As most of you know my mobile workstation/gaming machine for the past year and a half has been my beloved Toshiba Qosmio X305 laptop. Now I personally wouldn’t call it a laptop per se because it weighs in at around 12 pounds and is almost 3 inches at the thickest point when closed. It is a real beast and has every right to be seeing as Toshiba has crammed everything that a gamer could ever want into a laptop. However I am moving into a more professional period of my life and while the Qosmio X305 is a nice looking hot-rod of a laptop it is not professional looking. So seeing as my brother has had a Gateway P7807u that is very similarly equipped we decided to trade laptops (but we swapped our hard drives).
Today I have used the Gateway for about 8 hours and I am quite happy with the change. Not only is it slimmer than my Toshiba but the battery life is a bit better. The Qosmio got between 1 hour to 1.5 hours of battery life whereas the Gateway is getting between 2.5 and 3 hours. This is a big plus as I am not having to be tethered to the electrical outlet as much. The response time is a little better than the Qosmio but only because I setup a RAID 0 between my 2 500GB 7200RPM hard drives. The Qosmio had spots for dual hard drive but the BIOS had the RAID option disabled.The RAID 0 array nets about 200MB/s on the HD Speed benchmark.
As for what I don’t like about the Gateway there are only 3 things that I have a minor gripe about.
1. There is no integrated bluetooth radio. Now this model did not come with it but I am finding that I can BT for about $25.
2. The CTRL and the FN keys are reversed. This is a major problem right now because when trying to play a video game the CTRL key is commonly used to crouch down in game.
3. The speakers. Now as for laptops go the speakers are average but when compared to the Qosmio’s Harman/Kardon speaker setup it is vastly inferior.
One major plus is that I am able to easily upgrade the LCD panel to 1680×1050 or 1920×1200 for around $120. All in all I will be keeping the Gateway as my new mobile workstation.
I am an IT Professional with many years of experience in everything from network design to video editing. This blog is an outlet for my technology thoughts and a central place for employers to get to know me.
