Gateway E-155-C: A Lightweight Convertible

Design and Appearance

Performance, features, size, and/or weight are usually the primary considerations for people out notebook shopping. Appearance is another factor that may or may not be important, and the overall design needs to be evaluated to see how it works in day-to-day use.


We would characterize the appearance in general as utilitarian. It's not really ugly, but at the same time there's nothing to set it apart from other notebooks. You get a charcoal gray laptop that looks about the same as many other laptops. Those who are looking for a beauty queen will want to keep searching, but before you write off the E-155-C you might want to take a closer look at the design.


One of the selling points is that you can convert the E-155-C from a standard laptop into a tablet PC. (Note that in the above image the laptop is technically upside down; the screen orientation is automatically flipped when you convert the system into tablet mode, but we liked having the Gateway logo right side up.) The E-155-C might be thicker than a pure-tablet design, but we would be hard-pressed to give up access to a keyboard on any computer. Perhaps a combination of using a tablet interface along with speech recognition could suffice, but we did try exactly that and came to the conclusion that there are still plenty of times where having access to a keyboard and mouse is practically a necessity.


Looking at the laptop from various angles, we can see many of the features highlighted on the previous page. There are no ports or connections on the front of the laptop. The only item worth mentioning is the button that releases the display. The latch for the display can be flipped either direction so that it will also lock into place in tablet mode.

The rear is similarly barren. On the right side (left when you're facing the front of the laptop) is the power socket and Kensington lock, while on the other side is a telephone jack. (Our condolences if you still have to use such a connection.) The battery slides out of the back of the unit, and the larger battery sizes protrude slightly farther than what you see in the above image. The battery design actually works very well, and using a larger battery doesn't make the notebook any more awkward to handle. This is not the case with some other notebooks, where larger batteries can end up protruding from the bottom of the case and give the laptop a bulky feel.


The left and right sides as usual house the majority of the connections. On the left you will find a VGA port, the docking connector, Ethernet, a PC Card type II expansion slot, and a 6-in-1 flash memory reader (MS/MS Pro, MMC/RS-MMC, SD/Mini-SD). While the inclusion of an older PC Card slot as opposed to a new ExpressCard slot seems a bit odd at first, the primary market for the E-155-C appears to be business users, and many large corporations and businesses have various PC card peripherals that they continue to use. Near the front of the laptop, we also find the home for the stylus.

The right side houses the optical drive, which takes up the majority of the space. Near the rear are microphone and headphone jacks, while towards the front are two USB ports and a mini FireWire port.