Gateway Solo 9100 S5-200LS

By updating the innards of its Solo 9100 notebook, Gateway has added to the growing ranks of the Tilamook. Like the ACI Acumen (reviewed p163), the Solo's specifications are top notch, and while you might get less RAM on board, you do get Office 97 SBE and a bigger hard disk.

With Intel's 430TX motherboard chipset on board, the 9100 benefits from faster SDRAM memory and the improved transfer rates of the new UltraDMA hard disk interface. This puts it on a par, technologically speaking, with current-generation MMX-based desktops.

The Solo is fairly heavy at 3.8kg, but the extenuating circumstances include the sturdiness of the case, the large, long-lasting battery pack and the need to accommodate the big screen securely. The standard notebook expansion and connectivity are all present in the form of two PC Card Type II slots, with 32-bit CardBus support and Zoomed Video on the lower slot. There's also a PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector and a nine-pin serial port. A generous helping of extras round things off, with twin USB ports, a 4Mbits/sec infrared serial port, and even composite video I/O and a MIDI/ joystick port on offer. If you choose the Solo as a desktop replacement, Gateway offers you a choice of either a port replicator or a full docking station to facilitate the transition between fixed and mobile usage.

The active-matrix screen has a generous 13.3in diagonal, which produces a readable XGA 1,024 x 768 resolution image. The display is driven by a Chips & Technologies 65554 controller with 4Mb of video memory. This is sufficient to allow 24-bit colour in XGA mode, but only on an external monitor, as 18-bit colour is the maximum capability of current production TFT screens.

The Solo has integrated audio in the form of a 16-bit Yamaha OPL3-SAx processor with wavetable synthesis, which is output through a pair of Altec Lansing speakers built into the palmrest. The results were pleasing by notebook standards, with clarity but no excessive harshness.

Gateway has taken advantage of the full width of the case to provide a reasonably spacious keyboard, complete with full-sized modifier and keys. The action is light but still fairly decisive, although the looseness of the keytops gives the keyboard a slightly flimsy feel. Nevertheless, it's still very useable, the layout is free from function doubling, and there are tilt feet at the back of the case for improving the typing angle.

The days of separate floppy and CD-ROM drive modules are probably over, and hopefully soon all notebooks will have the kind of combo drive module fitted to the Solo. This packs in a 20-speed Toshiba CD-ROM drive and a 3.5in floppy drive into a single, standard-sized module, which can be removed and replaced with a second battery pack. The 4Gb IBM UDMA-2 hard disk slides in beside the combo module and can be removed without using any tools, as and when necessary.

The lithium ion battery pack provides three-and-a-half hours of continual use without power management, which is very impressive. While you can't make changes to the details of the power management setup unless you interrupt the boot, you can switch between various levels of saving on the fly using a key combination and an on-screen pop-up. As you can program your own custom settings, this is almost as good.

As expected, the performance of the Solo was remarkable, although not as quick as the Acumen. When you consider that the Gateway uses a P200 rather than a P233, the 0.10 difference in benchmark scores seems less of a problem. In fact, when you combine the excellent specifications with the long battery life, the Solo is a great buy.

Author: Dominic Bucknall