Gateway M285-E

You don't usually think of tablet PCs as supersized, but Gateway has never been shy about making big convertibles. The company was the first to come out with a 14-inch combo years ago, and the M285-E follows suit with its 14-inch widescreen display and a powerful configuration.

 

All of the strengths and weaknesses of Gateway's design philosophy for convertibles still hold true in it latest generation. The M285-E is big, relatively fast, and rich in features. But at 6.2 pounds, no one will enjoy lugging it around.

 

The M285-E has power, albeit unevenly distributed. Equipped with a 2-GHz Intel Core Duo T2500 processor, it tears through just about everything you could throw at it. The 80GB SATA hard drive launches programs a bit sluggishly and the 512MB of system RAM included in our system seemed stingy compared to the rest of the hardware suite. While many midsized and smaller convertibles dispense with optical drives altogether, Gateway includes a DVD burner on this model. We were disappointed not to find a bundled DVD editing suite.

 

The full-sized keyboard offers good feedback and makes fine use of the wide footprint. The directional keys are offset in the bottom right for easy access. The Shift, Enter, and Backspace keys are nicely oversized. The two-button touchpad is sensitive and contoured with a right-hand ridge that segments off a section dedicated to vertical scrolling.

 

The display subsystem is good for a mid-priced convertible but certainly not exceptional. The ATI Mobility X1400 graphics accelerator hit a modest 3DMark03 score of 3,944 and may run 3D games at low-res without a burp. However, this is not a gamers' chipset by any means.

 

The widescreen LCD ran at 1280 x 768, but the screen did not impress us with deep coloration or contrast ratios. The display tends to darken radically with off-angle viewing, which is a real weakness with a tablet. When put into tablet mode, the widescreen becomes a lengthy legal pad of screen, and we are not convinced that it does more than add awkwardness to an already heavy tablet experience.

 

If you can stand the weight, the M285-E has some good tablet features. The four launch buttons are well placed in one corner. A handy directional pad can handle scrolling, and it also has an activation key at its center. The stylus is thicker than most and has a good heft to it; plus, the hover zone is quite generous. For those who like to work in slate mode, using shortcut buttons and stylus gestures, this model fits the bill. 

 

On the downside, the built-in microphone lacks the sensitivity of the dual-array recording devices in some of the Electrovaya, Motion Computing, and Toshiba slates and convertibles. We wouldn't expect this model to record a meeting with any great accuracy, although it could be counted on for personal notes.

 

Overall, Gateway delivers an uneven convertible that delivers good performance and a large display for users who hate to squint. However, the system is too large and heavy for anything more than occasional tablet use.

 

Editor's note: At press time, Gateway was planning to equip the M285-E with a faster Intel Core Duo 2 processor on August 31.