Gateway Solo 9500

WHAT'S HOT: This streamlined follow-up to Gateway's gargantuan desktop replacement, the 9300xl, has the same expansive screen and Bigfoot dimensions but weighs 6 pounds less. The 9500's screen, the largest available on a notebook, measures 15.7 inches diagonally and offers a native resolution of 1280 by 1024. The notebook sports bays for removable drives on opposite sides of the case, with a DVD-ROM drive and a SuperDisk drive in our test unit. The optical drive bay can also hold a second battery or a second hard drive.

A multimedia-rich notebook, the 9500 offers an S/PDIF audio port on the right side and a composite-TV-out connection on the back. Of importance to graphics jockeys and others who spend their workdays performing processor-intensive tasks, the 9500 is the fastest notebook we've seen. Its combination of the Windows 2000 Professional operating system, a Pentium III-1000/700 processor, and a generous 256MB of RAM helped it earn a PC WorldBench 2000 score of 191.

WHAT'S NOT: An inch deeper and wider than most portables because of its screen, the matte-black 9500 is a slab of a laptop that would strain any airline tray table. It measures 1.8 inches tall by 13.2 inches wide and 11.3 inches deep. Although Gateway shaved weight by eliminating port covers and a few other features, the 9500 is still heavy at 8.2 pounds without peripherals, and it's noisy when both cooling fans kick in.

As with most other Gateway notebooks, the 9500's keyboard suffers from an overly loose feel and clacky sound. The built-in stereo sound on Gateway's leading multimedia notebooks continues to disappoint. There are no dedicated CD-player buttons, and the volume-control buttons above the keyboard are harder to use than in previous models: You could press and hold the 9300xl's buttons, but the 9500's require repeated pressing to lower and raise volume.