Gateway M505XL Notebook (1.5-GHz Pentium M (Centrino), 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD-RW Drive)

Rating:
Summary: Make sure you get what you pay for
Review: I have owned this lappy for about a month now. One word -- BEYOND EXPECTATION. Keep in mind that my old desktop is only a IntelCelron 400mhz and old lappy is only a iBook G3 450mhz.

I have been shopping around for a good looking lappy that can actually perform with excellent battery life. This is THE ONE. After looking at G4 Powerbook for a while, I decided to safe ~$700 to upgrade this M505XL, old desktop, old lappy and loaded of accessories for my new toy. Here is MHO review.

What's hot!!

1. Solid built quality.
2. Looks hot (looks more expensive than it actually is worth. It is the clostest thing a PC to a Power G4.
3. Over 4.5 hrs battery life w/~3.5 hrs for DVD. If you have a high capacity battery this could go up by about 0.5-1hr. I got mixed up with a regular 8 cells ion battery.
4. Great sound system for a lappy. Beat anything out there with this price range. Sub really adds good dept.
5. Centrino 1.5Ghz is plenty fast for my average graphic editing, office processing programs, and directx 9.0b gaming.
6. Full function dedicated AV control panel. Although it is not that big of a deal, but its functionality is very handy when watching DVD and listening audio.
7. Full size keybord w/ full functionality. And pretty impressive touchpad.
8. Good graphic and 15.4" (if you are into widescreen). Widescreen does not make anything look fat by stretching it when you bolw window into a full screen. Everything get adjusted accordingly when browsing the internet, etc.
9. Impressively stable OS unlike I've ever experienced with any PC. I knew this well comparing my old Win98 to MacOS9 and 10 and this WinXP pro.
10. Slightly above storage capacity (60GB) and standard memory, which is still very high for a lappy (512MB).
11. Quite and impressively cool system with death silent HDD noise (Thanks for Fujitsu great HDD technology). I was in shock when I first ran my applications. My old G3 iBook cen get relatively noisy and hot on my lap.
12. Above average customer service. Used to be great customer service. See below why.

What's not!!
1. Gateway has been notorious in sending M505XL with incorrect HDD spec. Origianlly I got Fujitsu 60GB 4200rpm w/2mbcache. It is supposed to be Toshiba 60GB 5400rpm w/8mbcache. I never got the right one from Gateway after a couple of weeks debating with Gateway. Well, I bought this system from elsewhere and the quote from the supplier is only mentioned about 60GB (no speed or buffer size). Bad luck for me because Gateway holds no responsibility for this even though there is sufficient information to link a real HDD spec for M505XL model from Gateway webpage. Gateway has been discontinued this model from their own web to avoid this problem. Be ware when you are trying to buy this lappy from any other sources. Make sure that you get a written HDD spec quote.
Why I am ranting so much about this?? Well, now that I bought my own a correct HDD spec (Fujitsu 60GB 5400rpm w/8mbcache -- in love with death silent HDD technology), I am feeling like having a brand new computer. Most of my regularly used applications load pretty much instantly. I can have two programs running while watching DVD w/o a hiccup. I could not do this with the old HDD. And, even Office outlook 2003 works so slow with my old HDD. Well, it is unaccepatably slow for this price range of a system. SO LOOK BACK AGAIN AT MY REVIEW TITLE. On top of my HDD and Battery mixed up. They got my serial in the system wrong. I was trying to register, and after entering my SN it brought up a Plasma TV??? Well, Gateway promise to fix it in 2-4 weeks. It is still not after 3 weeks. I wonder whether I will be able to extend my warrenty!!
2. No upgrade option. Well, Wistron is actually manufacturing this M505 series. Basically this is a mass production model from Gateway.
3. Regardless of full size keyboard and decent feel, it is not very solid. I can feel that one of these keyboards will not last longer than 2 years. I own G3 iBook for almost 3.5 years now and not a single complaint.
4. Can only upgrade HDD up to 60GB and memory to 1024MB. High end availability are 80GB and 2048MB of Ram (This means that Gateway have Winstron put it a sub standard motherboard). Well, 100GB HDD is coming out very soon too.

I would have given 4.5, but ended up in 5 because I still like it so much after all above-mentioned troubles I could have easily returned it for a full refund after first week. Now that I upgraded the HDD to a correct spec and increased memory from 512 to 768 (will try to max out to 1024 by next month), this lappy can really perform. Noted that I tried to add more memory with the old HDD but performace was not improved enough to make me feel like a $1700-1800 lappy. By the way, I can't notice any different in battery life regardless of a new higher spec HDD. It is probably less by less than 5 min or so.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a new PC based lappy with great battery life, solid OS, good graphic, well built, medium size weight (it is pretty light to carrying around), just grab one but don't forget about the HDD and battery. (...)