Good, but not the best budget laptop out there.
Written: May 25 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Bright Display, great performance, affordable and more.
Cons: Small touch pad, short of peripheral ports.
The Bottom Line: If you've been frustrated with Dell, the Gateway maybe your alternative.
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| lavoisier's Full Review: Gateway Solo 1450 PC Notebook |
When looking for laptops, many people had no clear direction for a laptop. But for those that have a very clear direction, but don't really want to pay for a Dell, because they we're too costly to buy in the first place, Gateway is the alternative for those that would like some flexibility for their laptop hardware configuration. But despite the lower price, is this as good as the Dell laptops that are offered online too? Find out.
For starters, a basic configuration for the laptop like this one will suit you:
Gateway Solo 1450SE
Mobile Intel Celeron 1.2GHz
14.1" XGA screen
256MB SDRAM
20GB Hard Drive
8x DVD ROM Drive
Integrated v.92 56K Modem
Integrated 10/100 Network Card
Primary High Capacity Li-Ion battery (recommended upgrade from the conventional Ni-MH battery)
1 year warranty (extra warranty suggested)
MS Works Suite 2002
MS Windows XP Home Edition
Price: $ 1347
This configuration is ideal for those that are more into basic productivity like Microsoft Office applications, viewing Internet content, researching for that school report with the bundled Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. Plus with the DVD ROM drive, you can really break the phrase "All work no play, makes Jack a dull boy." This allows you to view movies while you're taking a break or you can even use it to load software programs for your laptop and still use it for your own audio pleasures too. It makes it a great basic multimedia machine too.
Processors and Memory
The Gateway Solo 1450 features a 1.2GHz processor with a choice of either a Celeron or a Pentium 3-m. But for those who would like a little bit more zing, the Pentium 3-m is your choice, for a very reasonable charge. Teamed up with the Intel 830MP chipset, this laptop provides sufficient stability for the years to come for this laptop as well as compatibility. Because this chipset supports 133MHz memory as well as processors with a 133MHz bandwidth, it ensures that the processor and the memory to co-operate very well, even at times when the memory and processor requirements are very demanding during the application.
With memory sizes between 128 to 512MB, you can choose the amount of memory to best suit your requirements within the 2 memory slots provided inside the laptop. But I would really recommend upgrading to 256MB, because the latest operating system, Windows XP Home Edition, requires at least 128MB to work properly and to acquire stability.
Storage
There are many storage options available for the Gateway Solo 1450. For the internal storage, it offers either a 20 or 30 GB hard drive to store your operating system, software programs and many more. With such storage capacity, you can even store some multimedia files as well, like your digital audio collection that you've downloaded off the Internet for example.
With the removable storage options of a stationary floppy drive, it can store many small files like MS Office applications and many more.
Then, there are a few choices of optical drives that are offered at the time of purchase. They range from a conventional 8x DVD ROM, which is highly recommended by any user of this laptop, which adds versatility to the laptop. This versatility allows you to load software, play your favorite audio CDs and even play your DVD movie collection. Take a step further with the 8x CD Rewriter, and you can create your own CDs for backups, storing large files and create your mix of audio CDs, quickly and easily. For those that are really looking into the work and play machine, the CD-RW/DVD combo drive is not much more than the DVD ROM and it combines the versatility of the DVD ROM and the convenience of the CD Rewriter. Because the optical drive is stationary, the buyer must decide very carefully with their selection.
Display
The display is rather confined to the XGA resolution (1024x768), but it allows you to choose between the display sizes of 14.1" or 15". For those that are into basic productivity, the 14.1" screen is sufficient. But for those who would treat this as a work and play machine, the 15" display is recommended. But for those that are planning to use their laptop for photography, some gaming or watching videos with it, try another laptop with at least an SXGA resolution, like the Dell Inspiron 4100 or the upcoming Inspiron 4200. The screen isn't particularly the best here, but it does the job very well with DVD movies, MS Office applications and many more.
For the external graphics, the laptop handles it with the Intel 830M chipset. Due to the nature of the graphics chipset, it hogs a portion of your laptop's memory in order to display the image properly through a projector or a conventional monitor. As a result, the Gateway Solo 1450 series isn't really suited for graphics intensive applications like video creation or for gaming.
Connecting to Peripherals
As for the peripheral ports, Gateway seems to have skimped some peripheral ports in order to save money. Well, to start off, the laptop doesn't have a PS/2 port for those that don't have a USB mouse and it should be compensated by a 3rd USB port. But it does feature the parallel port for your printers though. Since I've already mentioned about the video port, the laptop also features a 56k v.92 modem as well as a 10/100 network port for communications and to hook your laptop for the Internet. Plus, it offers a microphone and headphone port for those private multimedia moments. Don't forget about those PC card slot, as it provides room for one Type II or Type III PC card.
Battery
The basic battery; which is a Ni-MH battery, really disappoints the user of the laptop as to maintain the performance of the battery overtime; you can only charge it when the battery is out of juice, an inconvenience. With the optional Li-Ion battery, you have the freedom to charge the battery whenever you want, without really deteriorating the performance of the battery in the long run. With the Ni-MH battery, it performed very well, at just a little more than 2 hours of battery life. But if you order the laptop with the Li-Ion battery, the battery life can be increased substantially for about another hour on a full charge.
Input
The keyboard is full sized for a laptop, but a few keys we're just too small, such as the backspace key and the escape key. However, the keyboard felt sufficiently smooth enough to type quietly and it responded very well with heavy typing. The touch pad itself was also too small for any practical cursor movement at all. But it was also easy to use and the scroll button, between the two button makes it a great addition to the laptop, which eliminates any cursor dragging when you would like to scroll the page up or down.
Software
There isn't really much to talk about software here, as it bundles an MS Works Suite 2002 for productivity. Other options for productivity software includes MS Office XP. It also comes with a choice of their Windows XP Home or Professional for the operating system.
Other Features
The laptop holds a rather plain and simple design, where it is the norm for most basic laptops. But most laptop users aren't really after looks at this price range, it isn't really much of a concern.
At about 6.2 lbs and 1.6" thick, this laptop is surely lighter and easier to carry than the Inspiron 2600 or 2650 series by Dell. But for those that are more concerned about the weight, the Inspiron 4x00 series should fit the bill for those users.
After using the laptop for about 3 months, I haven't really experienced any flaws with this laptop and I didn't have to even call Gateway for assistance, so I can't really comment about the manufacturer's support. Even when I'm using the laptop with the computer plugged in or not, it still performed very consistently. For around $1350, the laptop is priced just right for those that are really into productivity here.
My Review Laptop:
Mobile Intel Celeron 1.2GHz
30GB Hard Drive
15" XGA Screen
256MB SDRAM
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
8x DVD ROM
Intel 830M 4x 8MB Video Memory
Li-Ion battery
MS Windows XP Home Edition
MS Works Suite 2002
1 year warranty and Free Support.
Cost: $1433
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1433
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
lavoisier
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Member: Hugh Jazz
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 180
Trusted by: 26 members
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