The Luxury SUV of Notebooks – A user perspective of Gateway’s M675XL
by romo
First things first, the key words I’ll use in this review are “notebook” and “desktop replacement”. Note my exclusion of the term “laptop”. Although Gateway’s new M675 series machines will fit on your lap, you’re more likely to set it on a desk for the majority of its use.
M675XL Specs: 3.2HT, 512MB RAM (dual 256MB 333MHz PC2700), 2X DVD-RW/16x CDR, Windows XP Pro, 128MB ATI 9600
Price Paid: $2340 via Gateway.com, FREE SHIPPING, NO TAX TO FL
Those used to traditional 10” to 15” screen notebooks will immediately notice the very obvious difference in size and weight. The M675 is roughly 4”-5” wider than standard notebooks due to the immense 17” screen and the full-size keyboard with numeric keypad. It’s overall dimensions are 15.75" (W) x 10.63" (D) x 1.52" (H). My initial impressions after receiving my machine, and one of the deciding factors for me, was its high-class design. When closed, the machine has sleek lines and a nice silver finish accented by the chrome of the Gateway logo and the latch for the screen. Next to my business partner’s Apple’s 17” G4 notebook, the M675 looked surprisingly similar. Opening the notebook reveals the huge 17” LCD panel, the same OEM model used in many competing machines, including the G4, HP’s ZD7000 series, and the Toshiba models. The interior design is mostly black, with chrome accents for the Gateway logo, quick-access & power buttons and the thumbwheel below the touchpad.
Around the edges of the M675 is a nice arrangement of ports and other functional buttons. On the front, I really like the CD/DVD control buttons (skip, stop, pause depending on the DVD or CD playback software) and the volume controls. The volume controls are always active, allowing quick and easy adjustment. Pressing both UP & DOWN volume buttons at the same time, MUTES the speakers. The front panel also houses the two speakers which produce a reasonable amount of volume. The sound quality is very good with enough range on the high and low end to make for an enjoyable DVD or CD experience. Their front facing design works best when the notebook is placed on a table or desk so that the sound output resonates off the hard surface. Stereo separation is good but volume could be better. The M675’s sound system isn’t quite as good as the HP ZD7000’s Harmon Kardon configuration, but much better than average.
The front bevel showcases a row of LEDs, and the cool blue ones at that, for battery charge status, power, harddrive access, left & right modular bay access (this tells if the memory slot/floppy on left, or DVD/CD on right is in use), caps lock, scroll lock & num lock status. The battery LED is dual colored and glows purple during charging, going to blue once the battery is completely charged. The left side provides the audio I/O, firewire, a USB port, 6-in-1 memory card reader in the modular bay and a single PCMCIA slot. The rear side has S-Video out, modem, Ethernet, 2 USB, 15-pin VGA, parallel and AC adapter port in the center. An exhaust grille on the back allows the very air from the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 to be vented out the back. Make sure there’s adequate air space back there, since the warm air can quickly build up! On the left side, you’ll find the other modular bay device, a 2x DVD-R/RW/16x CD-R/RW, and yet another USB port. Having USB ports on 3 sides is a practical design detail which allows for convenient attachment of external devices. The fact that this machine has modular bays as opposed to fixed components was another deciding factor. The modular bays allow for upgrading the DVD/CD drive and adding an additional harddrive or a floppy drive (which isn't included in the stock model).
As a touch typist, I like the quality and feel of the full-size keyboard. It’s very solid with tactile key response similar to my desktop’s IBM keyboard. I didn’t find any sag or softness to the overall keyboard as I’ve found in other notebooks. Key placement is a bit different from my last notebook (a Sager 8500 series, also with full-size keyboard). The right SHIFT key is a bit small and the DEL, PgUp & PgDn keys are in awkward locations at the upper right above the numeric pad and will take some getting used to. Also, the scroll keys are also a little thin and may be an issue with those with larger fingers. I do like having Fn, Alt & Ctrl keys on either side of the spacebar.
At first glance the touchpad is off-center to the keyboard. This only looks strange when compared to notebooks that don’t have the extra numeric pad. If it were any other way and not centered to the main keyboard area, your right palm would end up resting on it when typing, touch-typist or not. The scroll wheel under the touchpad and between the touchpad left/right buttons is a very nice feature. Although I use an external mouse with scroll wheel most of the time, having the scroll wheel functionality when the machine isn’t on a desk comes in very handy. Plus it’s got a nice feel and smooth action to it. The touchpad itself provides smooth and predictable response. Other notebooks I’ve tested seem more erratic when navigating with the touchpad. A touchpad ON/OFF button like the one on the ZD7000 would have been nice though.
