Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3940/gateway-id49-mixing-the-bag



Introducing the Gateway ID49C

We've seen a trend as of late towards sleeker, lighter mainstream notebooks. The days of cheap, bulky machines are slowly fading behind us as Intel's Core 2010 processors are being engineered into slimmer, lighter chassis. Gateway's entry (in some ways on behalf of its parent company, Acer) is the ID49C, a unit designed to be portable and at least a little flashy without being gaudy. Does it deserve to be shortlisted for your next purchase, or is the bling wrong-headed? That's what we're here to find out.

Gateway ID49C08u Specifications
Processor Intel Core i5-450M
(2x2.4GHz + HTT, 2.66GHz Turbo, 32nm, 3MB L3, 35W)
Chipset Intel HM55
Memory 2x2GB DDR3-1066 (Max 2x4GB)
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT330M 1GB DDR3 Optimus Technology
Intel HD Graphics IGP
Display 14" LED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768)
LG Philips LP140WH2-TLA2
Hard Drive(s) 500GB 5400 RPM Hitachi Travelstar Hard Disk
Optical Drive 8x DVD+/-RW SuperMulti
Networking Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet
Realtek RTL8192SE Wireless 802.11n (150Mb capable)
Audio Conexant Cx20585 HD Audio
Stereo speakers, headphone (combination digital out) and microphone jacks
Battery 6-Cell, 11.1V, 4400mAh, 48Wh battery
Front Side 4-in-1 Flash reader
Left Side Ethernet jack
Exhaust vent
Kensington lock
VGA
HDMI
USB 2.0
Microphone jack
Headphone/SPDIF jack
Right Side 3x USB 2.0
Optical drive
AC adapter
Back Side Nothing
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Dimensions 13.46" x 9.64" x 0.87-0.99" (WxDxH)
Weight ~5.0 lbs
Extras 1.3MP Webcam
86-key keyboard
Flash reader (MMC, SD/Mini SD, MS/Duo/Pro/Pro Duo, xD)
Backlit touchpad
Aluminum lid and inside surface
Warranty 1-year standard warranty
Pricing MSRP $849

Gateway seems to be betting on the form factor and style of the ID49C to sell the machine, but they at least didn't skimp on the configuration. The usual mainstream contenders make themselves known: married to the Intel HM55 chipset and two 2GB sticks of DDR3-1066 running in dual-channel mode is the Intel Core i5-450M processor. It's a dual-core affair sporting a 2.4GHz nominal clock, able to turbo up to a reasonably fast 2.66GHz. Intel's "Core 2010" series of mobile processors hasn't been very wanting for performance, and the 450M should allow the ID49C to handle most tasks with aplomb.

A welcome inclusion is the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, which brings NVIDIA's Optimus technology with it. Getting a decent mobile GPU in a 14" form factor from any vendor other than ASUS is actually fairly uncommon, so we're happy to see it here. The GT 330M isn't that exciting on paper: 48 "CUDA cores" and a 128-bit memory bus recalls the milquetoast desktop GeForce GT 220, but we're not looking to have our minds blown here, we just need enough juice to game comfortably at the unit's 1366x768 resolution. It does bring Optimus to the table, though, allowing the notebook to completely and typically seamlessly shut down the GT 330M and just use the Intel HD graphics built into the i5 processor when running on the battery.

Spec-wise, the rest of the ID49C is a bit of a head-scratcher, a mish-mash of poorly chosen cuts aimed at hitting a price point. There's a healthy amount of storage in the 500GB hard disk, but that drive runs at a meager 5400 RPM when prices on 7200 RPM notebook drives are going through the floor. In fairness you'll need the capacity, since there isn't an eSATA port or really any expansion connectivity other than the four USB 2.0 ports. There's also your bog standard DVD rewriter, but it doesn't have a physical eject button on it: you have to use the touch-based eject button above the keyboard. That makes sense for the kinds of in-built slot-loading drives you'll find on Dell's Studio series, but on a regular tray-based drive it's unusual. The standard multi-card reader and webcam are included, and the HDMI and VGA ports on the left side are welcome. Wireless networking is handled by a Realtek 802.11bgn controller, and the Ethernet jack is good for Gigabit wired networking.



The ID49C is a Land of Confusion

It's important to consider all facets of a laptop design in evaluating the overall build. Gateway tried to go upscale with the ID49C and produce something classy and stylish, something you might not immediately link to the Gateway name at first glance. What they produced is something that achieves that purpose in some areas, but there are other aspects of the design that completely miss the mark.

