Gateway E-155-C: A Lightweight Convertible
by Jarred Walton on July 4, 2007 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Battery Life
In the past, our standard battery life test has been provided courtesy of MobileMark 2005. Since we're now moving towards testing with Windows Vista (which MobileMark 2005 doesn't support), we needed to come up with a new method to determine battery life. Generally speaking, we don't expect people to seriously tax their laptops when they are unplugged, so we tried to create benchmarks that will simulate normal use.
For the first battery test, we use Internet Explorer to simulate surfing the web. We have a script that starts Internet Explorer and loads our three homepages, all of which contain quite a few Flash-based advertisements. The script then sleeps for 60 seconds, simulating "reading" a web page(s), after which Internet Explorer is shut down and reloaded. Internet Explorer is set to delete all temp files on exit, in order to continue to generate hard drive activity. The other battery life test is simply DVD playback, and we use Star Wars Return of the Jedi as our test DVD. Basically, the Internet Explorer test corresponds to about the best case scenario you are likely to encounter, while the DVD test is a bit more taxing.
Gateway sent us both their 4-cell and 6-cell batteries for testing. The results are summarized in the following table, along with scores for the HP dv6500t.
The default 4-cell battery doesn't provide a lot of battery life unless you turn down the display brightness. Since we felt the display was already relatively dim, we certainly wouldn't want to use the laptop at reduced brightness settings. However, for the record we were able to improve battery life by 30 to 35% by running the display at minimum brightness. Moving to the 6-cell battery increases battery life by about 50%, as expected. In the near future, Gateway will also begin shipping 8-cell batteries - they are already selectable in the online configurator.
Another anomaly that cropped up concerns brightness, so we'll address that now. Windows Vista would periodically adjust the display brightness while we were using the system, for no apparent reason (though not during our battery benchmarks, thankfully - it appears to be related to input from the keyboard/mouse). Sometimes the LCD would get darker, and sometimes it would get lighter. The E-155-C has three keys that allow you to adjust the display brightness. Two of these are used to increase or decrease brightness, while the third appears to cycle between three settings (minimum, medium, and maximum). Unfortunately, for some reason Windows Vista disables the increase/decrease brightness keys. (We experienced the same problem with the HP dv6500t.) We would assume this is another driver issue, though whether it's the display drivers or something else we can't say.
Power Consumption
Related to the battery life discussions we've just finished, we have power results. For power testing, we remove the battery from the laptops and measure system power draw at the wall outlet using a Kill-A-Watt device. We test several different scenarios to try to isolate the power draw of the various components. First, we have the baseline measurement when the system is idle and sitting at the desktop. No applications are running for 10 minutes or more but the screensaver and hard drive sleep mode are disabled. As a CPU load test, we run the SMP version of Folding@Home at 100%. Finally, for maximum power load we leave Folding@Home running and start 3DMark05. In this way, we can see roughly how much power the GPU is using in 3D mode versus 2D mode.
The E-155-C doesn't consume a lot of power, and clearly a large portion of the power is going to the display. The difference between maximum and minimum brightness is about 5W, so maximum brightness increases idle power consumption by over 30%. The maximum power draw of the system when the CPU is under full load increases by 9W, so the display still increases total system power draw by 20% under load. Given the relatively small battery capacity, every additional watt of power draw can have a noticeable impact on battery life. We're looking forward to testing some laptops that use LED backlighting to reduce the LCD power requirements without compromising on brightness levels.
In the past, our standard battery life test has been provided courtesy of MobileMark 2005. Since we're now moving towards testing with Windows Vista (which MobileMark 2005 doesn't support), we needed to come up with a new method to determine battery life. Generally speaking, we don't expect people to seriously tax their laptops when they are unplugged, so we tried to create benchmarks that will simulate normal use.
