Gateway CX200X Tablet PC

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Gateway CX200X Tablet PC - Gateway's CX200X is our first tablet PC. We'll show you if this jack of all trades passes muster.

I had this system for two months, used it every day at work and school, and I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of the interface software. Of note is an Office program called OneNote, which is designed for Tablet PC’s. Just flipping through online guides, tutorials, and blogs on OneNote, the utility of this software package is astonishing.
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Please discuss our Gateway tablet PC evaluation here. Thanks for reading!
 
I was very surpirsed you were only able to run BF2 on all low on a 4 pixel pipeline X600. :eek: Those same settings plus putting Dynamic Shadows and Dynamic Light to low are what I run BF2 with on a 2 pixel pipeline 128MB XPRESS 200M with no problems, no graphical tearing both online and singleplayer. My brother's Dell 6000 has a 4 pixel pipeline 128MB X300 and he can set everything to Medium with no AA.

Apart from that little discrepancy, nice review. ;) :D
 
Good review, have you try using the omega drivers for the video card? It support alot more card and more recent than "some" manufactures.
 
Nice review. I've always been interested in tablets, but I've always decided to spend the money on gaming rather than utility or productivity. :D

The tech support response was a little disappointing. When you teach your techs to read from the book" rather than learning how to troubleshoot that is what they'll do.

I thought your gaming score was a low. I was surprised you were able to play all those games. I would have expected you to have to turn down the setting even lower to get decent performance or any kind of functionality. You explained "The score is almost solely based on the fact that this system isn’t meant for gaming." I still thought it held up well and was impressed by it's performance.

Also a thumbs up to gateway. A very solid product at a good price. (currently $1399.99 and $1099.99). Nice to see they dumped the bloatware too.
 
yujie said:
Good review, have you try using the omega drivers for the video card? It support alot more card and more recent than "some" manufactures.
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Yes, we tried the Omegas. They did not install - which frankly, surprised me. The ATI converter worked like a charm, though. I never tried putting the Omega drivers through the converter - something to try next time.
 
grizzed said:
I thought your gaming score was a low. I was surprised you were able to play all those games. I would have expected you to have to turn down the setting even lower to get decent performance or any kind of functionality. You explained "The score is almost solely based on the fact that this system isn’t meant for gaming." I still thought it held up well and was impressed by it's performance.

Also a thumbs up to gateway. A very solid product at a good price. (currently $1399.99 and $1099.99). Nice to see they dumped the bloatware too.
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Thanks for your comments!

I'll let Chris explain our policy on gaming if he wants to, but suffice it to say that because of the limitations of the graphics solution, there was a ceiling of performance that we couldn't get past. How we score our gaming experience has been debated amongst folks here on the forum - you might check out some of the other eval threads for the discussions on it. Might shed some light.

Personally, and as I said in the article, hell yeah - I was impressed that everything installed and we were able to play everything. Does that necessarily mean that our overall gaming experience was "good" or even "very good"? Not necessarily.

As I said in the article, Gateway has taken steps forward in every evaluation so far. We're really happy with them as an OEM.
 
Did you have any further problems with the battery you recieved via RMA? Did the 8 cell battery hold it's capacity, or did you not use it enough to notice?
 
Both the 8-cell and the new 12-cell worked like a charm. I used both of them for quite a while and never saw a capacity decline.
 
The review said the CX200X had 128MB of video RAM. The Gateway website only lists it with 64MB. Coincidentally, I've been tracking this laptop ever since Christmas (present for my wife) and finally ordered it last week. I've never seen it with anything but 64MB. Is your article wrong or did I mess up by ordering via the site instead of the phone? :confused: Either way, I think the article should be updated.

FYI, right now (and last week when I ordered) the X600 upgrade ($100) and a hard drive upgrade (60 gig -> 80 gig) are free. :D
 
But BF2 wouldn't can't even run on any 64MB card ive seen, much less a mobile one, so I don't think they have their tables mixed up, but correct me if I am wrong. :rolleyes:
 
Everest, the program we use for system monitoring, displayed the graphics card as having 128MB. I checked it just before I made the specifications table. I don't believe I have any screenshots of the specifications from Everest, but I'll rummage around.
 
