It’s on an analysts test bench”. Compaq’s status web page was also never updated past the day that they has sent us the service return box 20 days earlier! This is totally unacceptable customer service, buyer beware!
The Gateway 600X is a notebook that is clearly telling you that it is really a desktop replacement. So much so that we would suggest, if you travel by anything less than an Elephant or Hummer ATV-SUV, this desktop notebook is a little bit too big and heavy for ya! At 13.86" x 11.44" x 1.77" (W x D x H) and our tested weight of 8.85lb, it’s only appropriate for occasional travel like on the Orbital Shuttle or it you have to move to a different office once every two months.
Just to put things
into perspective, if you stacked two Apple G4 Titanium PowerBook's on
top of each other, they would be only slightly (1/4”) taller than
one Gateway 600X.
Great things
come in very big packages though, that’s how we would describe the
Gateway
600X and it’s richer brother the 600XL. Our test 600X was equipped
with a Mobile Intel P-4 at 2.0GHz (the 600XL has a 2.2GHz P-4M), 512MB
DDR SDRAM and a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 w/ 64MB DDR Video Memory. Wow!
The 600X also packs a 40GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, a Modular FDD and 24x/10x/24x CDRW / 8x DVD Combo Drive, which can swap locations. Handy if the DVD / CDRW tray gets in the way of your use of a desktop mouse, just move it to the opposite side of the notebook. We just loved that!
Also inside is an integrated 802.11b Wireless device, 10/100 Ethernet port, a slew of multimedia sound and video ports, two USB 1.1, one IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports. The WiFi device had better than average range of 240 feet to our Apple “Snow” v.2 Airport Base Station located in the Tech-Lab office.
The crown jewels for users though are the spectacular 15.7” SXGA TFT display that has more actual area than the Apple G4 Titanium PowerBook and the desktop quality keyboard that was the favorite of our speed queen review typist. To compliment the high quality keyboard, the Touchpad pointer was the second best to the IBM; if it were only a bit larger it would have been a tie.
As you might have imagined, we are very enamored (“in love” for those with a Gamers vocabulary) with the Gateway 600X and really hated to send it back. This is a true portable workstation.
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