We'll start at the lid, which is admittedly very attractive. Accentuating the generally slender build of the ID49C, Gateway opted to use an aluminum alloy on the lid. It's basically aluminum over a plastic frame, and feels cool to the touch. Credit where credit is due: there isn't a speck of glossy plastic to be found on it (and very little anywhere else on the notebook for that matter.) Flex is actually pretty good and it, along with the matte plastic frame of the glossy screen, feels pretty firm. The build quality here at least is a lot better than we're used to seeing on other Acer and Gateway laptops, and certinaly a step up from Clevo's candy shells designed solely to house high performance hardware and not melt in sunlight.

What's inside is a welcome change from the glossy fingerprint-magnet hells we've come to expect from most of the other manufacturers, with a similar aluminum (or at least aluminum-looking) material used for most of the surface of the body. What little glossy plastic there is exists tastefully under the speaker grille, where the wireless switch and touch-based media controls are located. If the ID49C can be accused of anything just by looking at the internal design, it's that it's almost too spare and almost too plain. I'd sooner chalk that up to "you can't please everyone" than anything else, though.

Before I get to the backlit touchpad (a phrase that will seem progressively sillier as this review wears on), a personal note to Acer/Gateway: your keyboard sucks. Seriously, this is a terrible design. It was bad when it was introduced, and has only gotten more terrible over time as you've continually foisted it on every single notebook and netbook you've released since its inception. If it were possible to hate something to the point of combustion, this notebook would be a flaming effigy on my front porch because of the sheer force of my disdain for this keyboard as it mangles every single Acer and Gateway review unit that comes across my desk, producing a point of compromise on otherwise reasonable value builds where none need exist. The aluminum shell is a nice change, but frankly we'd rather have a plastic case with a better keyboard first.

Of course, it only gets better on the ID49C, and by better I mean worse. While the silver key surfaces are at least mildly attractive, the keyboard bows in the middle whenever you type on it. The half-sized arrow keys are a little difficult to use, but the worst decision has to be switching the standard column of document navigation keys to "Fn" combos on the arrows and then using those keys to handle volume control and smiley faces. No, really, the key that would be "Home" on any sane keyboard has a trio of smiling people on it, and when you press it, it opens Gateway's "Social Networks" application. The others are volume up, volume down, and mute—functions that up until this point were really just fine being "Fn" combos. Acer keyboards, and the one on this unit in particular, cause me extreme existential duress. I can't sleep at night.

But I did mention backlit touchpad, didn't I? Why yes, yes I did. It's a unified touchpad (meaning it has the buttons built in instead of dedicated) similar to Apple's MacBook Pro line, but without the careful thought that went into the design. This is one of the better implementations I've seen, but it'll make you a tapper instead of a clicker in a hurry. The rubbery surface is actually pretty nice and easy to use, but the best part is the backlighting. Whenever you touch the "button areas", the touchpad lights up with a full-bodied white LED backlight. This functionality can be toggled on and off, but the pressing question is why was it included in the first place?

You can easily make a case for backlit keyboards; even touch typists periodically need to get their bearings in the dark—especially if you're looking for a function key or an Fn combo. But that's more than eighty individual keys. This is a single, big touchpad that operates as a single, big button. There's no practical purpose for it, and the instant the other cuts made to the design and configuration pop into your mind it only becomes more perplexing. Here's a thought: Gateway can't do keyboard backlighting with the silly "floating island" keys, and rather than giving us a better keyboard we get...this touchpad.

The rest of the build is an exercise in compromise as well. The port selection on the ID49C is paltry and behind the times. If you're not going to include USB 3.0, at least include eSATA. I'm the only person left in the world who cares about ExpressCard and FireWire, so I can live without those two on this machine, but not having any way to access external storage at a reasonable speed beyond USB 2.0 is ridiculous. Not even a combo port. The port placement is at least fairly sensible, but the row of three ports on the right hand side does run the risk of getting in the way of your mousing hand.

Finally, Gateway actually does a great job with the internals, with just a single panel and two screws giving you access to the hard disk, the wireless card, and the memory. Unfortunately, there's no notch for you to slip your fingernail into to pop the panel off: you have to wedge a flathead screwdriver between the panel and body of the notebook and then use some force to snap it off. I was actually worried the panel would snap in half when I was trying to remove it, so a measure of caution is required. Once you're in, though, it's well designed and easy to upgrade the individual components.