For the first battery test, we use Internet Explorer to simulate surfing the web. We have a script that starts Internet Explorer and loads our three homepages, all of which contain quite a few Flash-based advertisements. The script then sleeps for 60 seconds, simulating "reading" a web page(s), after which Internet Explorer is shut down and reloaded. Internet Explorer is set to delete all temp files on exit, in order to continue to generate hard drive activity. The other battery life test is simply DVD playback, and we use Star Wars Return of the Jedi as our test DVD. Basically, the Internet Explorer test corresponds to about the best case scenario you are likely to encounter, while the DVD test is a bit more taxing.
Gateway sent us both their 4-cell and 6-cell batteries for testing. The results are summarized in the following table, along with scores for the HP dv6500t.
| Battery Life (Minutes) | ||||
| HP dv6500t 6-cell | HP dv6500t 12-cell | Gateway E-155-C 4-cell | Gateway E-155-C 6-cell | |
| Internet Explorer (Max. brightness) | 133 | 246 | 111 | 168 |
| DVD Playback (Max. brightness) | 105 | 205 | 98 | 146 |
The default 4-cell battery doesn't provide a lot of battery life unless you turn down the display brightness. Since we felt the display was already relatively dim, we certainly wouldn't want to use the laptop at reduced brightness settings. However, for the record we were able to improve battery life by 30 to 35% by running the display at minimum brightness. Moving to the 6-cell battery increases battery life by about 50%, as expected. In the near future, Gateway will also begin shipping 8-cell batteries - they are already selectable in the online configurator.
Another anomaly that cropped up concerns brightness, so we'll address that now. Windows Vista would periodically adjust the display brightness while we were using the system, for no apparent reason (though not during our battery benchmarks, thankfully - it appears to be related to input from the keyboard/mouse). Sometimes the LCD would get darker, and sometimes it would get lighter. The E-155-C has three keys that allow you to adjust the display brightness. Two of these are used to increase or decrease brightness, while the third appears to cycle between three settings (minimum, medium, and maximum). Unfortunately, for some reason Windows Vista disables the increase/decrease brightness keys. (We experienced the same problem with the HP dv6500t.) We would assume this is another driver issue, though whether it's the display drivers or something else we can't say.
Power Consumption
Related to the battery life discussions we've just finished, we have power results. For power testing, we remove the battery from the laptops and measure system power draw at the wall outlet using a Kill-A-Watt device. We test several different scenarios to try to isolate the power draw of the various components. First, we have the baseline measurement when the system is idle and sitting at the desktop. No applications are running for 10 minutes or more but the screensaver and hard drive sleep mode are disabled. As a CPU load test, we run the SMP version of Folding@Home at 100%. Finally, for maximum power load we leave Folding@Home running and start 3DMark05. In this way, we can see roughly how much power the GPU is using in 3D mode versus 2D mode.
| System Power Draw (Watts) | |||||
| ABS Mayhem Z5 | ASUS A8JS | ASUS G2P | Gateway E-155-C | HP dv6500t | |
| Idle | 44-49 | 26-32 | 43-52 | 16-21 | 22 |
| 100% CPU | 67-71 | 47-52 | 71-81 | 25-30 | 57 |
| Maximum | 100 | 71 | 97 | 34 | 67 |
The E-155-C doesn't consume a lot of power, and clearly a large portion of the power is going to the display. The difference between maximum and minimum brightness is about 5W, so maximum brightness increases idle power consumption by over 30%. The maximum power draw of the system when the CPU is under full load increases by 9W, so the display still increases total system power draw by 20% under load. Given the relatively small battery capacity, every additional watt of power draw can have a noticeable impact on battery life. We're looking forward to testing some laptops that use LED backlighting to reduce the LCD power requirements without compromising on brightness levels.
