Introduction:

Gateway is focusing on mass market retailers; according to Reuters "Gateway sales to Best Buy represent 39% of net sales during the year ended December 31, 2006." I know of Gateway since 1992 when I purchased only Gateway Desktop at my division. Business condition for Gateway has since been "struggling". This has nothing to do with the quality of Gateway products.

Laptop sales have been on the rise in the last two year. It is not uncommon to see a family of four having four laptops. Thanks to DSL and Cable internet connectivity, American families are emailing to each other sitting right at home. May be I exaggerate a bit here, but I don’t think I am far off. A good example is the low price of laptop today. This Gateway MT3705 packs with Dual Core and a few nice features is priced at ~$600. At the time of my purchase, a free printer was included in the price.





The top is covered with black aluminum facing in satin finish making it difficult to photograph. It's better than plastic from other brands.




In short, the MT3705 has very nice features; Duo Core T2060, 2x512 PC4200, 100GB HDD, 1280x800 display, wireless network, DVD R/W double layer etc.

What I did not find but found equally important are video out and built in microphone. They are inexpensive, and should make this laptop more "complete".

Closer Look:

With so much talk about Windows Vista, I will not add anymore unnecessary comment. However, I will highlight some of office productivity software and drivers that are necessary for ordinary users in a home or small office environment as we proceed.

If you are buying this laptop from retailers; likely they will ask if you want to make a system DVD backup for a charge of about $70. It is entirely up to you. I declined the offer because I use Acronis Image for my system backup. Or, Gateway provides "System Recovery" utility so that the users could burn it onto DVD disc. I strongly recommend all users to do this.

In the package:

• Windows Vista Upgrade DVD
  
• Product Key
  
• Operating System Disc
  
• Setup Guide and Starter Guide

Before we proceed, let's take a look at the crapware re-installed at the factory. Remember, there is no free lunch and most of the pre-installed junks are not free, but junks.:) I use Vista uninstall to remove all but the followings: MS Money 2006, Quick Time and Adobe Reader 8.0. Then, I installed my own licensed software such as Norton Antivirus, MS Office 2003, PhotoImpact etc.





Interesting and confusing to see the left label reads "Vista Home Premium" while the left says "Vista Basic" in truth the former was installed with media player and "aero" are in the package.


The "Ultra Bright" screen is too glossy with too much reflection to my liking


The keyboard is a bit flimsy; but I kind of getting use to it after a month.


From the front, microphone and audio jacks, speakers and two LED indicators for power on and battery condition (purple being charged and blue means fully charged).


On the right side; DVD R/W, RJ45 /RJ11 and VGA (D-Sub) connection for external display.


On the left side; CPU exhaust, 3-USBs, 4-in1 Media card and PCMCIA slots. The 3 USB placement is okay, I prefer to have a fourth one on the other side.



Closer look of the 4-1 Media and PCMCIA slots. The four media are: SD, XD, Memory Pro, Mini-SD with adapter. By the way, 4GB capacity cards are out of the question here. It works up to 2GB, anything higher you will have to get USB adaptor.

Removable components:

Being a low cost budget Laptop, MT3705 uses onboard ATI video without any upgrade path. A nice feature is the provision of 2 memory slots against "a single slot and onboard mounted" memory found in other laptops. With Windows Vista and memory sharing for video, you would appreciate upgrading to 2GB system memory later on.

The removable components are:

• Battery
  
• Memory slot access
  
• Wireless PCIe access
  
• Hard Drive

I found removing the HDD for future upgrade by removal two screws is easier than most. For PATA broken pin is common occurrence when removing the HDD. MT3705 reduces this risk. As usual, exercise caution in dealing with memory removal, static discharge is the main killer.

I guess buyers’ interest in MT3705 is the light weight. One or two pounds heavier may not seem a lot until you have to haul it around with other accessories long enough the heavier weight is no longer an option.



The Aero effect is nice, however the 1GB memory is not going to make it far. Within one week of use, I upgrade it to 2GB. We will take a look at the difference next.

Performance:

Laptop at this caliber is not meant for gamers. Knowing this before hand may save the disappointment later on. Therefore, I strongly remind you not to make comparison and if you must, compare the video performance with onboard video alike. However, if you are the type who tweak and overclock everything please drop a line at our forum.

The MT3705 is meant for office work and school other than video/photography and Cad design majors. Likely all sub one thousand dollars laptop are very similar. Having said that, let's take a look how it performs.

• Super PI 1M
  
• 3DMark 01, 03, 06
  
• 1 GB versus 2 GB system memory
  
• Sandra HDD performance
  
• Sandra Multi Core efficiency
  
• DVD ripping & burning

1 GB PC4200



2 GB PC5300






Without the expectation, your disappointment does not exist here. It will do fine with office application, DVD movie and photo work. (~2500 3DMark2001SE allows for a PC to play through Max Payne, the 2001 game, at 1024x768 maximum in-game detail).



SuperPi is not too bad in comparison to mid-range desktop of today.

There is a slight gain in performance from PC4200 to PC5300 asynch to FSB. Nevertheless, Vista operates much more "smoothly" with 2GB system memory. The single channel memory certainly does not help much.