There’s a set of multi-function buttons to the right of the power button, above the keyboard. Respectively, these will launch your default mail program, default web browser, open online help, open the My Computer window, and turn on/off the wireless Ethernet (I haven’t found a way to customize these yet). The ring around each of these chrome buttons glows blue when activated, providing a cool look. Blue seems to be the LED trend these days: The USB receiver for my wireless optical mouse lights blue and my Motorola 120e mobile phone’s keypad emits a bright blue to match… I guess green is old-school.
The guts of my M675XL include a full desktop variety Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz CPU with Hyper Threading. Although software has to be written to fully take advantage of HT, the sheer clock speed of the P4 makes a huge difference in general. I am a multimedia developer and use apps like, Visual Studio .NET, After Effects, Lightwave, Maya, Photoshop, Flash, and other CPU intensive programs. The M675’s P4 steps up the productivity factor by blowing through processes that involve rendering, compiling or working with large media files such as video and animation. I don’t have any specific benchmarks yet, but everything just behaves obviously quicker. I’ll report on these speed gains as the machine settles into my workflow. My configuration has 512MB of dual channel 333MHz PC2700 RAM which should be sufficient for a while. Once I do find the need to upgrade though, it will probably be to 1GB of 400MHz PC3200 RAM.
I’m not much of a gamer, but the ATI 9600 with 128MB VRAM works well with my 3D and animation apps. Since I’m used to working with Dual monitors on my company’s Avid video editing system, I tried attaching an external 17” CRT monitor to the M675’s VGA port. I extended the desktop to the external monitor and found that I could work in very much the same way, dragging and opening windows between the two displays. The ATI card provides ample memory to drive the two displays and provides yet another way to increase productivity.
Software bundled with the M675 is sparse, but then I’d rather pay for software that I would actually use. MS Works is included, but I haven’t even opened that yet since I immediately installed Office 2003. For DVD/CD burning, Nero Express is included. I burned a full DVD in about 20 minutes with the 2x burner. The stock drive is a DVD-R/RW only but Gateway now has a 4x DVD +/- writer as an available upgrade. CD-R speed is a nice 16x.
Viewing DVDs really shows off this machine and its 17” display. Intervideo’s WinDVD 4 is bundled and provides a nice viewing experience and control. Visual quality is impressive and playback is smooth with no stuttering in everything I’ve played so far.
The M675’s network connectivity is another factor that aided my buying decision. The Broadcom Wireless G card installed and worked immediately with my DLink DI-614+ router at home. This router has a proprietary 22Mbps mode, that only works with their adapters, but the M675 connected just fine in 802.11b, 11Mbps mode, fine for Internet access since my cable modem maxes out a 3Mbps anyway. At work, it took a little bit longer to connect to our DLink DI-624 802.11g router. But after 20 minutes I was up and running on a wireless G connection. The built-in antenna on the notebook is well integrated and placed since it provides excellent reception, much better than the DLink PCMCIA card I used in my old notebook; where I was getting “poor” connection status from about 40’ from the router in my house, I now get “very good” and sometimes “excellent” status from the wireless status. The Broadcom control panel has a nice software interface and useful diagnostics. The gigabit Ethernet feature is particularly useful for my work since I interface with Apple G4/G5 machines with built in gigabit Ethernet. Our server also has gigabit access. Large video files used for encoding DVDs and such, flow quickly between machines with this kind of network bandwidth.
Traveling to and from work with the M675 hasn’t been too different an experience from my old Sager, which is actually almost a pound heavier than the M675. The 675 comes up at just over 8 pounds. But the trick for transporting the machine was finding the right case, one that would fit and provide good protection from everyday shock and bumps. I found this in the Kensington Contour Pro 17” and picked one up from Amazon.com for a very reasonable $39.99 (including free shipping & tax free).
I bought the M675 specifically as a desktop replacement, much like how I used the Sager. So, weight and battery time weren’t that much of an issue. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the lighter than expected weight of the M675. The battery life is a little shorter than expected though. My first charge lasted 2.5 hrs, but that was just a test of the machine not really doing anything. In a real world scenario, where I was browsing the web via Wireless G, and accessing the harddrive & CD/DVD drive, I’ve been averaging just shy of 2hrs. For me this isn’t too bad considering my primary use and considering the amount of power it takes to drive the massive screen, powerful CPU, and large drives. In battery mode the screen dims and the CPU throttles down significantly. The screen dimming is a little more than I’d like, but necessary to maximize battery time. It’s still usable though. The CPU throttle down is too drastic if all you’re doing is surfing the Net or working in an Office app. I’d rely on AC power to get full CPU bandwidth though. The AC adapter is about as large as the one I had for my Sager. But this one comes with its own fan! A necessary feature since the brick does get significantly warm. I ordered a second adapter (only $35) so I can leave one at work.
