Product Reviews

There seems to be a vogue at the moment for slimline notebooks with silver-coloured magnesium alloy lids. We've been treated to products from Mitsubishi and Toshiba, and now Gateway has come up with its contribution.

Gateway has followed this emerging design trend closely, from the silver magnesium alloy lid to the external floppy drive module. However, in exchange for a little extra size and weight (2.4kg when compared with the Toshiba PortÚgÚ's 1.8kg, for example), the Solo is kitted out with an integral 20-speed CD-ROM drive. If I were being picky, I'd say that a modular approach - one bay, two drives - would have been better, since it would let you decide which one to take. The option of a second battery pack instead of either would have been the icing on the cake.

The Solo is very solid, with a dense, unyielding body to go with its metal lid, and the build quality is equally confidence-inspiring in terms of fit and finish. The cooling fan was a bit throaty, but it doesn't run all the time and this might well be a pre-production rough edge.

In addition to making an external floppy drive a necessity, the slim case design has reduced the PC Card slot count from the usual two down to one. Initial production in the UK will be bundled with a PC Card K56Flex voice/fax/modem, which is probably most users' card of choice while away from base, but it's possible that future versions will come with an internal modem like their US counterparts. That, of course, is dependent on BABT certification being obtained for the modem.

Room has been found for the normal array of ports, including a headphones output, a 4Mbits/sec infrared interface, a single USB port and a PS/2 connector for an external

ADVERTISEMENT

mouse or keyboard. This might see some use if you do a lot of work on this machine, as the trackpoint device set in to the keyboard isn't altogether satisfactory. However, this is more a failing of the type, rather than just this instance. It's a shame that the designers didn't opt for a mousepad. There seems to be room for one on the reasonably broad palmrest.

The keyboard has a lively feel to it thanks to a distinct but quiet break to the action, and the keypad as a whole has been given enough space to avoid the cramped, packed-in characteristics of some notebooks. The modifier keys are a reasonable size, Enter and Backspace are large enough, and the spacebar isn't too short either. Home and End have become secondary functions on the page keys but, apart from that, this is a pretty successful effort, especially for a fairly small notebook.

A NeoMagic MagicWave sound chip provides audio with wavetable and 3D spatialisation capabilities through a pair of speakers embedded in the palmrest. Sound quality isn't bad by notebook standards, with adequate volume before distortion hits in, and reasonable clarity without harshness.

The size of the machine more or less dictates a 12.1in screen diagonal, and Gateway has opted for a TFT panel running at a resolution of 800 « 600. This is ergonomically sensible, as XGA on this diagonal makes everything rather too small. The panel can run in 18-bit colour, which should be sufficient for most users, and it's bright enough to cope with normal natural light conditions without any problems.

After an initial BIOS setup, power management - at least on the review sample - was left to the improved utility provided with Windows 98, although you can turn power saving on and off with a key combination. The lithium ion battery pack ran flat in just over two hours with no power management, which is a good figure and suggests at least 2.5 hours and maybe more with savings enabled.

Smaller notebooks are often not especially good performers, but the Solo managed fairly well, thanks to a 300MHz processor, 64Mb of RAM and IBM's quick 4Gb UltraDMA hard disk. Some full-sized portables run a little bit faster, but the Solo beat the Toshiba PortÚgÚ 7010 and delivered a highly impressive performance. In fact, it's an impressive product all round.