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By Jim Forbes
When I first reviewed the Solo in 1995 I liked its performance, active-matrix screen and software bundle.
The latest update to Gateway's family of portables is the Solo 2100 Multimedia Notebook. It's available with a full complement of external ports (including an optional IRDA transceiver) and PCI-bus docking. It uses a bay to house either a 6X CD-ROM drive, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive or an optional second battery.
The unit I tested had a 133MHz processor, an 11.3-inch TFT screen, 16MB of EDO RAM, an integrated EZ Pad pointing device, integrated Sound Blaster 16 compatible audio and Super VGA video. It had a 1.2GB hard drive and measured 1.93 by 11.3 by 8.97 inches.
This notebook clocked an average score of 245MIPs when running our processor benchmarks. Its PCI video subsystem had a zippy three-pass average score of 8.2Mpixels per second. This is fast, but not as fast as notebooks we tested that used the NeoMagic video accelerator chip. The 2100's 1.2GB hard drive had a three-pass average uncached throughput of 3.0MB per second, an excellent score. The Solo breezed through our application macros, taking average times of 23.66 and 15.33 seconds to run our Word and Excel benchmarks.
One drawback is its battery life, which in my tests averaged between 1.5 and 1.7 hours of typical usage, a dismal score for a lithium ion model.
The Solo 2100 is worth your consideration. Its display and above-average performance make it another noteworthy portable from Gateway 2000.
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