Gateway M285 Convertible Tablet Notebook

Gateway's M285-E is the successor to Gateway's previous model, the M275, and is also known as the CX210 if you are purchasing the laptop via Gateway Home's website. Gateway's other vendor sites are calling this the M-series laptop, even tough there are very few differences between them, mainly in the different upgrade options available. This laptop looks exactly the same as the previous generation M275, however, it's been freshened with the new Core Duo architecture and this update provides a significant upgrade in performance that is seen throughout various applications. This tablet amply provides a laptop that in essence is a laptop, but also provides tablet functionality without detracting from the overall notebook experience.

Gateway firmly believes that a convertible tablet PC should be a full-size notebook with tablet features. Case in point is the Gateway M285-E ($1,843 direct as tested). This dual-purpose system has a large 14-inch widescreen, a full-size keyboard, and all the pen features a tablet user wants. Now factor in the portable’s Intel Core Duo processor and PCI Express graphics from ATI, and you’ve got a system just as powerful as any notebook on the market.

Weighing a hefty 7.3 pounds, the M285-E is better suited to sit on a desk or your lap than it is to stay in your arms for long. The 14-inch widescreen and integrated dual-layer DVD burner, both rarely found on Tablet PCs, add the extra heft. The larger screen gives you more room to scribble, and it’s safe to say that the transflective display is also a great medium for kicking back with a movie or viewing slide shows of your favorite photos. Some may think a transflective screen would give off a lot of glare. But the beauty of a tablet is that you can tilt it to a glare-free position before you start writing.

Touch-screen systems fill a niche; workers tap or jot on clipboard-like slates to fill out forms in hospital rooms or at insurance-claim sites, and pen-capable PDAs and smart phones are everywhere. But even with the convenience of convertible models that switch from notebook to tablet mode with screens that swivel and fold back over keyboards, laptop shoppers have largely ignored the option to scribble and sketch as well as type and click. So have some manufacturers.

But not Gateway. In fact, the prairie PC companion has introduced one of the freshest convertibles around: Not only does the M285-E have a dual-core CPU (albeit Intel's eight-month-old Core Duo instead of the brand-new Core 2 Duo), it has a 14-inch widescreen (1,280 by 768-pixel) display. Among Tablet PC challengers, Toshiba's Portege M400 and HP's Compaq T4400 also offer Core Duo power, but are more likely to cause writer's cramp with 12.1-inch, standard-aspect-ratio XGA (1,024 by 768) screens. Lenovo's ThinkPad X41 relies on a single-core Pentium M processor.

Toshiba's Tecra M7 is a true rival to the Gateway, since it has both a Core Duo CPU and a 14.1-inch widescreen display. But while it's a subjective preference, we think the Tecra's more likely to cause eyestrain -- like not a few non-convertible notebooks, it goes for high-res bragging rights by squeezing 1,440 by 900 pixels into a space that comfortably accommodates 1,280 by 768. This sounds impressive, but arguably makes menus and icons harder to read and demands more careful penmanship in Win XP Tablet PC Edition's input panel. And the M7, like the abovementioned tablets, costs more than a comparably equipped Gateway.

You can convert the M285-E into tablet mode by spinning the display around and folding it flat, hiding the keyboard. It comes with a thick and comfortable digitizer pen, which requires some calibrating to ensure that every line drawn is in sync with what's shown on the screen. Scribbling with the M285-E feels natural and is very similar to writing on paper. Next to the display, you'll find a scroll wheel for browsing and an orientation button to view pages in landscape or portrait mode. In portrait mode, the screen has more room to display information. In addition, you have three other programmable keys to play around with while in tablet mode.

The M285-E is loaded with software; it comes with Microsoft's Experience and Education Pack and associated tools. (These are also available free for download.) The Snipping tool is extremely useful for clipping almost anything on the screen; so capturing the exact information and e-mailing it to your buddies is a cinch. Agilix GoBinder Lite lets you jot down reminders about class schedules and project deadlines.

Actually, speaking of cost, you'll need to poke around Gateway's Web site to find the best deal on the tablet. The M285-E tested here -- with a 2.0GHz Core Duo T2500; 512MB of DDR-2/667 memory; 80GB hard disk; DVD burner; and Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g, and Bluetooth networking -- comes to $1,850 in the vendor's medium- and large-business store. There's a slightly lower-priced, small-business-oriented M285-E SB, but it doesn't seem to be available with Bluetooth. And as of this afternoon, a limited-time discount put the convertible's virtually identical consumer cousin, the CX210X, $155 below our M285-E despite the former's flaunting 1GB of memory and Microsoft Office Basic 2003 versus our machine's 512MB and Works 8.5

While base models of the M285-E make do with the integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video of Intel's 945GM chipset, our unit featured the $100 optional ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 discrete graphics controller with 64MB of memory. While that's still small beer to hardcore gaming maniacs, the ATI chip joined the system's DDR-2/667 memory and 80GB, 5,400-rpm Hitachi Serial ATA hard drive to deliver above-average performance. Overall, the convertible outran the last Core Duo T2500 notebook we tested (last month's Lenovo 3000 V100), despite packing only half the RAM.

To get to the graphics first, the Gateway managed not only 173 frames per second in Quake III Arena but a thoroughly playable 65 fps in the tougher Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and 29 fps in the even tougher AquaMark3 (all at XGA resolution). Even at its native 1,280 by 768 resolution with 4X antialiasing, the system posted a none-too-shabby 20 fps in Gun Metal 2, a gaming simulation that about half the PCs we test can't run at all. Its native-resolution 3DMark06 score was an eminently respectable 906.

The screen for this laptop is very essential, as not only does it serve as the main way to view whatever the computer needs to display, but also that it has to hold up to the pen and make sure that it is not pliant which would degrade from the pen and pad feel of a tablet screen when using the stylus to write on it. As far as the screen is concerned, this 14" screen is very nice. It has a semi-glossy cover, which provides excellent visibility, and the brightness is very adjustable, and I find myself keeping it on the lowest setting because I like to save battery life (which later you will find out I really do not need to). The screen has no flex, and when pushing onto the screen, it does not produce any ripples. This can be attributed to the fact that this screen is manufactured differently as it has to adapt to the need to hold up to the requirements of a tablet screen.