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Gateway first released its FX series notebooks bringing powerful gaming notebook prices down to an afordable level vs. desktop PC pricing. Gateway hopes to bring powerful business and school notebooks to users at an afordable price with the Gateway T-series.

With a powerfull 2.0Ghz Core 2 duo, and 4GB of DDR2 this notebook is sure to help you get all your work done without breaking a sweat.

Full Specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5750 (2.0GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB)
• Intel Centrino Processor Technology
• Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit w/ Service Pack 1
• Intel GM965 Chipset
• 14.1” Ultrabright WXGA TFT display (1280x800)
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 w/ up to 384MB of Dynamic Video Memory
• 4096MB DDR2 667MHz Memory, Dual Channel (2x2048MB)
• 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVDRW w/ DVD-RAM with LabelFlash Technology
• 5-in-1 Digital Media Manager
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g
• Ethernet, 56K modem
• 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
• 3 USB ports
• 6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Metal Precision-Touch Multimedia Buttons
• Microsoft Works 9.0 & Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 (60-day trial)
• 1 Year Warranty (Tech Support / Parts / Factory Labor)
• Pacific Blue chassis
• $649.99 ~ $799.99 @ Best Buy

What’s in the Box:
When your T-series arrives you’ll find it in Gateways “cow spotted” box. Inside the box you will find the notebook, power supply, phone cable for dialup, setup guide, starter guide, Gateway restore disk including Vista Home Premium 64/32-bit with SP1, warranty and trial software papers.



Software & OS

The notebook comes with Vista Home Premium 64-bit Preinstalled. If you prefer 32-bit the install disk includes the 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium. This Gateway also comes with plenty of trial software from Microsoft office to Norton 360.

Design

I find the look of the notebook itself fashionable. The dark blue lid and palm rest looks great with the brushed aluminum and grey keys. The black text “pops” off the grey keys nicely for easy reading. The notebook also has the “razor” like function buttons of the popular FX gaming series from Gateway. Its Stylish keyboard, Glossy black LCD frame, and blue/black details are sure to appeal to anyone be it school or business use.




Screen:

The Screen on the notebook is a 14.1” WXGA (1280x800) TFT display. Like most TFT displays the screen suffers from top and bottom up views. But left and right angle views don’t distort too bad so watching a movie on a plane with a friend is very possible. For a TFT screen it looks great, the picture quality looks great and no dead pixels were found. The screen has 8 different brightness settings so you have options for saving battery life.





Keyboard
The keyboard is easy to use, much like any other 14” notebook keyboard. The keys are where they should be. Arrow keys are located in a good spot, easy to transition to from a desktop keyboard. The notebook has most of the function keys you would expect a notebook to have: disable/enable wireless, sleep mode, brightness levels, multimedia, and volume function keys among others. This keyboard is also quiet compared to my other gateway FX series notebook. Key press doesn’t make much noise at all other then the spacebar.



Touchpad

The touchpad on this notebook is comfortable and easy to use as it’s centered directly under the spacebar. It’s possible to use your thumbs to navigate while typing. The touchpad itself is very smooth and lets your finger glide easy on it. The scroll on the touchpad has a slight texture and is easy to scroll without interfering with the position of the mouse. The touchpad left and right buttons are kind of on the noisy side but it’s not too bad.



Features:


Multimedia Keys –

The T-series features 9 sleek “razor” like media buttons and a neat black gloss volume control. With 2 programmable media buttons are by default, set to use Windows Media Center. And play, pause, stop, forward, and backward buttons for media control makes it effortless to control your movie or music with the press of a button. My only complaint about the media keys is they don’t have the option to light up like my Gateway FX series does, making it even easier to find the right media key. They still function just the same and I find them useful in Itunes and Windows Media Player.



LEDS -

You will find LEDs in the power button, In the front of the notebook (2) in the touchpad (3?) and in the volume control (2). All buttons are set at a good level of brightness so they do not take your eyes away from the screen, but are clearly visible when looked at. In the front you will find the power and battery LED indicators. Under the touch pad you will find the wireless, HDD, and disk drive LED indicators. All LEDs are blue.




Wifi

It was very easy getting my network setup with this notebook. Equipped with Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g signal was great and worked well outside and across the house. With a switch on the side of the notebook wireless can be turned off to save on battery life. I was downloading over 1.3mbps via wireless with my Fios 20/20 connection.

Speakers

The speakers in the notebook are quite high pitched and don’t carry softer sounds. They are pretty loud for a notebook though. But headphones may be a better option for sound quality.

Input and Output Ports



Front

At the front of the notebook you will find is 2 audio ports for headphones and a mic input. The notebook also has a 1.3Mp Webcam.



