Digital Trends

Gateway M675CS

December 8th, 2003 | by Doug MacLean

Overview:

The laptop computer is rapidly replacing the standard desktop for many users. The power of these small computers is now able to rival their big brothers. Now a new class of such machines is becoming popular - the portable workstation. Case in point is the Gateway M675CS. The M675 is the top line of Gateway notebooks with the CS basic model at the lowest of the three rungs of this series. Don't let its relative position fool you; this is a powerful machine that will exceed almost any use you have. The fundamental difference between the CS and the higher end X and XL models is the screen size. The CS has a 15.4” screen where the other two models come standard with a 17.1”.

First Impressions:

The first thing that you will notice about the M675CS is that it is larger than most laptops. You find out why when you pop open the lid on this notebook computer and take a look at the keyboard. Unlike every other notebook keyboard, there is a fully integrated 10-key numeric pad to the right of the main keys. This feature has always been standard on desktop units and now comes to the portable. If you do a lot of numeric entry this is a must. It also makes a lot of games easier to play, since many gamers use the number pad for movement.

The M675CS features very modern blue LED status lights. The screen is also different; the monitor has a 15:10 aspect ratio similar to most high definition televisions. The input jacks and drives are distributed on the back and both sides. In fact, there are USB ports at all three locations for easy connection to your other devices.

Above the keyboard is a large power switch and one-touch buttons to access email, a web browser, the main Windows help page, My Computer (in browse mode) and wireless on/off. While it appears that the fast access buttons cannot be user defined they are useful. At the front edge of the unit are controls for the DVD and media player as well as the usual indicator lights. The battery light is purple when the battery is charging and changes to neon blue when full. There is even one light for writing to the CD as well as reading from it.

The cooling fan is nice and quiet and is barely audible. On the other hand, the CD drive was very noisy when reading a disc

Digging a Little Deeper

Included with the M675CS is a high capacity lithium ion battery, which is rated at 14.8V/6300 mAh and comes with an AC pack. Only one battery can be used in the unit at a time and since the CPU draws a good amount of juice, the life span of the charge averaged just about two and a half hours. That may not seem like much but remember this is one of the fastest, most power hungry desktop processors currently available.

The battery is loaded from underneath saving valuable side real estate for the input/output ports. While in battery mode the screen does dim to conserve power. The downside here is it dims just a little too much for comfortable viewing.

Both the left and right side drives are hot swappable and easy to remove once you get it down. There are little catches underneath the machine, slide them to the side and you can rapidly replace the 3.5” floppy/memory card reader or the CD/DVD drive. This adds to the versatility of the machine and provides an easy upgrade path.

One of the touches that demonstrate that this machine is meant for the power business user is the inclusion of a Gigabit Ethernet port. It also features a standard parallel printer port and an S-Video output. With many laptops doing away with parallel and other legacy ports, the business user may appreciate being able to hook their parallel printers to the M675CS.

With the full size keyboard and complete numeric entry keys, data entry is a snap. It is rare to see a Num-Lock on a notebook keyboard that is actually usable. There may be a bit of a learning curve for your fingers if you are used to a typical notebook keyboard, but the benefits for quick data entry far make it worth the effort.

Considering this machine has a full scale hyper threading CPU, it ran remarkably cool and efficient. Even after many hours of use there was no discernable heat generated.

Industry Comparisons