General Performance with the ID49C

Our testing suite remains consistent with our previous test results, but what may make this a bit more interesting is the spread of i5-powered notebooks. Thanks to our ASUS reviews, we've got i5-430M and i5-450M notebooks sporting GeForce GT 325M and 335M GPUs, along with the Studio 14's Mobility Radeon HD 5470. This gives us a fairly level playing field when we move on to gaming performance.

The ID49C is performing pretty much where we'd expect it to, falling in line with the other i5-450M notebooks and even actually posting a slight lead on the ASUS machines.

Starting with the Futuremark benchmarks, PCMark Vantage's predisoposition to faster storage subsystems allows the ASUS units with their 7200 RPM hard drives to sail past the ID49C. PCMark05 is a bit more balanced, where the 450M is bested only by the quad-core 720QM in the Dell Studio 17; the 720QM has a nominal 1.6 GHz clock speed, but it turbos up to 2.4 GHz on two cores, allowing it to close the gap with the 450M in less heavily multithreaded applications. Peacekeeper remains inscrutable, with the ASUS units running at slower clocks posting minor leads.

When you spread out to Cinebench and the x264 benchmarks, the story remains the same, with the ID49C falling in line exactly where it should be. While it posts leads on the other i5-equipped notebooks, these leads are minor and within the margin of error. The extra 266 MHz the i5 is capable of under turbo mode allows it a slight advantage over the 720QM in the Dell, but that advantage is ceded the instant the two additional physical cores come into play. In almost all cases, the unfortunate Phenom II P920 in the Toshiba A660D brings up the rear. The 1.6 GHz clock speed is devastating to an architecture that's already slower clock-for-clock.



Low and Medium Gaming on the ID49C

The benchmarks we run in our gaming suite should provide some fairly interesting results, especially in placing the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M's relative performance against the 325M and 335M. The 325M sports 48 "CUDA cores" and a 128-bit memory bus just like the 330M, but at lower clock speeds, while the 335M moves up on the food chain and uses a harvested GeForce GT 240 die, running at slightly lower clocks than the 330M but bumping up to 72 shader cores.

There's a caveat to these results, however: for StarCraft II we had to manually tweak the display drivers to get Optimus to work with it (before we did the game ran at a constant 4fps, which is slow even for Intel's HD Graphics.) Also, there seems to be a bug with Optimus in Left 4 Dead 2 using the latest 260.63 drivers, where setting the game to 4xAA results in a blank screen. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the ID49C to run L4D2 with 4xAA on the 258.96 drivers either, something which wasn't an issue on the ASUS N82Jv. Those test results—for our "High" preset—are mostly academic as the 330M really isn't powerful enough to be pushing anti-aliasing anyhow, but it bears mentioning nonetheless.

Of course, all of this is going to be rendered fairly meaningless soon enough: GeForce 400M series parts should start trickling in soon, and hopefully they'll bring the kind of performance improvements NVIDIA has desperately needed on the mobile front. Optimus is a great technology AMD just doesn't have a counter for right now, but AMD's mobile parts are generally faster in their given classes. Hopefully with the 400Ms NVIDIA will be able to give us everything: better performance, DX11 support, and better battery life thanks to Optimus.

 

 

At these minimal settings, the GeForce GT 330M in the ID49C is able to post playable framerates on every game in our suite with room to spare. In most cases the testing units seem to be CPU limited, though the GeForce G 310M and Mobility Radeon HD 5470 are so anemic to begin with that even at minimal settings they threaten to bog down gaming performance. The exception is StarCraft II, where for whatever reason the Radeons seem to take it to the GeForces. The only Radeon not posting framerates over 80 is the HD 5650 in the Toshiba A660D, hamstrung by a slow Phenom II in a game traditionally CPU limited at even the highest settings. Also somewhat interesting is that the ID49C manages to best the GT 335M in the N82Jv in several games, despite sharing the same CPU. We'll see that once we up the quality settings, the GT 335M is able to take the lead.

