The lead engineer on the product was Howard Fullmer and other significant contributors included Bob Burnett and Rick Murayama.

Intel worked closely with IQV to include similar capabilities in the SL chip sets which were introduced in the mid-90s.

The HandBook had 640 KB of RAM, a 20 MB hard drive, and a monochrome blue-white CGA-compatible display.

It was possible to install Linux or OpenBSD on these computers; the HandBook 486 is probably the earliest Linux-compatible subnotebook released.

The HandBook 486 also has a pointing device similar to the IBM trackpoint located on the right hand side of the keyboard just above the enter key.

The Gateway HandBook remains one of the smallest laptops ever produced and was a precursor to Netbooks such as the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Inspiron Mini Series, and the Acer Aspire One.