DISQUS

ZaraByte · 5 months ago

Yeah I bought one of theses last night from BestBuy good system just comes with unneeded stuff had to uninstall sadly its pre-loaded with Vista which will bring software problems I'd like to downgrade it to Windows XP gotta see if I can find drivers for the Gateway LT3103U that will work with XP hopefully Windows XP will install must of the software by default only need to get the wireless and webcam and possibly audio drivers and should be fine Gateway said taking Vista off Voids the warranty so heh.

krunker · 5 months ago

Make sure to create recovery DVDs before you downgrade your system to Windows XP. The system doesn't come with Windows Vista DVDs so you'll need to create the recovery images yourself. This also assumes you have an external CD/DVD burner readily available. You'll be able to burn two types of recovery discs - one for straight up system recovery and another containing backup copies of applications and drivers.

You should be able to find drivers for all of the components on the system. I'll try and install Windows XP Professional at some point in the next few weeks too.

aaronwt · 5 months ago

Having VISTA is one of the things that helped make my decison to purchased this Netbook.
I hate dealing with XP. I've never had any problems with my six PCs with Vista installs.

krunker · 5 months ago

I certainly have no issues with Vista itself - I just prefer the speed of either Windows XP or Windows 7 over Vista. With the single core Athlon 64 L110 clocked at mere 1.2 GHz, Vista Home Basic is feeling a bit of a dog.. though luckily the system does come with 2GB of RAM.

krunker · 5 months ago

@zarabyte - I installed XP Professional last night and wrote up a quick guide to doing so in case you need some hints.
http://www.netbooktech.com/2009/07/02/installin...

enjoy!

aaronwt · 5 months ago

Thanks. I looked at this and the 1005HA eee PC today at best buy.
I'll be getting the Gateway later this week.
Looking forward to reading your in-depth review.

jeff · 5 months ago

What graphics and WiFi drivers did you use under the 64-bit windows 7?

krunker · 5 months ago

@jeff - The first thing I did was make the application/driver recovery dvd from the Gateway Recovery program (can't recall the name right now but will figure it out when I finish the review). Then after installing Windows 7, I popped the DVD into my external DVD drive (oh yeah this assumes you have an external DVD drive) and loaded up the Atheros Wireless LAN HB95 driver (took a guess and it worked) and then the AMD NB Chipset VGA driver. The graphics driver didn't take hold on reboot so I forced 7 to find drivers manually and then it found the appropriate ATI drivers.

jeff · 5 months ago

So out of the box, installing 64-bit Windows 7, the video and wi-fi will not recognize.

I manually installed wifi drivers from the ones built into Windows (choose driver, uncheck "show compatible"), and choose the Atheros 5B895 driver.

Once wireless worked, Windows 7 showed a MS update for the Radeon X1200 series driver (despite the system showing "Generic PNP VGA adapter") Once the update was installed, with a reboot, the system had working video at the native resolution.

So, it's possible to do without a external DVD (though burning the recovery DVD is a highly recommended idea).

With 7, the system is marginally smoother, though it still CANNOT run Hulu @ 480p in full screen mode. Interestingly enough, if you downgrade the resolution before starting Hulu in full screen, it actually gets better/smoother.

krunker · 5 months ago

@jeff - sweet. That's awesome that you were able to do that without an external drive.
I think I'm probably biased towards windows 7 now since I use it day in and day out everywhere - at work and at home. Although it's probably marginally faster than Vista Home Basic with the latest SP installed, I just prefer the look and feel of 7 (with the new UI enhancements etc).

Having said all of that, I've installed Windows XP Professional now on the box for testing purposes (need some benchmarks etc) and man.. the OS boots fast (tho I wish it was Moblin v.2 fast).

mkanet · 5 months ago

Sorry for the double-post. I'm not exactly where to post a new question.

