Digital Trends

Gateway M320XL October 11th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

Getting the M320XL setup and running is very easy. Gateway provides a detailed and easy to use manual which will walk you through the process. When you fire up the system for the first time you are greeted by Microsoft Windows, which will ask you a few questions such as the names of the users of the system, your network workgroup name and the type of Internet connection you have. Once those are answered you are done with the whole process. As we mentioned in the features section of this review, the M320XL comes with very little preinstalled software, and this is a very good thing. Microsoft Works 7.0 is an adequate office suite for the home user, but should you decide you want to upgrade to the larger Microsoft Office XP software suite, you can do that as well since the trial version comes preinstalled. Microsoft Media Player should be able to handle most of your multimedia needs while Norton Antivirus protects your system.

Using the system certainly has its highs and lows. We found the screen to be very bright and good for most types of applications but we noticed that the screen struggled when playing any sort of high resolution 3D games. There were noticeable artifacts present, which is either a result of the integrated 32MB video adapter or the LCD screens capabilities.

The keyboard is easy to use and feels very responsive although it is a little bit mushy feeling in the center, but it did not hinder its use; this is typical of a lot of notebooks and is not isolated to the M320XL. The touch pad works very well, but the touch scroll-pad is simply terrible, we would rather have a scroll wheel. Since the touch scroll-pad works by touching it and dragging your finger up and down, it took a while for us to get used to it. It just does not work as well as a scroll wheel. A lot of notebook manufacturers are integrating this technology into their systems much to our disliking. The mouse buttons on the M320XL are recessed to give the system an appealing look, but they are difficult to use at first. Their surface area is probably smaller than it should be for a system of this size and they also feel mushy, lacking the reliable clicking feeling we like.

We appreciate the fact that Gateway includes a memory card slot that supports both SD and Sony Memory cards. And adding 4 USB ports and a FireWire port makes this a very versatile system which digital photographers and other with a lot of peripherals can appreciate.

Our M320XL test system was very quiet while in use and did not get very hot, which is nice. Sony notebook computers, for example, can get very hot when they are used for long periods of time. The M320XL stayed nice and cool while being used, even after burning several DVD's.

We want to make this very clear; the M320 series laptops are not designed for hardcore gaming. You may be able to get away with Ages of Empires or any other 2D game, but this product line cannot play any sort of 3D game. If gaming is a priority, then you will want to step up to Gateway's 520 series notebook. In our 3dMark gaming tests, the M320XL performed on par with the other Centrino based notebooks that use the integrated Intel graphics chip; which isn't bad, just not very exciting. For running applications, the M320XL performed very well thanks to its 512MB of internal memory. Battery life was above average and we were able to get just a little over 4 hours of use before the system would go dead. For complete performance results please click on the performance tab and link located above and below this review.

We need to mention that the reason why there are no Mobile Mark scores on our performance page is because we could not get the test suite to finish successfully. We experienced numerous errors throughout the testing process. This happened on several Sony notebooks we are reviewing as well. According to Bapco, the manufacturer of the Mobile Mark software, it could be incompatibilities with Windows Service Pack 2. We are working with them to find a fix.

Conclusion

Gateway's M320XL laptop is a good laptop but it falls short in a few areas. First of all, this is a poor laptop for gaming. The system's 32MB of integrated video memory and XGA LCD display are simply not very impressive. During our 3dMark 2001 benchmarking, the M320XL's display could not display all of the colors some of the tests tried to use. We also did not like the recessed mouse buttons and the touch scroll wheel which was hard to use and very sporadic.

However, if gaming is not your forte, then the M320XL has a lot to offer. We think the systems design and looks are well above average. The keyboard has a nice feel to it and reliability was above average. There is plenty of power and technological features that should keep this system up-to-date for longer than the average laptop. One of the upsides to buying a Gateway system is that you will be able to stop by your local Best Buy to try it out before you purchase it, and that is what we recommend you do with the M320XL. If this system had a better scroll wheel and mouse buttons, we would give this system an 8 or a 9. Fundamentally the M320XL is a very strong offering from Gateway.