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Rick Rizner, John GoddardUnder its plain silver-and-gray case, the latest version of the Gateway 450XL is a thoroughbred. From performance to features to design, we found little to fault in this 1.7-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M-equipped portable.
Our review machine's fast mobile chip, the latest from Intel, helped it earn a PC WorldBench 4 performance score of 125, slightly faster than the score of 122 achieved by the average 1.6-GHz Pentium M-equipped notebook we've tested.
Battery life is also impressive: just a minute shy of 5 hours in our tests. The large T-shaped battery power pack pops easily out of the bottom of the notebook, and a convenient LED power gauge on the end lets you check how much juice you have left. A $20 upgrade buys you a high-capacity battery for an even longer run time.
The 450XL offers not only currently common connections such as a modem and a...