Entertainment notebooks have always been a tradeoff of sorts—bigger screens and more powerful processors for mediocre battery life. The rationale was that the inherently bulkier size and increased weight that is associated with entertainment notebooks would more than guarantee that the user would stay chained to his desk, or, at the very least, near an available power source. But today’s mobile generation will have none of that, and the need for an entertainment notebook that can keep up with upwardly mobile individuals has produced the Gateway ID58.

Saying that the ID58 is big is pretty obvious, but still needs to be said. Gateway has tapped Italian design house Pininfarina Extra for the ID58, and the design shows it. The clean, sleek lines and the angled speakers look extremely sexy, and the dark blue finish certainly sets it apart from the traditional black box design of notebooks. The 15.6-inch widescreen display is perfect for watching HD movies. There are plenty of USB ports (four) to connect external devices, with one doubling as an eSATA port. If you’re the sort that likes connecting your notebook to external displays, you have a choice between a D-Sub and a HDMI connection, with the latter connection providing audio as well. The ID58 features a full-sized keyboard complete with a numerical pad which is treated with the same metallic finish as the speaker grille. The touchpad is slightly offset to the right because of the size and positioning of the keyboard, and boasts multitouch capabilities. Above the keyboard sit touch-sensitive controls for Wi-Fi, touchpad, power saver shortcut and volume controls. A slot-loading DVD drive located on the right side rounds out the external features of the ID58.

The ID58 is equipped with Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU, which runs at about 2.53 GHz. It is complemented by 4GB worth of DDR3 memory, 500GB worth of hard drive space and an NVIDIA GEFORCE G105M video card. Sound is taken care of by Dolby Sound Room Audio Enhancement with high-definition audio support. As with most notebooks currently out in the market, the ID58 can connect via wired and wireless networking, and comes standard with gigabit Ethernet support and 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless compatibility.

The generously large 15.6-inch widescreen display is perfect for watching movies and browsing the net, as it gives users more real estate to work with. The powerful processor, more than ample memory and hard disk space make for a zippy computing experience—there hardly is any lag of any sort when opening programs or files. The keys have excellent travel and are easy to use, although the addition of the keypad and the offset nature of the touchpad take some getting used to.

Battery life is better than expected, as the ID58 clocked in at an amazing 3 to 3 ½ hours with conservative use. Normally this isn't much when compared to other notebooks, but considering the size of the screen and the power requirements of the processor, it is a pretty impressive feat.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the performance of the graphics card. For something that simply weighed more than a midsized notebook I was expecting more graphical punch out of it, instead I was left with a 3-kilogram notebook that couldn’t even run Crysis smoothly, a game made two years ago, in a higher resolution than 800 x 600.

All in all, the ID58 is a good entertainment notebook, and, aside from the underpowered video card, is perfect for multimedia junkies out there.