Gateway M-6834 - Laptop Overview

I’ll start with the keyboard. Overall, I like it. The buttons are comfortable and feel firm and precise with each keystroke. The layout is your standard laptop arrangement. There is no numerical keypad, but the function key opens up another level of keys. I would like to see a backlit keyboard, but laptops with backlit keyboards are few and far between.

Next, we’ll move up to the speakers and shortcut buttons. The speakers are located on the back corners and offer acceptable sound. Still, you can definitely hear a difference between a dedicated sound card with a decent pair of speakers on a computer and the integrated speakers on this laptop.

The power button is on the left side and lights up blue. In the middle, we find the short cut buttons. I don’t like these at all. They may look cool, but their functionality is weak. The buttons are hard to push down and there's no indication that you've pushed them down enough until the application launches.

The volume control button is an exception from the rest. The button is touch sensitive and reacts according to the direction you move your finger. It is a little tricky at first, but it has a quick learning curve. I had success by laying my finger down in the center of the volume touch pad and moving it left to decrease the volume and right to increase it. You will know it went up or down when the blue light at the end of the pad lights up, confirming your request. It’s exponentially better than the other quick start buttons and is something I think that other manufacturers should start adapting to their technology.

The touch pad is good too. I’m a huge fan of the “feeling” type over the “glossy” type. The scroll pad on the right side works great, though sometimes you go into it without knowing and instead of moving the cursor down, it moves the view down. A little ridge separating the two would solve all these problems.

On top of the screen we have the 1.3 MP webcam. Over the past year or less, we have seen a big movement towards integrated webcams in notebook computers. What once was either an expensive upgrade or not offered at all has now become either automatically built in, or a cheap upgrade.

On the left side, we find an Ethernet port, 2 USB ports, the exhaust fan, and the multimedia card readers/Express card slot. You can definitely feel the hot air come out of the laptop, but the computer doesn’t seem to get very hot. The fan isn’t too loud, though it is noticeable when it is on. We also find the wireless card switch here as well.

The front has the headphone and mic lines. Opening up the laptop felt odd at first, as there aren’t any latches on the laptop to keep the screen securely closed.

Next: Laptop Overview continued >>
 

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