 

 

Once we start to ratchet up graphics settings, our testing suite starts to separate the men from the boys, and it's here that the GeForce GT 330M unfortunately exposes the weak link in Nvidia's current (and thankfully soon to be retired) mobile lineup. The GT 330M is extremely common, but it consistently loses to the Mobility Radeon HD 4650. The 4650 is an old chip; when it dropped it was an absolute powerhouse for the market segment, but it's been around for nearly two years, and Nvidia is only just now getting around to answering it with the 400M series. Even the GT 335M has problems with it.

Taken in a vacuum, the 330M is able to produce playable framerates in every game we tested it in, but it doesn't have much headroom. Its bigger brother, the 335M, and AMD's newer Radeon HD 5650 both come out looking pretty bad too. The 5650 proves itself as an incremental at best upgrade over the 4650, although it's important to keep in mind that the A660D is CPU-limiting it and worse, the 5650 itself is clocked 100MHz below spec in that unit. But the 335M, despite having a 100MHz slower clock speed has 72 shaders instead of the 330M's 48, and it still barely holds a lead, likely because both parts have the same memory bandwidth.



High Gaming and 3DMarks

As I mentioned on the previous page, driver bugs in Optimus prevented us from running Left 4 Dead 2 with 4xAA, so those results are omitted here. The GT 330M isn't really cut out for anti-aliasing or gaming above 1366x768 anyhow, making those results mainly academic, but it still would've been nice to see it really reach for the stars in a game that's traditionally pretty forgiving of video hardware.

Once we move to our "High" preset, the 330M in the ID49C takes a swan dive and can only produce playable settings in Mass Effect 2 and, arguably, StarCraft II and DiRT 2 (only at native resolution.) As we said before, the results are academic, but they do serve to illustrate the immense gulf in performance between the mainstream-class graphics processors and their high-end kin. In fairness, though, these are settings the 330M wasn't really made to run.

 

 

Once we get to 3DMark, the GeForces start to accel, though 3DMark03 and to a lesser extent 05 seem to have some issues with being CPU limited. That's fair; 3DMark03 is seven years old at this point and wasn't designed to run graphics hardware this fast. It's still sad watching the G 310M and HD 5470 trail the mainstream parts, though. The solid i5-450M in the ID49C gives the GT 330M the support it needs to rank consistently high on these charts, and in 3DMark06 and Vantage the ID49C comes into its own and slots in right where it ought to be.



Can It Hit Gateway's Six Hour Claim?

Gateway claims a six hour battery life on their site for the ID49C, no small feat for a unit that boasts mainstream parts. To be fair, they do have a couple of aces up their sleeve: the GeForce GT 330M's Optimus technology allows it to power off completely while on the battery and let the Intel HD integrated graphics do the work, and the notebook can shut off power to the optical drive.

Also included is power optimization software that threatened to ruin our benchmarking sessions: with this software installed, even if you set the screen not to dim or turn off, it still will. The best part? There's no control panel to tweak those settings! Hot on the heels of the dismal keyboard comes my next pet peeve with the ID49C: software that takes control of the computer completely out of your hands and leaves you no recourse other than to uninstall it. Mercifully, this software is separate from the software that handles turning off the optical drive while running on the battery.

 

 

Well, if you leave it completely idle and don't touch anything, you can scrape nearly six hours out of the battery, and that's not too shabby. Once you start using the ID49C for other tasks, the battery life becomes somewhat less exciting. Internet usage knocks it down to a decent if unexciting 216 minutes, or about three and a half hours. That's not bad at all, but it's not great either, and it places the ID49C near the bottom of our charts.

Things do pick up when HD playback is introduced, where the ID49C is able to cull nearly three hours of running time: more than enough for most movies unless you were aching to watch The Lord of the Rings on a 14" screen. In fact, under this metric the ID49C ranks near the top of our charts and is only bested by notebooks that have the privilege of bigger batteries.

When you talk about battery life and power consumption, just how much a notebook needs to run the fan is introduced. Units like the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e will let the processor run uncomfortably hot to keep fan speed and noise down, so how does the ID49C fare?

To test thermals, we set the ID49C to loop 3DMark06 for more than an hour and left HWMonitor running in the background. There's a lot of information to break down here.

First, the good news is it's nice to see a notebook that doesn't threaten to cook the GPU: the 71C full load temperature for the 330M is actually pretty good comparatively speaking. If you remember, the ID49C also keeps the memory and hard disk under the palm rests, and while the hard disk isn't very fast, thermals remained excellent: a top temperature of 33C is fantastic, and you could install a faster 7200 RPM disk without worrying about making your palms sweat.