I'd like to know all of you that installed Windows 7 64 bit, how you managed to pull off getting the card reader to work, I tried the Realtek USB 2.0 card reader drivers from Acer's site with the 64 bit drivers in it, but nothing changes after running the executable. I'm guessing because there isnt a respective yellow exclamation mark for an SD Reader. The system should show the SD Reader in the device manager, but it doesnt. How do I get Windows 7 to show the SD reader in device manager so I can even install the driver.

Thanks!

Michael · 5 months ago

Just a quick question to those who have this netbook...how long is it taking to charge the battery? I have drained the battery on mine and it took 7hrs to fully charge the battery back up. Is this normal? I want to make sure...because if it is not, I need to take it back and exchange it. Thanks for your help on this!

krunker · 5 months ago

I actually didn't time my charge. I'll try and figure this out for you the next time I drain my battery but if it's consistently taking that long for you, I would certainly return the unit.

krunker · 5 months ago

OK.. I'm going to try and install Windows XP Professional tonight on the Gateway box. I'm doing this:
1. to see what's involved and
2. to run benchmarks that I can then compare against other netbooks which typically run Windows XP Home Edition (close enough IMHO).
Hope to have a step by step tutorial at some point.

krunker · 5 months ago

For those of you interested, here's my quick guide to installing XP Professional on the netbook.
http://www.netbooktech.com/2009/07/02/installin...

It's probably not the only way to do it.. but it was what I came up with last night. Hope it helps.

Bill · 5 months ago

So here's a question for the class. I value power much more than battery life. Since this uses a RS690E chipset, would it be possible to take, say a Turion X2 bought off of ebay, open this baby up, and put it in?

I know the battery life would be cut in half or more, and it would void the warranty, but is it doable? Could the power supply and cooling handle this sort of thing? Will the motherboard recognize the processor or do you need some sort of software or hardware clock setting thing? Is the processor soldered on or socketed?

If possible, for a total of maybe $450, you'd have a perfectly usable, fully functional ultraportable, without the cripled usage you get with these single core low power processors. If battery life goes down to like 2 1/2 hours, or even less, I could live with that.

krunker · 5 months ago

@bill - that's certainly an interesting idea although I think you'll also have to worry about whether the heatsink would be capable enough to handle the dual core Turion processor. I guess we'd have to look at the TDP of both processors although I have a hard time finding info on the Athlon 64 L110 (though I haven't looked in recent days on the AMD site).

I wish I could say I'd try this right now but I'm not sure I have the guts to do so yet :)

DT · 5 months ago

Well ... the L110 is rated @ 13W

http://sg.gateway.com/products/product.html?pro...

jose · 5 months ago

Just wanted to throw in my two cents.

I just bought this laptop last night. I think its going to last me a long time; at least from here until I finish graduate school in about 3 years. It handles itself like a notebook but is still very compact and light.

I also downgraded to XP and it works like a champ, thanks to your guide by the way!

krunker · 5 months ago

Glad the guide helped!!

bmartin · 5 months ago

Has anyone tried using Ubuntu netbook remix or better yet Jolicloud OS on this thing?

krunker · 5 months ago

I'd love to give those OS's a spin on the system - just need some time to do so.

Joanmarie · 5 months ago

I couldn't resist picking one of these up. :-) I installed OpenSolaris on mine and am somewhat surprised at how well it runs given the single-core processor. Mind you, I haven't actually tried to build anything on it; merely doing netbooky tasks. :-)

Question for the Windows users: Is your fan on all the time? Mine is. It's not loud, and the system is not particularly hot. But the I find the constant running of the fan curious. (And, yes, this is my first netbook.)

fixture · 5 months ago

Hi, could you post a lspci on the lt3013? Also, is powernow running on opensolaris to scale down the cpu frequency? Thanks,

Joanmarie · 5 months ago

scanpci: http://pastebin.com/f5c4c7e94
prtconf -v: http://pastebin.com/f731c0b64

As for PowerNow: According to the information I received from AMD, PowerNow is not implemented on this processor period. So it's not an OpenSolaris issue. See also this (brief) thread on the issue: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?thr...

