Product Reviews

American PC manufacturer Gateway closed its European operation in 2001, citing market conditions. Now it's back, this time selling through major retailers such as Comet. The 8550GB notebook, a deluxe widescreen model, is at the top of its new range.

The chassis looks great. At just 36mm high it's very slim, and it looks just as good with the lid open, as the power button is surrounded by a pleasing blue glow. The touch pad is responsive and has a ridge that separates a scroll bar segment. The widescreen display allows space for a full-sized keyboard with keypad. This is very firm with well-sprung keys and provides positive feedback.

Although the chassis is slim, the 8550GB has all the ports you'd expect. There are four USB2 ports, two on each side of the chassis for ease of use. It also has FireWire, S-video out and Gigabit Ethernet. There's a handy 4-in-1 memory card reader on the front of the chassis next to conveniently

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placed microphone and headphone sockets. The speakers are pretty basic, though, and will suffice only for Windows alerts.

This notebook's main draw is its large 17.1" widescreen display. The native resolution of 1,440x900 provides lots of space for day-to-day tasks. It did fairly well in our monitor tests. Subtle but regular banding marred an otherwise smooth greyscale test. Whites were good, but the colours could have done with more subtlety in the lighter shades. The widescreen ratio of 16:10 makes it ideal for viewing DVDs, and playback through the included Power DVD software was very pleasing, with no problems in fast-moving scenes.

In applications the 8550GB's performance is easily good enough for everyday tasks and it scored 84 overall in our Shopper benchmarks. Its large 100GB hard disk should cover all your storage needs. Battery life is usually an issue with a large screen, but the 8550GB managed an amazing 264 minutes in our low-usage test.

Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system will use 3D graphics on the desktop. Fortunately the X700 graphics included here should be more than up to the task. It'll also run games, although you may need to reduce detail levels to play the latest titles. It managed a very respectable 24.3fps in our tough Doom 3 test.

The 8550GB is not the cheapest notebook on the market, but you get a lot for your money. The large screen means it's not ideal for use on the move, but if you're after a notebook for some entertainment, it's excellent value.