My 2c...

Great to see a nice thorough, reliable HardOCP review on a personal favourite of mine - tablet PCs. Personally I use my Acer tablet at uni and currently take all my lecure and tutorial notes on it. As most of the course material is avaliable online, this means that I can always refer to a digital copy when I'm working. It dramatically cuts down on the amount of things I have to carry around, and also on the packing in the morning! I have a system of folders and tabs in OneNote keeping everything nicely organised, it's so easy to pull out notes that are a few weeks old to refer back to. Oh and all your notes are searchable!

In short I'd recomment the tablet PC to any college student looking to get more organised. You can find plenty of websites with lots more info - check out the tabletpcbuzz and studenttabletpc.

It's great to see some more variety in the hardware too - widescreen with a built in dvd writer, nice! Thanks for reviewing this HardOCP!

Dave x
 
one thing I see that is missing is the weight of the notebook. I think that is a big thing and I don't really see it. However I mighth have missed it I just skimmed most of the article (in class :) )

edit: NVM I found it on page 4 maybe that should be listed in the specs next time for those of us that are a tad slow
 
10lbs with the big battery?

I wonder how long before a revision sporting a dual core comes out? I guess my hangup is that I see little reason to buy any laptop with an Intel processor in it unless it is a dua core processor.

Now if Dell would just offer a real graphics solution in their E1505 or Gateway offer something similar... A nice 15" display and dual core power with a good graphics chipset would rock. Make it in tablet form and I doubt I would resist.
 
Duster said:
maybe that should be listed in the specs next time for those of us that are a tad slow
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Good idea - I'll make a note to do that for the next notebook eval. That's a key spec for notebooks. We always talk about it, but perhaps it should be part of the specs table, as well. Thanks for the input.
 
Nice evaluation, as usual.

What were the different screen configurations/ postions the CX200X capable of?

You mentioned that you could hold it like a book and write on it. I assume the screen folds flat with the outter shell agianst the keyboard?
It only turns counter-clockwise, but how far does it turn that direction?

I just feel that this feature was not covered as in-depth as I thought it would be for a tablet Pc. You might also want to explain better the stylus and it's storage.
 
The screen will rotate counter-clockwise 180 degrees. It's elevation can be anything you wish, but angularly, you're limited to only rotating it to the right. Once it reaches 180 degrees, you feel a light klunk, and you're able to lock the display down to the chassis for Tablet mode.

I took a picture of the only storage for the pen stylus. I went into it's shape, weight, features, and size. Anything else in particular you were interested in?
 
another thing i was thinking about was screen brightness/battery ratio stuff would be good to know

 
I just want to say that I'm really impressed with y'alls evaluations. (That's right, y'alls, I'm in Texas!) On one of your earlier laptop reviews I had asked about the comfort and air intake vents, among other things. I was tremendously pleased to see that you included all of that info in the article this time. As far as I'm aware, y'all are the only website on the net that listens to their readers so attentively.

Go [H]!
 
Thanks for the kudos! We're always happy to listen to good ideas on how to make the program better ;) .
 
DNA Doc said:
Come again?
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well one of the biggest things that drains my battery life is the screen and a way to save it is to make it dimmer. basically running it at its lowest setting and then at its brightess to see the diff.


but then again (was kind of still drunk when i was thinking that) you could do alot of batt test using wifi/not using CD/not

don't mind me

 
There are a ton of different variables that we could play with as far as the battery goes. For the sake of time, we choose some of the more common applications that one might use. If time permitted, some of those things might be interesting - how much battery does wifi take up, what's the difference in different screen dimness settings/resolutions, wifi vs 10/100, speaker sound level, etc......

Unfortunately, it's just not feasible because of the time investment that would be required.
 
DNA Doc said:
Unfortunately, it's just not feasible because of the time investment that would be required.
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yeah that is what i was thinking after my head started to catch up with my body

 
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