James · 5 months ago

Hey joanmarie,

I'm glad you like your gateway netbook too. I am a bit suspicious of the PowerNow feature. Could it be that the AMD might support it but the gateway BIOS is what is not enabling it. I checked on the opensolaris forum you mentioned that there were no PowerNow settings you found in the default BIOS.

Out of curiosity, could you please try using a great power saving utility (windows only) called RM Clock (cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml) and try to check if its possible to do what the BIOS and PowerNow would have 'automatically' done, manually ... i.e tweak the voltage/ frequency to optimize battery and run it a little more cooler? RM Clock can easily let you 'underclock' when idle AND 'overclock' when under load ... care to share your experience with it? - Thanks, James

Joanmarie · 5 months ago

Given that AMD has told me that this CPU does NOT support PowerNow, my guess is that your suggestion that "AMD might support it but the gateway BIOS is what is not enabling it" is erroneous.

And, no, I'm afraid I couldn't try using a "windows only" utility because I don't use Windows. Sorry!

fixture · 5 months ago

Wow, Joanmarie, thanks for the info.

Could you tell if the process P-state and C-states are working if there is no frequency scaling? Also, if powertop exists on solaris, could you read off the power consumption on typical usage? I guess the number kinda depends on whether the Opensolaris kernel is tickless or issues halt on idle. Thanks

James · 5 months ago

@Joanmarie

Thanks for the info. How much battery life do you get on a single charge?

krunker · 5 months ago

@joanmarie - that's pretty cool that you got opensolaris working. How was the driver support for you? Did all the components work under OpenSolaris??

As for the fan - it's not too bad but occasionally under high load you do hear it whirring away. I honestly don't notice the fan but that's also b/c I tend to be surrounded by a lot of systems at home so the sound gets washed out by the ambient fan noise :)

Joanmarie · 5 months ago

@krunker - Yeah, it all just worked out of the box with only one (temporary) exception, the wifi adapter. But the OpenSolaris laptop community has a driver for that available. Easy to install, worked as expected: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/...

Thanks for the fan info! It's definitely quieter than my desktop systems. And seems to be quieter than my Toshiba laptop. While the fan *does* run all of the time, in retrospect I think I was being hyper-sensitive. :-)

prometeum · 5 months ago

Hi, I've just bought it but I have a problem: it didn't come with any driver nor system discs. I can't use the recovery backup because I can't buy an external drive and site Getaway doesn't have the drivers online. how can i get a copy of the drivers?

Does anyone know if there's a way to backup the drivers to a zip or iso using the recovery feature.
thanks!

krunker · 5 months ago

I do recommend that you pick up an external DVD burner for yourself. They're fairly cheap to get these days. With that said, I'll try and see if I can zip up the drivers at least and put them up on netbooktech.com for ya. Will let you guys know soon.

mkanet · 5 months ago

Krunker, could you please do me a huge favor and look for the AMD chipset drivers that comes on your DVD? I made the mistake of installing Windows 7 without creating the DVD. I need the chipset drivers (particularly the 64 bit ones for Vista). I have looked for hours and cant find them anywhere on the Internet; and, of course, Gateway doesnt provide these Laptop's drivers online. The Acer website has the chipset drivers for the Intel mobile platform only. You can email me at mkanet@yahoo.com.

mkanet · 5 months ago

Any who can help, I'd greatly appreciate it! I need these drivers to expose the SD controller so I can install the cardreader drivers (I already have the cardreader drivers).

obocho · 5 months ago

I just bought LT3103u, but I cannot find any driver.
The worst thing is that already installed Win7[from USB Key], and now I have no internet [since I cannot install my WLAN Card]...

If you have any idea how to install WLAN on Win7, please let me know.
Thanks in advance...

PS: assuming that my card is atheros, I tried all possible atheros drivers.


