Gateway ID49: Mixing the Bag
by Dustin Sklavos on September 23, 2010 2:46 AM ESTCan It Hit Gateway's Six Hour Claim?
Gateway claims a six hour battery life on their site for the ID49C, no small feat for a unit that boasts mainstream parts. To be fair, they do have a couple of aces up their sleeve: the GeForce GT 330M's Optimus technology allows it to power off completely while on the battery and let the Intel HD integrated graphics do the work, and the notebook can shut off power to the optical drive.
Also included is power optimization software that threatened to ruin our benchmarking sessions: with this software installed, even if you set the screen not to dim or turn off, it still will. The best part? There's no control panel to tweak those settings! Hot on the heels of the dismal keyboard comes my next pet peeve with the ID49C: software that takes control of the computer completely out of your hands and leaves you no recourse other than to uninstall it. Mercifully, this software is separate from the software that handles turning off the optical drive while running on the battery.
Well, if you leave it completely idle and don't touch anything, you can scrape nearly six hours out of the battery, and that's not too shabby. Once you start using the ID49C for other tasks, the battery life becomes somewhat less exciting. Internet usage knocks it down to a decent if unexciting 216 minutes, or about three and a half hours. That's not bad at all, but it's not great either, and it places the ID49C near the bottom of our charts.
Things do pick up when HD playback is introduced, where the ID49C is able to cull nearly three hours of running time: more than enough for most movies unless you were aching to watch The Lord of the Rings on a 14" screen. In fact, under this metric the ID49C ranks near the top of our charts and is only bested by notebooks that have the privilege of bigger batteries.
When you talk about battery life and power consumption, just how much a notebook needs to run the fan is introduced. Units like the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e will let the processor run uncomfortably hot to keep fan speed and noise down, so how does the ID49C fare?
To test thermals, we set the ID49C to loop 3DMark06 for more than an hour and left HWMonitor running in the background. There's a lot of information to break down here.
First, the good news is it's nice to see a notebook that doesn't threaten to cook the GPU: the 71C full load temperature for the 330M is actually pretty good comparatively speaking. If you remember, the ID49C also keeps the memory and hard disk under the palm rests, and while the hard disk isn't very fast, thermals remained excellent: a top temperature of 33C is fantastic, and you could install a faster 7200 RPM disk without worrying about making your palms sweat.
The bad news is that the processor is peaking awfully high. 92C is very hot, near spec for the chip. Fan noise when the system is under load is a little obtrusive although not as bad as some of the other units (the Studio 17 can get pretty loud, for example.) The real thermal issue is where that heat localizes. The exhaust is located on the left side of the unit, right under the keyboard, and the surface of the notebook can get uncomfortably hot. This hot surface is also perilously close to the WASD keys, meaning that while you're gaming you may find your left hand getting hot after prolonged gaming sessions. When the system is idling or not doing much, it's fine, but place a gaming load on it and it starts to become a real issue.
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HibyPrime1 - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
Looking at the spec sheet, the visual layout of the laptop, and the price, I was actually quite interested in this one. Ugh.Back-lit trackpad but no back-lit keyboard? I want what they are smoking.
How much would it honestly cost to turn this into a usable keyboard? 5 cents worth of plastic under the keyboard to help a little with the flex, maybe a total of 2 engineering hours (come on, I could design that on a napkin), and a short conversation in a design meeting. That might increase the cost per laptop of a whole 10 cents. I'd be willing to let them charge me a 1000% percent profit on that.
To the authors of Anandtech, don't give up on the LCD bashing (when needed). Manufacturers need to hear it from somewhere.
vol7ron - Sunday, September 26, 2010 - link
I'm one of those people that don't need a backlit keyboard if it means cheaper.If necessary, the lighting from the screen should be enough; but mostly, I can't remember the last time I looked at a keyboard when typing. I don't even look at the iPhone on-screen keyboard anymore. My fingers are just used to the positioning and the second-nature of typing.