With all the power this machine sucks up, the by-product is heat, and a lot of it. Luckily the M675 has a great ventilation system. A large intake grill at the bottom sucks cooler air in and blows the hot air out the back. This configuration works well and allows the machine to comfortably sit on my lap. It’s warm but not too much as I’ve found with the 17” G4. Even the keyboard surface stays relatively cool with just a little warmth under the right palm area, near the harddrive. The heat exhaust is aided by a controlled fans that turn on and off as necessary. CPU intensive apps will cause the fan to run more and faster (louder) and in a quiet room this can be very noticeable but is something I’ve gotten used to.
As my experience with the M675 continues, I’ll provide other details specific to performance and benchmarks. But overall, my initial recommendation (as biased as it may be since I own one now) is that the M675XL is a top-of-the line value in the 17” desktop replacement class. I evaluated the Dell Inspiron 8600 (great battery life, not enough CPU power for, great screen resolution options but no 17”), Toshiba (didn’t like the style & no number pad), Sager (price), and HP ZD7000 (great machine and second choice, but additional features in the Gateway sold me for not much more cost). Just remember that like buying a vehicle, you have choices of size, style, fuel economy and features. The M675XL is like a luxury SUV: lots of room and features, but with it you also get the size and lower fuel (battery) economy.
Pros:
-Great design, smallest form factor & weight in its class (compared to Toshiba, HP, Sager)
-Excellent cooling system keeps surface temperatures reasonable on top & bottom
-Lots of ports & user control buttons (DVD/CD rom & multi-function buttons)
-Solid keyboard
-Excellent Wireless G reception
-Touchpad scroll wheel
-2 modular bays allow for upgrade and expansion options (others provide fixed components)
-Wireless On/Off helps conserve batter power
-Gigabit Ethernet
-DVD +/- RW optional
Cons:
-Battery life averages 2hrs or less (but typical of machines in this class)
-Firewire port is 4pin vs. heftier & powered 6pin (ala Sager)
-Some keyboard quirks: wierd placement, small keys
by romo
First things first, the key words I’ll use in this review are “notebook” and “desktop replacement”. Note my exclusion of the term “laptop”. Although Gateway’s new M675 series machines will fit on your lap, you’re more likely to set it on a desk for the majority of its use.
M675XL Specs: 3.2HT, 512MB RAM (dual 256MB 333MHz PC2700), 2X DVD-RW/16x CDR, Windows XP Pro, 128MB ATI 9600
Price Paid: $2340 via Gateway.com, FREE SHIPPING, NO TAX TO FL
Those used to traditional 10” to 15” screen notebooks will immediately notice the very obvious difference in size and weight. The M675 is roughly 4”-5” wider than standard notebooks due to the immense 17” screen and the full-size keyboard with numeric keypad. It’s overall dimensions are 15.75" (W) x 10.63" (D) x 1.52" (H). My initial impressions after receiving my machine, and one of the deciding factors for me, was its high-class design. When closed, the machine has sleek lines and a nice silver finish accented by the chrome of the Gateway logo and the latch for the screen. Next to my business partner’s Apple’s 17” G4 notebook, the M675 looked surprisingly similar. Opening the notebook reveals the huge 17” LCD panel, the same OEM model used in many competing machines, including the G4, HP’s ZD7000 series, and the Toshiba models. The interior design is mostly black, with chrome accents for the Gateway logo, quick-access & power buttons and the thumbwheel below the touchpad.
Around the edges of the M675 is a nice arrangement of ports and other functional buttons. On the front, I really like the CD/DVD control buttons (skip, stop, pause depending on the DVD or CD playback software) and the volume controls. The volume controls are always active, allowing quick and easy adjustment. Pressing both UP & DOWN volume buttons at the same time, MUTES the speakers. The front panel also houses the two speakers which produce a reasonable amount of volume. The sound quality is very good with enough range on the high and low end to make for an enjoyable DVD or CD experience. Their front facing design works best when the notebook is placed on a table or desk so that the sound output resonates off the hard surface. Stereo separation is good but volume could be better. The M675’s sound system isn’t quite as good as the HP ZD7000’s Harmon Kardon configuration, but much better than average.
