Hi everyone, excuse my rather long term of absence from posting. I have been held up with the very first and hopefully only inconvenience with my Convertible in a while. To begin with, it was the cause of my incomplete sense of technical issues and an unfortunate overreaction that shouldn’t have been happening. The long story is that the click tap on my executive stylus just wouldn’t work, and since I had very often had driver problem, to me the first logic thing was a reinstallation of necessary drivers. Gateway nicely puts a function in the Start menu that allows one to reinstall and update (almost) all drivers that had been shipped with the Tablet to begin with. Well, “almost” unfortunately meant NOT the Pen driver. So the only logic conclusion that popped into my head at that time was the ever-present recovery disc. I booted on the DVD and selected the Recovery version that promised to retain all personal data and settings. Cut short – it didn’t. One of the only and rather unpleasant change was that the (wide-) screen which runs at a native resolution of 1280 by 768 pixels decided to cut short and try 1024 x 768. Bad. It was so stretched the media player logo on my desktop looked a little a turtle missing legs and stuff. Also, the speakers seemed dead, the pen click still didn’t work, and all the trial software I had spent days on to remove was back again. The speakers had another surprise for me, as each time a windows sound would sound (and there are a lot after you just reinstalled xp!) the startup-beep-sound-monotone-speaker had a 100 decibels orgy. It was real nice especially when I tried to fix things software wise at 2:00 am in the night when my patents were sleeping. Anyways, fortunately there are the friendly and helpful Gateway Service Agents, which managed to help me understand what the problem was and fix it. Pen : hardware problem; Screen, Audio, etc. : Driver problem. OK, all good? Nope, there still is the fact that I can’t access the internet without a USB wireless adapter due to a broken Network Controller. It sucks ass. Believe me. Now that I’m done sharing my problems, I guess it’s time for the real review. I’ll just start out with the system specs and then say what I like about the Gateway, and what could be improved / what I would have bought if it hadn’t been for my wallets will. What really makes this Tablet a beast is the Intel Centrino Duo 1.6 Gigahertz processor. Try saying it rolling the “r” in Centrino. Makes it sound cool ^^ . The Dual core CPU is responsible for the incredible speed, battery power, low temperature and silence of the baby. Second best is a 100 GB HDD and a gig of RAM. The DVD burner matches that real nice and the 5 hour battery is a cream top of the amazing package. I have heard a lot of complaints about the battery because of it’s bulk, but I have not found a single negative part about it. It gives the base of the CX2724 a nice slant that is great for typing and a nice grip for standing and writing. AND it enables the awesome battery life that’s in the device. The keyboard is great to type on, even though I must admit I had some difficulties rethinking the keyboard layout from the German style to US American. I’m missing the sharp s and the “umlauts” so if anybody knows a free tool to i.e. have [alt]+[a] be [ä], please shoot me an email. I thought keytweak would do the job, but it’s just for remapping keys. I’m aware some people don’t enjoy having to use a Touchpad, but the EZ-Pad with dedicated scrollzone that Gateway put into this machine feels good, and I have used it for two weeks without pen and mouse without problems. I have now bought a really neat wireless notebook mouse to use with programs like Google SketchUp and to amplify the desktop feeling when I’m at home. The LCD screen is a little odd at first, because it rotates counterclockwise to hide the keyboard, unlike all other convertibles I know of. But the display itself is great! As I mentioned earlier it runs at a native of 1280 x 768 which is more than my 17″ external TFT monitor has. It is really bright, but even at the lowest brightness setting (which makes up to almost 6 hours of battery life possible) you can perfectly read what’s on the screen. An irrelevant but fun fact is that the Status LED lights are in blue and pink, which matches the Centrino Duo logo real nice ^^. I guess it sounds a little like I’m being paid to wrote all this, so is there anything I DON’T like about the Tablet? Yes, sadly there is. The magnetic latches that hold the screen down are a nice concept, and they work fine for a whole while, but they wear off after some time and you have to precisely place the screen down to fasten it to the notebook body. There also is the fact that it seems to be making me problems at accurately planned events in time. e.g. I had just set up everything perfectly, when the pen problem made me reinstall windows and… you know. But that’s probably just my fantasy sense of things. What Gateway could have also fixed is that they could have made ALL drivers reinstallable from the Start menu. My problem wouldn’t have happened. Also the great battery life and computing features are paid for with the mobility factor you would like to have from a Tablet PC (5.5 lbs say it all). Something minor is also that the speakers are in the front. Usually that’s a plus, but the slight slant that the battery adds, make the speakers face the desk top, which makes some distortion happen. Gateway could have fixed that by simply turning them upwards by a few millimeters. It’s not like there’s no space there. What kinda evens it out is that the Audio in/out jacks. This comes in handy when you carry your convertible in a Notebook bag, and have an automatic playlist shovel you your fine tunes (via headphones) while your notebook lid is closed and you are riding your bike or walking down the street. That’s about all I can think of right now, except maybe for the nice feat that I can lock the tablet buttons and power button below the screen so I don’t accidentally hit them when I don’t need them. I will post pictures soon, and I’m thinking of reviewing some software I use every day with my Tablet next time I get to type something. If you have any questions or ideas, post a comment or email me. Type to you later! //F2theD
. The OQO is nice for some, less for others, so if the 2.5 hour battery or the 2000something USD price tag keep you from ordering one right now, I suggest you take a look at the Tablet Kiosk eo with 7 inches of screen and a 120 gram touch screen for inking. (approx. 1000 US dollars at 512 mb, 40 GB and 1 GHz). *type 2 u l8er!*