Sisoftware Sandra



Windows Experience Index

Processor 4.5

Memory 4.2 (increase to 4.3 with 2GB)

Graphics 2.6

Gaming graphics 3.0

Primary Hard Disk 4.0

Knowing the 4200 rpm HDD is aimed at lower battery consumption with Sandra reporting only 24 Mb/s; SATA and 5400 rpm may improve the performance here. The ever slight improvement in memory from 1 to 2GB could very well be of higher latency despite higher speed from 266 to 333 MHz.

It took 19 minutes and 40 seconds to decrypt one of my favorite "The Thomas Crown Affair" DVD movie; only a few minutes slower than my AMD Opteron 165 @2.8 GHz desktop system with much faster HDD.

Power Tweaking/Battery life

Often time we use a laptop for reason of portability. Personally, I think the size of screen, keyboard/mouse and CPU power can never match that of a desktop. Working late at night crunching numbers with Excel, finalizing PowerPoint before the next morning presentation or preparing your final paper before the exam, it is better that you have an external 17” or large LCD display plus external keyboard/Mouse.

VPN eliminates the need to commute with a laptop for many business managers together with large capacity thumb drive. PDA and Blackberry keep most of us in touch with work without the bulky laptop riding the train, yet less productive than laptop with which sales are on the rise because they are priced competitively. Active people and college students will find laptop companionship close to that of a “soul mate”.

Laptop battery life has always been the most important factor, and more than a few neglected to consider prior to purchase. The MT3705 returned a 3-hour intermittent use (using power saver, sleep mode) on my last 16-hour non-stop flight. Watching DVD movie from CD will drain the battery in about 120 minutes; it will last longer running from the HDD. Flying first or business class, A?C power socket is provided. Then, you wouldn't be looking for budget laptop.:)

Using software to tweak CPU voltage may extend the battery further. A few weeks ago, one of our forum members pointed out the Notebook Hardware Control offers a free version to tweak down CPU voltage. When overclockers are raising CPU voltage to increase CPU speed for free, laptop users are trying to lower CPU voltage to increase battery life.



I found the lowest CPU voltage at 1.0375 volt from 1.215 volt default, almost 15% lower at full speed stability. The lowest the software provided for this CPU is 1.025; it would be nice if it provides even lower voltage to try.




There is no free lunch, Notebook Hardware Control also robs 4-8% CPU usage.

Vista Ready-boost may enhance performance, be sure to read our previous article SD, Memory Pro and USB Flash Ready-boost or not .

Software/Hardware Compatibility :

There will always be love and hate relationship when it comes to major O/S change over. You love it when all existing software/hardware in your procession works; hate it when some or none works with the new system leaving you the only option is to spend more money.

A matter of luck, both of my HP Officejet All-In-One 4215 and Okidata C5150 color lazer printer work with Windows XP drivers. The Logitech Navigator Duo (wireless) keyboard/Mouse is not supported at all, with no driver available six month after Vista introduction from Logitech.

Most of software programs from my old Dell D610 works, inclusive PhotoImpact 7, Office 2003 and even the 9 years old Mapsource from Garmin GPS. Intervideo DVD7, PowerQuest 2002 Drive Image and Nero Ultra don't. Of course, this has nothing to do with MT3705 itself more so than the operating system, Vista.

Thoughts & Conclusion:

Some of you may consider removing Vista and replacing it with Windows XP Professional; it does not work on MT3705 because of a lack of XP video driver from ATI and Audio driver due to proprietary OEM licenses. Should any readers find a solution, please drop us a line. Additionally, updating the wireless network card driver from Vista update might affect certain wireless routers not being able to recognize IP address. It happened to me twice, since, I stay with the original driver and ignore the update from Vista.

Personally, I have less issues with Vista than some. There is no perfect laptop because it is a product of compromise for the sake of size, portability, battery life, and price, amongst other factors. I found the MT3705 suits me well, particularly on the weight of about 5 lbs. It has the right size HDD of 100 GB; dual core for the simple multi-tasking requirements. Unlike others in similar price range, MT3705 comes with Vista Home Premium features Media Player and Aero versus Vista Basic which lacks the Aero *bling*.

An addition of built-in mic, TV-out or even a webcam would make it an outstanding buy at about US$600. The additional $90 on 2 GB Sodimm memory is money well spent on the upgrade. You could live with the 1 GB, but you may not be totally pleased.


Memory usage at idle


+ Price
+ Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
+ 100GB HDD
+ Two internal memory slots
+ DVD R/W double layer
+ Light weight
+ Vista Home Premium


- no Windows XP drivers for video- and soundcard
- Only 3 USB ports
- No TV-Out or Build-in MIC
- Too much glare from the "ultra bright screen"


Before you head out to buy your laptop for College in the next couple of weeks and you are going to have a lot to choose from; Gateway, Dell, HP, Acer and many more; make sure your existing printer you are bringing with has Vista driver support. Call up the school to find out if Vista is supported by the school IT department.

"Outlook" from Office XP is not supported by Vista; you must enter your account password each time to access email. There is no fix for this except upgrade to Office 2003 or 2007. Other than this, Gateway MT3705 is a great buy.