The front bevel showcases a row of LEDs, and the cool blue ones at that, for battery charge status, power, harddrive access, left & right modular bay access (this tells if the memory slot/floppy on left, or DVD/CD on right is in use), caps lock, scroll lock & num lock status. The battery LED is dual colored and glows purple during charging, going to blue once the battery is completely charged. The left side provides the audio I/O, firewire, a USB port, 6-in-1 memory card reader in the modular bay and a single PCMCIA slot. The rear side has S-Video out, modem, Ethernet, 2 USB, 15-pin VGA, parallel and AC adapter port in the center. An exhaust grille on the back allows the very air from the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 to be vented out the back. Make sure there’s adequate air space back there, since the warm air can quickly build up! On the left side, you’ll find the other modular bay device, a 2x DVD-R/RW/16x CD-R/RW, and yet another USB port. Having USB ports on 3 sides is a practical design detail which allows for convenient attachment of external devices. The fact that this machine has modular bays as opposed to fixed components was another deciding factor. The modular bays allow for upgrading the DVD/CD drive and adding an additional harddrive or a floppy drive (which isn't included in the stock model).
As a touch typist, I like the quality and feel of the full-size keyboard. It’s very solid with tactile key response similar to my desktop’s IBM keyboard. I didn’t find any sag or softness to the overall keyboard as I’ve found in other notebooks. Key placement is a bit different from my last notebook (a Sager 8500 series, also with full-size keyboard). The right SHIFT key is a bit small and the DEL, PgUp & PgDn keys are in awkward locations at the upper right above the numeric pad and will take some getting used to. Also, the scroll keys are also a little thin and may be an issue with those with larger fingers. I do like having Fn, Alt & Ctrl keys on either side of the spacebar.
At first glance the touchpad is off-center to the keyboard. This only looks strange when compared to notebooks that don’t have the extra numeric pad. If it were any other way and not centered to the main keyboard area, your right palm would end up resting on it when typing, touch-typist or not. The scroll wheel under the touchpad and between the touchpad left/right buttons is a very nice feature. Although I use an external mouse with scroll wheel most of the time, having the scroll wheel functionality when the machine isn’t on a desk comes in very handy. Plus it’s got a nice feel and smooth action to it. The touchpad itself provides smooth and predictable response. Other notebooks I’ve tested seem more erratic when navigating with the touchpad. A touchpad ON/OFF button like the one on the ZD7000 would have been nice though.
There’s a set of multi-function buttons to the right of the power button, above the keyboard. Respectively, these will launch your default mail program, default web browser, open online help, open the My Computer window, and turn on/off the wireless Ethernet (I haven’t found a way to customize these yet). The ring around each of these chrome buttons glows blue when activated, providing a cool look. Blue seems to be the LED trend these days: The USB receiver for my wireless optical mouse lights blue and my Motorola 120e mobile phone’s keypad emits a bright blue to match… I guess green is old-school.
The guts of my M675XL include a full desktop variety Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz CPU with Hyper Threading. Although software has to be written to fully take advantage of HT, the sheer clock speed of the P4 makes a huge difference in general. I am a multimedia developer and use apps like, Visual Studio .NET, After Effects, Lightwave, Maya, Photoshop, Flash, and other CPU intensive programs. The M675’s P4 steps up the productivity factor by blowing through processes that involve rendering, compiling or working with large media files such as video and animation. I don’t have any specific benchmarks yet, but everything just behaves obviously quicker. I’ll report on these speed gains as the machine settles into my workflow. My configuration has 512MB of dual channel 333MHz PC2700 RAM which should be sufficient for a while. Once I do find the need to upgrade though, it will probably be to 1GB of 400MHz PC3200 RAM.
I’m not much of a gamer, but the ATI 9600 with 128MB VRAM works well with my 3D and animation apps. Since I’m used to working with Dual monitors on my company’s Avid video editing system, I tried attaching an external 17” CRT monitor to the M675’s VGA port. I extended the desktop to the external monitor and found that I could work in very much the same way, dragging and opening windows between the two displays. The ATI card provides ample memory to drive the two displays and provides yet another way to increase productivity.
Software bundled with the M675 is sparse, but then I’d rather pay for software that I would actually use. MS Works is included, but I haven’t even opened that yet since I immediately installed Office 2003. For DVD/CD burning, Nero Express is included. I burned a full DVD in about 20 minutes with the 2x burner. The stock drive is a DVD-R/RW only but Gateway now has a 4x DVD +/- writer as an available upgrade. CD-R speed is a nice 16x.
Viewing DVDs really shows off this machine and its 17” display. Intervideo’s WinDVD 4 is bundled and provides a nice viewing experience and control. Visual quality is impressive and playback is smooth with no stuttering in everything I’ve played so far.
