Beautiful Design, Low Cost

You don't need to spend big bucks to travel in style. Weighing in at only 3.2 pounds, the Gateway E-100M is slender, sleek, and (unlike other ultraportables) reasonably priced. Although the performance won't rock your world, it's good enough to get you happily through your day.

The high-contrast transflective display has a resolution of 1,280-by-800 and is ideal for viewing downloaded videos as well as text files and PowerPoint slides. Gateway keeps the keyboard simple, excluding extras like quick-launch keys, speaker grilles, and multimedia buttons. You get the necessities: a full-size keyboard, a touchpad, and a pair of mouse buttons. The system also includes an 80GB hard drive and a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which encrypts personal files and passwords.

Perhaps the greatest drawback to the E-100M is its lack of an internal optical drive, though that's how it stays so sleek. Also, the E100M's performance can be slow, as we saw in testing. It uses an Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2 GHz) and has just 512MB of RAM. The ULV processor's benefits are that it keeps the system cool and allows the tiny, three-cell battery to run for up to 3 hours.

The Gateway E-100M doesn't try to impress you by loading up on a bunch of bells and whistles. But it's ideal for anyone who needs to do basic Office tasks on the go.

Gateway E-100M

The E-100M is truly a treat to travel with, as long as you don't need to rely on an optical drive for entertainment. This slim beauty doesn't have one.

$1,574 direct

go.pcmag.com/gatewaye100m

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