   Notebook Review: Gateway M250B
  I asked for advice here concerning notebooks about a month ago, more specifically a sexy Dell I had seen in a mall. After asking for advice I did some more shopping around, found Gateway's laptops to be kind of nice, and applied for credit with them. Long story short, they said they'd have to talk to me so I ceased my laptop hunt and decided to just save money and get one when I had the cash.Gateway's SalesTwo days later a Gateway Rep called me (on a Sunday, too!) to ask if I was interested in one of their systems. I said not really, since I didn't have all the cash right now. She was very polite and convincing and within a few minutes had me waiting on hold for their financial backer to get on the line. After about five minutes of talking with him I was approved for a $900 credit line with no interest or payments within six months.Back on the phone with the Saleslady, she asked me what systems I was interested in. I mentioned their M250, and she said that they [Gateway] had some phone-only specials going, specifically with first-run editions of the model. She read the specs off to me, and they turned out to be higher than what I had been looking at previously for almost two hundred dollars less.Before I knew it I was handing out my credit card number to take care of what the 900 dollar loan would not cover.Sales at Gateway is rated 10/10. Very nice salesperson, very good at what she did, and very helpful when I had questions.The System: First ImpressionsI ordered on Sunday and received the computer on Friday. As luck would have it I got off work early that day because the job was done, so I had over nine hours to play with my new computer, rather than five.Right out of the box I was pretty impressed. It's a widescreen system, bigger than what I had origionally wanted. But now, I'm glad I got it this large. I looked at my sisters 12" Dell the other day and I honestly could not imagine working on a computer that small. Since its purchase this Gateway has been my primary system.It has a 14" widescreen display, full sized keyboard, touchpad, and that's about it for frills. The touchpad has a scrollbar on the right hand side, but I've not used that too much because it doesn't work in Firefox. I did a little research, and downloading some drivers and the latest version of FF should fix that. Upon first bootup I was even more impressed. The system took its sweet time in initializing WindowsXP Pro for the first time, but once that was over with I was greeted with a sinfully naked desktop and startup bar. The only thing that started up with the standard Windows shite (messenger, I'm looking at you) was some Gateway remote help thingy that the Saleslady had told me about and Norton AV. Nothing else. No dumbass Dell Bar, no oodles of HP menu's and helpful hints popping up, just blissful slate-blank serenity. In short, the Saleslady was completely truthful. The system had MS Works installed (but it didn't open on startup!), came with six months of Norton AV and some Gateway remote assistance utility that I'm content to let sit in the background. Nothing else.The System: Extended UseAfter using this thing almost every day for the last month, I'm still very pleased. It's pretty zippy, but battery life is mediocre (three hours of word processing is the longest I've gotten it to go) and it sucks at gaming. Ntohing I didn't know about though. I can play Civ III, Deus Ex and Fallout II. I've tried Morrowind but that didn't work. It might with some driver updates, but I'm not really that interested in loosing my life to that timetoilet again.DVD Playback is kind of weird. Movies like Futureama or Family Guy tend to have a halting skip every minute or two, while other live-action movies are smooth as butter. Again, driver updates will probably fix this.I'm happy. It's got a firewire port built in, so eventually I'll get an external audio interface and reference monitors and use it for some Sonar4 editing while away from my studio. The Memory and Hard Drive will be very easy to replace/add on to, just one screw to remove for each.Overall, I give the system a 8/10. Battery life is disappointing once I start using the built in modem or WLAN. It's only a six-cell battery though, I may pick up a twelve sometime in the future. The screen didn't come in their ulta-brite model. I asked, but I couldn't get the prebuilt deal with that. It gets bright enough for indoors use, and I do keep it pretty dim when not on the power cable.Things I should have done differentI should have asked about models with a more peppy GPU. The Saleslady broached the topic, but I reassured her that I wouldn't be doing much beyond playing five year old games. I possibly could have gotten an ATI200 mobile thingermabob had I kept my trap shut.I should have asked if she had any deals on their convertible systems. Doodling in Photoshop right on my screen sounds awesome.I should be paying off my loan, rather than buying more video games for my xbox.   
  My experience with Gateway laptops hasn't been quite as rosy. I purchased an M200X laptop in late 2003 which I kept until this past summer, and it grew increasingly unstable over time. The core fault was the HDD: my roommate received the exact same model from work and ended up having to replace the standard HDD, which solved all the instability issues.Presumably, given the age of my laptop, Gateway has better components now and you won't experience the same frustratingly intermittent crashes, but watch out for random BSODs. If you experience them, I recommend replacing the HDD immediately. The rest of the system is likely of very high quality.As an aside, however, Gateway fired its previous CEO and appointed Wayne Inouye, who basically worked miracles at eMachines (acquired by Gateway, with Inouye rising to helm to larger company in the process). I'm pretty sure their products are better now, and I wish you the best with your new machine.Me? I'm looking at getting an Acer.   ;  This is the second Gateway product I've owned/used exclusivly. My Dad bought the family's first modern computer about five years ago, maybe six. It was a 450Mhz PIII with 128MB of RAM (back when 32MB was standard), and I was the most envied kid in town. My computer could run any game at butter-smooth rates for years. Heck, that TNT2 kept plugging away until two years ago.I'll keep my eyes open for BSOD's.   