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elom - Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - link
This deal has been horrible for the companies that had existing warrenties with Gateway. MPC has still yet to get there act together and it is now April. My company has had 28 of these machines down since the begining of the year and only half have been fixed. I have NBD on-site service and I am not seeing anywhere close to that. I am moving to another PC manufacturer ASAP.tacoburrito - Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - link
With the 6 cell battery, this thing will weight over 5 lbs. Not really an ultra-portable in the classical sense, is it? But it seems this is what we have to put up with if one wants the Tablet features. Lenovo, Toshiba, and HP already have sub-3lbs notebooks in their catalouge running similar specs to the Gateway. Can you review those instead, if you want to do an ultra-portable review?JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - link
As always, we review what we get sent. Needless to say, I'm not about to go out and spend $2000 on a notebook just to provide free press for a company. I've tried to get in touch with Lenovo, without much success. I'm working to get some stuff from Toshiba and HP that falls in the ultraportable range, so we'll see.Honestly, I'm not quite sure why the notebook is so heavy relative to others. The case does feel pretty durable, however, so that's probably a large part of the weight question. The display doesn't really feel much heavier than a normal laptop LCD - certainly not more than a few ounces. Anyway, lightweight and flimsy may not be the right way to go either - I'd probably take the extra pound if it means the display hinges and other parts don't break after a year or two.
bldckstark - Friday, July 6, 2007 - link
I'm disappointed to see that Lenovo hasn't responded to your requests. I would really like to see their V and X series ultraportables up against the competition.I bought my wife the Lenovo V series laptop that is almost an exact twin of the Gateway reviewed here, with the exception of the convertible screen. It is quicker than my desktop 3800+, weighs 4.4lbs with the 6 cell battery, and gets 255 mins runtime on, all for $1,250. It really puts the Gateway to shame. At least this time I didn't buy an expensive piece of electronics just to go online a month later to see a review of a cheaper, faster, better device that makes me want to throw up.
What I can't compare at home though is the LCD screen quality versus the Gateway. I would like to see if the Lenovo screens are better, worse, same. Especially on the V series versus the X/T series.
This makes me really want to see the Lenovo T60 reviewed to see how much dust the Gateway would be eating.
jonp - Friday, July 20, 2007 - link
I'd vote to add a Lenovo T61, p/n 7662 with the T7500 CPU, 2GB RAM, 7200rpm hard drive, XP Pro to a future review.Athlex - Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - link
Any chance of getting a photo of the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint?Baffling that laptop manufacturers are putting "docking" ports on the sides of notebooks instead of the bottom. HPQ seems to be doing the same thing on their consumer stuff.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - link
Sorry about that - I actually had the image on our server but forgot to update the first page before the article went live.I'm also a bit baffled about the docking port on the side... but then I don't see much reason for docking stations these days. All I really need is mouse, keyboard, and display - if I want more than that from a laptop, I'd probably get a nicer laptop rather than worrying about spending the money for a docking station.
strikeback03 - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
If you connect keyboard/mouse/monitor every day (or multiple times a day) it is probably convenient to only have to make one connection instead of 3. also, some docking stations offer ports the laptop does not - for example, most (if not all) thinkpad docking stations have DVI ports even though the laptop itself does not.One reason this might be heavier than other tablets is the included optical drive - lots of the ~3lb ones ditch that, and the whole case can shrink as a result.
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
Gateway does list the laptop as weighing .3 lbs less with a "weight saver" - I'm guessing a plastic piece that fills the ODD slot. I do have to say that ditching the DVD - except you would have an external unit - isn't a good move IMO. That's just marketing trying to cut weight at all costs. I suppose I could live without a DVD in a pinch, but I really wouldn't want to.People that will spend $200+ to save themselves two connections are a bit out there, I'd say. The DVI port could be useful, but plenty of laptops have those anyway. Heck, ditch the docking port connector and give us DVI and we'd be set. Heh.
Verdant - Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - link
a lot of people seem to refer to the screens as "touch screens" i thought they used some sort of circuit that involved the stylus. Do tablets have a "touch" or "digitizer stylus" screen? Or do both exist?Personally i would prefer non-touch screen as writing on those can be difficult with my left-handedness.