Gateway M255-E Review Notebook Preview I

Calif.based Gateway, one of the most respected brands in the business, has unveiled its latest lightweight performance Gateway M255-E notebook. The M255 provides usability and IT-friendly features that make it ideal for professional customers. Building on the success of it's predeccessor, the award winning M250, M255-E has been redesigned to provide even more benefits for networked professional environments. Building on the company's award-winning Gateway M250 notebook, the Gateway M255-E has been redesigned to provide even more benefits for networked professional environments. For example, the M255-E helps reduce costs and ease support issues by providing stable images and sharing components and accessories with the company's award-winning E-Series M-465 and M-685 notebooks for professional customers.

“The Gateway M255-E builds on our popular M250 with a redesigned form factor and an ideal combination of features for professionals,” said Chad McDonald, director of notebook product marketing, Gateway. “Shared components and accessories like the port replicator, modular bay optical devices and batteries make the M255-E and the entire Gateway E-Series professional notebook line IT-friendly, since they are easy to deploy, maintain and service. Plus, the addition of a Smart Card reader for advanced security takes the M255-E notebook to the top of the must-see list.”

Gateway Computer's M255-E is a business model that has been redesigned with added benefits for networked environments and packed with a dual-core processor that makes it super powerful. The M255-E is ideal for large numbers of users with its stable software image and managed life cycle of more than a year, making it easy to deploy, maintain and service. IT staffs will enjoy fewer support hassles because the M255-E shares accessories such as a port replicator, modular optical drives and batteries with Gateway's entire E-Series of notebooks. Mobile professionals of the world, Gateway is hoping that you give them the time of day. Put down your Sony's and your Toshibas. Turn in your Apples and your Acers. Gateway has the new M255-E laptop for you. Let's be honest, though. If you got your $2,000-plus business notebook on the corporate dime, you ain't giving that up for the M255-E. So really, we should say that Gateway has an offering for you if you're a small business owner or another professional who has to crack open his/her own piggy bank to buy a cheaper laptop.

That makes the best feature of the new Gateway M255-E its affordable entry level price tag of $984.99. OK, backtrack again. Perhaps the best two qualities of the M255-E are its price tag and its 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo T2300 processor. The M255-E is a widescreen notebook with a 14.1-inch display squeezed into a tidy package that weighs only 5.2 pounds. The display has a WXGA native resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels and is driven by integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. The unit's widescreen display is suited for entertainment and presentation use.

Then again, Renaissance business men who are in tune with both sides of their brain may also appreciate its aesthetics. The M255-E is a shoulder's best friend at only 5.47 pounds, and is 1.39 inches thick by 13.36 inches wide and 9.76 inches deep. That's small enough to fit in tight spaces in trains, planes, and automobiles. The chassis is decked out in standard business silver and black, but the lines are rounded and the silver buffed to give it more character than your typical stiff corporate handout.

The sample M255-E unit was powered by an Intel T2500 Core Duo Processor running at 2GHz, with a 667MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) and a 2-Mbyte Level 2 (L2) cache. Less expensive configurations powered by Celeron processors also are available. The unit arrived with 512 Mbytes of memory, a 60-Gbyte SATA hard drive, an Intel Gigabit Ethernet adapter and 802.11 a/b/g wireless NIC and a V.92 modem. Ports include four USB 2.0, one FireWire, VGA and S-Video out. A 7-in-1 media card reader is compatible with Memory Stick, MemoryStick Pro, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, xD-Picture Card, Mini Secure Digital and RS-Multimedia Card memory modules.

Gateway M255-E Screen

The glossy "Ultrabright" screen is excellent and really has no negatives that we can see, though it would be great to have the option of a higher resolution than 1280x800, which is not the case. Movie viewing is a pleasure, and the highest available brightness seems more than sufficient. We would think, however, that most business people would prefer the matte screen for long stretches of work. If we did go to the Gateway website to order one right now, we would probably select the non-glossy option, even if it meant ours DVD watching experience was somewhat diminished. As with other glare-type screens weve seen and used, the LCD on this particular machine is a veritable mirror in certain lighting circumstances.