Gateway E-155-C: A Lightweight Convertible

Design and Appearance (Cont'd)


Looking at the bottom of the notebook, there are three compartments that can be accessed. At the top, the latch mechanism for the battery can also be seen. The left latch can be used to lock the battery in place to prevent accidental removal, while the right latch is spring-loaded and needs to be pushed aside in order to hold the battery out. The batteries also have a power gauge that can be seen here, which will allow you to see an estimate of how much battery life remains without connecting the battery or turning on the laptop.


Removing the three covers, we gain access to the hard drive, memory, and two Mini PCI slots. Starting with the latter, the left Mini PCI slot is occupied by the wireless adapter while the other is empty in our laptop and could be used for further expansion. The DDR2 SO-DIMM slots are in the top section, and you can also see part of the heatsink/heatpipe that is used to cool the CPU and chipset. If you actually want to swap processors, you will need to remove the rest of the bottom cover in order to access the CPU socket. The hard drive is in the bottom left compartment, and it's worth pointing out that Gateway uses an SATA hard drive.


Here's a look at the basic 4-cell as well as the upgraded 6-cell batteries. The smaller battery offers a 38.5 WHr capacity while the upgraded battery provides 57.7 WHr. That means that the increased capacity battery should offer about 50% more battery life, which as you'll see later is pretty much exactly what we measured.

Looking at the design as a whole, there's really a lot to like. The battery configuration works well, whether you stick with the default 4-cell or opt for one with increased capacity. All of the necessary connections are present and accounted for, with one exception: there's a VGA port, but no DVI port. We'd prefer to ditch the VGA support in preference for a digital connection, as the vast majority of people - particularly those considering an expensive ultraportable laptop - will have LCDs. However, businesses that use projectors are more likely to want a VGA port, which accounts for the design decision. (We'd still prefer a DVI port with a DVI-to-VGA adapter instead, though!) Given the size of the laptop, it's not too surprising that there aren't a lot of extra connections available. Two USB ports? A keyboard and mouse will take care of those! If you're like us, investing in a USB hub for when your laptop is sitting at a desk might be a good idea. Some people will always want more, and that's not the purpose of the thin and light laptops. As such a design, the E-155-C has everything we need and really doesn't have any major flaws, especially for business users.