The M675’s network connectivity is another factor that aided my buying decision. The Broadcom Wireless G card installed and worked immediately with my DLink DI-614+ router at home. This router has a proprietary 22Mbps mode, that only works with their adapters, but the M675 connected just fine in 802.11b, 11Mbps mode, fine for Internet access since my cable modem maxes out a 3Mbps anyway. At work, it took a little bit longer to connect to our DLink DI-624 802.11g router. But after 20 minutes I was up and running on a wireless G connection. The built-in antenna on the notebook is well integrated and placed since it provides excellent reception, much better than the DLink PCMCIA card I used in my old notebook; where I was getting “poor” connection status from about 40’ from the router in my house, I now get “very good” and sometimes “excellent” status from the wireless status. The Broadcom control panel has a nice software interface and useful diagnostics. The gigabit Ethernet feature is particularly useful for my work since I interface with Apple G4/G5 machines with built in gigabit Ethernet. Our server also has gigabit access. Large video files used for encoding DVDs and such, flow quickly between machines with this kind of network bandwidth.
Traveling to and from work with the M675 hasn’t been too different an experience from my old Sager, which is actually almost a pound heavier than the M675. The 675 comes up at just over 8 pounds. But the trick for transporting the machine was finding the right case, one that would fit and provide good protection from everyday shock and bumps. I found this in the Kensington Contour Pro 17” and picked one up from Amazon.com for a very reasonable $39.99 (including free shipping & tax free).
I bought the M675 specifically as a desktop replacement, much like how I used the Sager. So, weight and battery time weren’t that much of an issue. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the lighter than expected weight of the M675. The battery life is a little shorter than expected though. My first charge lasted 2.5 hrs, but that was just a test of the machine not really doing anything. In a real world scenario, where I was browsing the web via Wireless G, and accessing the harddrive & CD/DVD drive, I’ve been averaging just shy of 2hrs. For me this isn’t too bad considering my primary use and considering the amount of power it takes to drive the massive screen, powerful CPU, and large drives. In battery mode the screen dims and the CPU throttles down significantly. The screen dimming is a little more than I’d like, but necessary to maximize battery time. It’s still usable though. The CPU throttle down is too drastic if all you’re doing is surfing the Net or working in an Office app. I’d rely on AC power to get full CPU bandwidth though. The AC adapter is about as large as the one I had for my Sager. But this one comes with its own fan! A necessary feature since the brick does get significantly warm. I ordered a second adapter (only $35) so I can leave one at work.
With all the power this machine sucks up, the by-product is heat, and a lot of it. Luckily the M675 has a great ventilation system. A large intake grill at the bottom sucks cooler air in and blows the hot air out the back. This configuration works well and allows the machine to comfortably sit on my lap. It’s warm but not too much as I’ve found with the 17” G4. Even the keyboard surface stays relatively cool with just a little warmth under the right palm area, near the harddrive. The heat exhaust is aided by a controlled fans that turn on and off as necessary. CPU intensive apps will cause the fan to run more and faster (louder) and in a quiet room this can be very noticeable but is something I’ve gotten used to.
As my experience with the M675 continues, I’ll provide other details specific to performance and benchmarks. But overall, my initial recommendation (as biased as it may be since I own one now) is that the M675XL is a top-of-the line value in the 17” desktop replacement class. I evaluated the Dell Inspiron 8600 (great battery life, not enough CPU power for, great screen resolution options but no 17”), Toshiba (didn’t like the style & no number pad), Sager (price), and HP ZD7000 (great machine and second choice, but additional features in the Gateway sold me for not much more cost). Just remember that like buying a vehicle, you have choices of size, style, fuel economy and features. The M675XL is like a luxury SUV: lots of room and features, but with it you also get the size and lower fuel (battery) economy.
Pros:
-Great design, smallest form factor & weight in its class (compared to Toshiba, HP, Sager)
-Excellent cooling system keeps surface temperatures reasonable on top & bottom
-Lots of ports & user control buttons (DVD/CD rom & multi-function buttons)
-Solid keyboard
-Excellent Wireless G reception
-Touchpad scroll wheel
-2 modular bays allow for upgrade and expansion options (others provide fixed components)
-Wireless On/Off helps conserve batter power
-Gigabit Ethernet
-DVD +/- RW optional
Cons:
-Battery life averages 2hrs or less (but typical of machines in this class)
-Firewire port is 4pin vs. heftier & powered 6pin (ala Sager)
-Some keyboard quirks: wierd placement, small keys
.
. Not many ports but for some people they don't need what I need.
