Gateway M505XL - Page 9

For specs galore, product views, and support info, you can go to www.support.gateway.com. You don't have to have a serial number. Near the bottom you can "Browse by notebooks".

Kwik7

I also use Autcad for work. Do drawings seem stretched on the widescreen? Or if there is anything else you can tell me about using Autocad on the 505 that would be great.

pnahumb-

no problems whatsoever with autocad! what's absolutely great about using it on widescreen, is that there is no stretching at all. Like a word document, you are left with a massive amount of real estate that you wouldn't get using a normal CRT. So, on my notebook, I see more than I do on my desktop, because of the widescreen.
I haven't noticed any problems at all yet. One thing I have noticed, about autcoda in general, is that I never experience any lag or slowdown or anything unless I am moving large amounts of text, so I don't blame my notebook for this. I havent really come across any problems using it on this lappy.

Hi guys, im new to this forum and because of this thread, I ordered my 505XL a week ago. It arrived today and this thing owns. I returned my Dell 5150 I got a month ago to get this thing. Oh and btw I got both the restoration CD and WINXP CD, no broken seals, and the best part of it all is that I got the Toshiba Hard Drive. Best $1800 Ive spent. One negative thing tho, I ordered Office XP Pro and it didnt arrive today with my computer, does it usually arrive seperately or should I be asking Gateway some questions tomorrow. Good luck with your 505XL and I recommend everyone get one if you have the money to spare. Thanks, Tom

NYbsbl04-

I've heard a few people didn't get there office cd. It couldn't hurt to give gateway a call. Glad you love it. I sooo love mine, kinda wish I got the XL but I am more than extatic with my X.

Before I post my findings, lemme just say again how much I LOVE this laptop! This thing flies. I can access the wireless net better than before due to the centrino. Now on to business. I surfed the net last night for over 5 hours on the battery and still had 15% left. No Joke. The harddrive works awesome, it surprised me how fast it could work. Now onto the sound. Get a techno song, put up the volume all the way and turn on the bass, sounds better than my desktop setup. The laptop didnt get hot at all during my time with it last night, but the fan did turn on and off while running 3dmark2001. The fan does its job to corrale the heat issues. My Dell is going back today, good ridance. Nothing can compare to this notebook. For the price, I think its one of the best out there right now. Point Blank


Oh, my benchmark for 3dmark2001 was above 8000. Now idk if thats good or not, but during the tests, it looked absolutely amazing. Ill get the exact scores later today and post them.

Great forum going on here guys, keep it up

BTW...Could someone rate or give a brief description of how good the components are on the 505XL? I just wanna know if they used top notch stuff. Thanks guys

Followup to HDD issue: I called again and spoke with customer service BEFORE tech support. This time I spoke with someone who was able to make things happen. She talked to her boss who said to replace it ASAP and NOT make me wait until after Christmas. She also verified that there is a $150 cap on returns unless it is a Plasma TV. Anyway, they then transfered me to Tech Support to finish up and guess what?.... My serial number is not in their system (still)! He verified the HDD was incorrect. I have a Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 4200RPM drive. He cannot, however, help me as my serial number is not in the system! He transferred me back to customer service who transferred me to my sales rep, Alicia.
Alicia has to be one of the rudest people I have talked with. She refused to help me and told me I got exactly what I ordered. She then told me that if I wanted to return the laptop, she would charge me $300 no matter what anyone else told me!!! I asked for a supervisor and she refused to find one and would only send me to one's voicemail. Well, the voicemail was full and I could not leave a message! I was mad as hell by now and was not going to give up. I pressed an option on the full mailbox for the "main line" and started over at customer service. This time, Connie, my savior answered. I explained my horror story to her. By this time, I was on the phone 1 hour and 10 minutes. After a length of time, she came back and gave me an order number and an ETA of 12-29-03. She verified the part number and made sure it was the Toshiba 5400 RPM drive.
I asked her how she did this, and she told me she walked over and talked to a tech support rep and a supervisor and made the order. So, needless to say, if this doesn't work out as planned, and I will let you know, I will be returning this and not paying a red cent. I will let the credit company deal with Gateway. So, wish me luck!
(BTW: I don't know if my serial number is even yet in the system!)
I will never order from Gateway again due to the incompetence and the fact that they charge for a return that is not my fault. That is true robbery.
...But they do sell a great system...

My Serial Number wasn't in there system as well...sheesshh

emtownsend : It sounds to me like Alicia is your true problem, and not Gateway.Thats like saying that all Qwiznos sub shops are bad, just because the cook in one spit in your food.

alicia represents gateway therefore geateway is bad... someone trained her at gateway and someone monitors her performance....

my salesguy at gateway ... oscar was eqally bad... oscar's supervisor hasnt even responded to my emails...

having to wait 30+ min and getting no where is bad...

hopefully it changes, but right now gateway sucks... only this computer is nice

well its 1 am pacific time and gateway has removed the m505 from their website... weird.

nevermind its back on...

Thkim is right... I was passed around to so many people who did not want to help, or could not help, or more importantly, did not know how to help... it was pathetic. They make a good product, but their service after they have your money is not at a level to be expected from a major company like them. That is where PCTorque shines. They have good products AND good service. I thought that poor customer service (or rumors of it) was something I could live with since I can service my own machine and know the OS; but I was wrong. I count this as a lesson learned.

Hi Guys,

While I also noted that some of the Gateway employees are not the sharpest tool in the box, I am still very much in love with my lappy; plus as you can find in one of my earlier posts in this thread, I made a pretty good deal on case/adapter instead of going for the HD replacement.

I have, however, a quick questions. Sometimes when starting the lappy up, I get the following error msg:

"InCD error
Cannot connect to file system. InCD service not running"

I have not been able to find anything not working when I get this message, and it does not appear all the times. Any clues?

Thanks guys!

PS. I started playing Morrowing GotY and it runs like a dream on the 505XL, with everything turned on full. Water never looked soo good!!!

I went into my registry and removed that from the start key. It has to do with Nero formatting a CD for use as a HDD. In earlier versions, this was a problem with XP. When I was running it in the start key, I did not have any problems.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
is the location. I took lots of Gateway goodies out of there to make more room in RAM and to increase startup speed. InCD is not worth it for me. XP can write to a CD natively anyway. Did you reinstall your OS/Software or is this out of the box?

Thanks for your reply.

Other than removing some of the crap that came with it (AOL, Games, etc.), this is out of the box.