The bad news is that the processor is peaking awfully high. 92C is very hot, near spec for the chip. Fan noise when the system is under load is a little obtrusive although not as bad as some of the other units (the Studio 17 can get pretty loud, for example.) The real thermal issue is where that heat localizes. The exhaust is located on the left side of the unit, right under the keyboard, and the surface of the notebook can get uncomfortably hot. This hot surface is also perilously close to the WASD keys, meaning that while you're gaming you may find your left hand getting hot after prolonged gaming sessions. When the system is idling or not doing much, it's fine, but place a gaming load on it and it starts to become a real issue.



Another Dismal Notebook Screen

I've joked half-heartedly with some of the other writers and editors here that the screen section of our notebook reviews is under constant threat of redundancy, getting perilously close to being as pointless as reviewing laptop speakers. If one in twenty laptops produces halfway decent sound, then generally it's easy to assume the speakers suck and the exceptions to the rule are the ones that get brought up (example: the Dell Studio 17.) The same could be said of notebook screens.

The real problem is that while speakers often require a measure of physical space to produce quality sound, a good notebook panel isn't a matter of logistics. Unfortunately, we run the risk of repeating ourselves with the screen on the Gateway ID49C.

Ugh. Most of the other screens we have reviewed are pretty bad, so it's even more disappointing when the screen on the ID49C manages to sit at the bottom of most charts. While it's reasonably bright, the contrast on it is dismal and color-reproduction just as bad.

Even subjectively, the screen is unattractive. While backlighting and viewing angles aren't quite as terrible as some of the other review units, colors get washed out with alarming frequency, and the overall quality pales in comparison. If you wanted to nitpick, you might notice the dithering is also fairly poor and visibly noticeable. This is a bad screen even by laptop standards.



Lookin' for Bling in All the Wrong Places

To say the Gateway ID49C is a mixed bag would be a gross understatement: the notebook feels downright schizophrenic. On the one hand, Gateway has clearly tried to produce a classier, more upscale model, and in some ways they've succeeded. Aluminum styling is always attractive, and opting to use as little glossy plastic as humanly possible is welcome in a world where major companies like Toshiba and Dell still aren't fully grasping that "less is more." Which is to say: less glossy plastic is more attractive. The ID49C is very svelte, reasonably light, and offers fine performance in a portable form factor.

The problem is that when you see the investments made into using aluminum, getting the unit slim, and for the love of whatever deity you believe in, backlighting the touchpad, you can't help but feel like the whole design is wrong-headed. Gateway's answering questions no one was asking while leaving the usual problems utterly unchecked.

I'd trade the aluminum for matte plastic if it meant a better screen, replacing the keyboard with something useful, or at least adding a USB 3.0 port. But no, instead of a halfway decent screen or even a combo eSATA/USB port, we get a backlit touchpad. Backlighting the touchpad and getting rid of dedicated document navigation controls was more important.

It's hard to be positive about the ID49C when the trade-offs are so bad, because you sit there and you see where investments were made and where they should've been made, and you watch Gateway utterly whiff with the ID49C. The notebook has a lot of wasted potential; having decent performance under the hood is nice, but the keyboard and the screen are how you interact with a computer, and if those are bad enough to make you not want to use the machine, who cares how fast it is?

Viewed within a vacuum, the ID49C's $849 pricetag is justifiable and I could see someone walking away with one. It's slim, fairly attractive, and the specs are respectable. Battery life may not be exciting, but it's still very reasonable. The performance is a bit less than the ASUS N82Jv we looked at last week, but $150 less is something to take note of. Unfortunately, while the N82Jv wasn't a clear win, at least the keyboard and touchpad were decent. Unless you happen to be one of those who like this awful keyboard design—do such people exist? Enquiring minds want to know!—that coupled with the dismal screen and lack of expandability make this a much harder sell, and you're left staring at a backlit touchpad and wondering about what could've been.

Given NVIDIA recently announced their new 400M parts, Gateway should take the ID49C back to the drawing board and make a few judicious changes. Kill the glowing touchpad, give us a backlit keyboard (with no flex or flowing island keys please), and try to find a better LCD. And while you're at it, make one of the USB ports 3.0 compatible. For that, we'd happily pay $1000, but the current pricing ultimately reflects on the fact that Gateway cut the wrong corners.

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