Webcam Pictures



The qualiy is pretty decent, about what you would expect from a 1.3MP webcam. The cam did have some issues in my dark room so I had to turn on a light to get it to auto adjust the settings right.



Right Side:
On the right of the notebook you will find the DVD-RW drive and a single USB port most likely to be used by your mouse.



Left Side:
On the left you will find 2 more USB ports, Eithernet port, SD/MMC/MS/xD card reader, wireless switch, and PCI expantion slot. You will also find the only exhaust coming out of the left side of the notebook.



Rear: At the back of the notebook you will find the phone jack, VGA, and power plugin.



Bottom: Under the notebook is very flat and closed. It looks very friendly to resting on your lap. There is a battery lock and battery release switch.




Size and Weight
Unlike my FX series there isn’t a huge battery sticking out of the back which makes carrying the notebook from the back or front up easy to grip. The notebook feels very light and balanced making it easy to carry around.

Rated: 14.1" WXGA 13" (w) x 9.8" (d) x 1.3" (h) and 5.7 lbs



Heat and Noise
The notebook is very silent, even when putting my ear up to the exhaust while at idle I couldn’t hear a fan spinning. When running more demanding apps you can hear the fan kick on but it’s still very quiet. The word warm rather than heat comes into mind when talking about the exhaust. It didn’t feel to warm underneath. I was able to watch TV for 3 hours in the living room with the notebook on my lap while I was benchmarking.

Here I used a digital thermometer to measure different areas of the notebook. Temperatures are in Fahrenheit. Room tempature was about 79 and temps were taken while surfing the web.




Battery Life

The two following battery tests were taken on the assigned brightness level. The test runs until the battery reaches 10%, which is the stock setting in which the notebook will notify a user with a low battery warning.

1/8 [Vista Power Saver Managment]– 226 minutes (web surfing, trailer watching, youtube)
8/8 [Vista Balanced Power Managment]– 203 minutes (web surfing, trailer watching, youtube)


Synthetic/Gaming Benchmarks

Here is a list of tested synthetic and gaming benchmarks. All results are with stock hardware settings.
Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark:

The 3Dmark Benchmarks are the most common benchmarks used to determine if the notebook is configured to play the latest games. More specifically, it is used to determine the direct X performance of the graphics cards. The higher the score, the more suited your notebook is to playing games. The number behind the 3dMark Benchmark (3dmark2001, 3dmark03 etc) is related to the year the test relates to technology, which is why the 2001 scores are always significantly higher than the 06 scores. You can compare the scores of this notebook to other notebooks by going here.


3DMark®03
(Build 340)
1772

Compare Benchmark Here


3DMark®2005
915

Compare Benchmark Here


Super Pi calculates Pi to a certain amount of digits you prescribe, and the faster it does it, the better your notebook performs. For all my tests using Super Pi I calculate to 2 million digits of accuracy.
Super Pi
67 seconds


Compare Benchmark Here

Cinabench:

Cinabench runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real world circumstances. This test is important to graphic designers and 3D editors. The higher the bench, the better the performance.



Compare Benchmark Here

wPrime:

wPrime is an "application designed to use a highly multithreaded approach to calculating the square-roots of large amounts of numbers (up to 32 billion at this stage!)".




Compare Benchmark Here

Windows Experience Index



Compare Benchmark Here

HD Tune:

This next benchmark I ran is called HD Tune which measures raw performance of transfer rates, access times, CPU usage, burst rate and the overall health of your hard drive setup. A couple of obvious notes; the burst rate should always be higher than the maximum transfer rate of your score. In this case it is. The second number to look at is the Access Time. The bigger the number, the better the performance.




Compare Benchmark Here



Pros:
Performance – Scores well compared to other notebooks in its class.
Memory – 4GB of memory and a 64-bit version of Vista to use it all.
Space – Large 250GB hard drive
Weight – Light weight, Easy to carry around.
Battery Life – Almost 4 hours of battery life.
Keyboard – Great layout and silent keys.
Heat – Runs very cool onboard fan does a great job of keeping the temps down.


Cons:
Touchpad Buttons: Make a clicky noise unlike the other keys on the notebook.

Speakers – Onboard speakers sound like a cell phone set to speaker phone.


Conclusion:

The T-6836 is one powerful budget notebook. Fast CPU, 4GB of memory, large hard drive, and Great battery life in a well built and sturdy chaise with a 14” widescreen will prove quite handy for school and office use. The blue and grey look great together. Yes the notebook loves finger prints but what doesn’t these days. The T 6836 is light weight and easy to take with you on the go. And to think this can now be found for $650 at bestbuy is quite the deal.


If you have any questions about anything written here you can e-mail me: Kasucode[at]yahoo.com