Mid-sized Dothan Notebook Roundup: Dell, Gateway, and HP/Compaq

Gateway M320XL: In the Field

Fan

Because this is the only notebook in this roundup to use something lower than a 2.0GHz Pentium-M Dothan processor, it wasn't a surprise to find that noise was less of an issue. It is very hard to hear the fan if you are just typing away at the office, but in a dead silent room, you can make out the low pitched whirl if you are paying real close attention. Otherwise, in a slightly noisy office, you would have to stop typing and put your ear close to the notebook to hear anything. Compared to Dell's D600 and HP/Compaq's NC6000, it is much quieter.

Heat

Likewise, as the result of a lower clocked CPU, the thermal emissions are lower for this notebook. It gets slightly less warm than the NC6000 or D600, but it is still warm enough to melt an ice cube if you gave it enough time. We aren't saying that the NC6000 and D600 would melt an ice cube fast, nor should you test this out; but rather, just a little quicker than the M320XL.

Keyboard

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The quality of the keyboard is shy of what we had with Dell's D600, which means that it is designed more for an average consumer-end notebook or lower. Our main problem is that the amount of tactile feedback that we are use to getting from business notebooks like the ThinkPad series isn't there. If you haven't used a large variety of notebooks, you probably won't notice the lower tactile feedback level. Even in our use, we grew accustomed to it after some time.

The control key and function key are located in the correct spot: control key at the bottom left corner and the function key to the right of it. The M320XL has dedicated page up, page down, home, and end keys, but unlike most notebook keyboards, they are arranged vertically on the right end. It just takes a while to get use to if you are jumping over from a desktop or a keyboard scheme similar to that of the D600 or NC6000.

TouchPad & Buttons

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The touchpad and its buttons are spaced reasonably well, and we have no qualms about it. However, we would have liked to have seen more texture to the touchpad, like we have seen on other business notebooks. Additionally, the way the LEDS are positioned, it is near impossible to see them, if you are using the touchpad. They should be relocated to the space above the keyboard. There is a picture on the next page that shows them lit up. In the picture above, they would be seen in the translucent black piece of plastic.