There are a few things that make the perfect laptop for me:
1) Price
2) CPU
3) GPU
4) Battery
5) Size
The other, still important factors include memory/hd capacity/performance and ports, but But backlit keys and glossy vsmatte aren't on my top-10 list.
xype - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
The more I read the reviews here, the more I think Apple's approach is smart on many levels—even though some people complain at the lack of diversity in their laptop lineup. If you have 3 models that differ in size mostly, "fixing" a keyboard means doing so once (especially since the keyboard is the same size/layout on all models). Fixing the screen on a, say, 13" means that, while some customers get screwed if they got an older model using a bad one, you're basically fixing the 13" model. No being left with a different model with a better screen, but perhaps a differently messed up keyboard.Sure, it doesn't please the geek in me to be able to choose the _optimal_ model, since with just 3 different ones (I'm buying MBPs) that are mostly the same, I'll have to compromise. But for Apple it's just so much more effective—and they can spend the time focusing on getting the 4 laptops they offer as "right" as they can.
Now, before someone accusses me of Apple fanboiism—perhaps I am one, but I'll freely admit that I know little of the product palettes of other manufacturers. The biased view I have is that each of them produces a ton of different models, trying to differentiate them with color covers and what not, and often get much less things "right" than they could get if they focused on making less models.
Also, I'd be interested to see the comparison tables include Apple laptops, where applicable, just because I'm interested in where other manufacturers do a better job so I can go compare them in the shop (I'm sometimes asked for buying advice and yapping "get a mac!" all the time is not something I want to do if there are better alternatives out for a budget/need).
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
Honestly, I know Anand and Brian both use MacBook Pros and having seen them in action I can understand why: the MBP has an excellent combination of form factor and screen quality. The screens on those are among the best I've seen on notebooks, high-resolution screens with great uniformity and viewing angles that are clearly designed for work.I'm not an Apple fan, I don't like their politics, and the desktop Macs are a rip-off in my opinion, but credit where credit is due...they make awesome notebooks.
xype - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
I've been pretty happy with MacBook(Pro)s for the past 4.5 years, but without a relative comparison the comparison tables just draw a blank stare from me. So I've wondered how they compare—of all the colleagues and friends, there's not one using a PC laptop, since we're all in the same lame-hipster-web-app-and-design business... so if you say they're among the better/best screens, I'm gonna go with your experience on this. :)vol7ron - Sunday, September 26, 2010 - link
Apple has historically only targeted the high-midend market, not cutting edge technology, but not the economy scale either.While this is good for Apple, if everyone had a business model like this, there wouldn't be anyone competing at the upper-and-lower end spectrums; the lower-lower and lower-middle end is where the majority of the market is.
Because Apple focuses on a niche market, they charge more. More importantly, they focus more on aesthetics and emotional marketing - trying to sell you something beyond performance/options, which is generally meaningless.
There are products that are less expensive and kick Apple's hind-side in almost everything except battery, which is partly due to the battery technology Apple uses, and the fact that Apple uses a Linux-based OS.
vol7ron - Sunday, September 26, 2010 - link
In general, given the same $$, you can get better performance elsewhere when compared to Apple.What you can't get is that "elitist" social recognition. ... It used to be that you also bought that superior casing that Apple is known for, but many companies are now offering artsy, slim, and sleek packaging that competes nicely.
Dustin Sklavos - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link
While I agree that there's a certain "my computer's better because it's a Mac" mentality that's prevalent among Mac users, in the case of the MacBook Pro line...I still don't think you're going to find a more balanced design anywhere else. The screens on those notebooks are phenomenal. Someone else brought up HP's Envy line, and those can probably compete, but I can't think of anyone else who produces mainstream notebooks with quality, high-resolution screens.For what it's worth, I reviewed here the two laptops I use, and my desktop is a custom. I won't spend a dime on Apple technology. But I can see why some people would go for a MBP.
Ivan Karkour - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link
Dell competes perfectly with the XPS 16, and the Adamo, but Adamo is kinda pricey.The Studio XPS 16 has the exact same screen as the mac book pros have. --and guess what, it's a little less expensive :)
seanleeforever - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
MBP's screen are decent, but no where near the best in term of "high-res" and "uniformity" and "view angel".go check out any lenovo tablet, any HP dreamcolor 2, or fujitsu T5013 tablet for that matter.. (they are all pretty expensive (1.6k~4k) and are never on display in BestBuy, so i won't be surprised that none of you guys actual saw it in your life, especially if you are student that are not targeted audience).
just because you are in "lame-hipster-web-app-and-design business" doesn't mean you need a good screen. apples' screen is 6 bit TN for god sake, the same part that used in NUMEROUS windows PCs (Dell M4500, Lenovo T/W510, W701/ds, Dell Studio XPS 16)... your argument is akin to say the Core 2 Duo used in Mac Book Pro must be faster than i7-960 because it was in a apple package.