SOLVED: http://www.station-drivers.com/page/atheros.htm

mkanet · 5 months ago

I'd like to know all of you that installed Windows 7 64 bit without a hitch, how you managed to pull off getting the card reader to work, I tried the Realtek USB 2.0 card reader drivers from Acer's site with the 64 bit drivers in it, but nothing changes after running the executable. Completely overlooking the cardreader is easy to do since there are no yellow exclamation marks in the Windows 7 64 Device Manager to even try to manualy upgrade the device driver. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

jefferios · 5 months ago

mine worked just fine on Windows 7 RC. (card reader) I don't know what you will need to do.

Has anyone noticed that Gateway just released a new netbook which is 10 inches. It has a Atom processer.

JamesT · 5 months ago

Yeah jefferios, but its a lower end atom model with half the battery (3 cell), less screen resolution (1024x600) smaller HDD (160 GB), less RAM (1GB) for just $100 less than the LT3103u.

Enough reasons to conclude that the LT3103u is a better bargain, IMO.

mkanet · 5 months ago

Yeah, all I had to do was put a flashcard in and it worked fine. I was used to Vista where it shows the drive letter even when there's no flashcard in the reader. The drive doesnt show up until I put the card in.

On another note, I couldnt be happer wit this netbook. It's still much much faster than any other netbook that I've seen (even netbooks priced much higher) and definitely the best screen I've seen period on a netbook (brighter, crisper higher res) when compared to all the other netbooks. the 11.6" 1366x768 screen is the "sweetspot" for netbooks; at least for me. I also could never get used to 10" netbook keyboards that are smaller than full size.

BTW, I've come to realize that the Atom processor completely sucks compared to the Athlon 64 in this PC; at least when using 64 bit Windows 7. The 1.2Gz version of the Atom proccessor and respective Intel chipset is unusably dog slow. I know, because I had both this the LT3103U and the Acer One A0751H side by side. Im guessing Intel Atom CPU would need a 2Ghz processor or faster to compete with the AMD 1.2Ghz.

I never really cared for AMD before; in fact this is my first AMD based machine ever since AMD were first made. But, this machine just screams with speed and responsiveness with Windows 7 64bit (using the latest 64 bit drivers, chipset drivers).

The only problem I have is I cant find a place that sells 3cell batteries for this netbook (or the Acer A0751H). The only way I know how to get it is buying the 751 just for it's battery. But thats being very picky. It just would be nice to have the 3 cell battery available as well.

angelo · 5 months ago

I wonder how linux will do on these machines. They are pretty nice - saw one today at best buy and am considering it.

jimslinux · 5 months ago

Typing on my new Gateway LT3103u 11.6 inch netbook, using both OpenGEU Linux as I like the enlightment 17 GUI, look and feel and also Crunchbang or #! linux for its speed.
Crunchbang went without a hitch. 64bit linux with background apps. totally controlled is making it real difficult to choose the windowz boot on the grub menu.
OpenGEU went well except, since it uses a little bit older Kernel, I had to install the newer Ath9k for this wireless chip-set.
Also the ati radeon x1270 is no longer supported in the fglrx driver. I am using the opensource radeonhd to chipset but out of using heavy compositing. I Have a separate harddrive that I plan to experiment with using Radeonhd x1200 as well as other Ati/Opensource drivers. If I blow it up, to the point beyond xorg.cofig then just reinstall.
Midori browser loads instantly, Firefox a little longer but can watch apple movie tailors, any size, in full HD using totom-browser plugin, sweet!
Touch pad and scroller worked out of the box in live CD mode.
Yes I bought the CD/DVD Asus 08D1S-U. This black, glossy little thing, looks outstanding next to this little netbook.
Gateway releasing Atom 270, after others release there 280's and Z530/40's surprises me.
Can't get enough of this little thing.
Final note that battery life in windows is much longer then Linux, but after two hours and a half my coffee shop is throwing me out anyway.

tirnaog · 4 months ago

How did ye manage to get win764 on this PC without a external DVD drive?

jcoeng · 4 months ago

I just purchased this same system and installed Win7 x32 RTM on it but can't get the video drivers to work. I also installed the AMD/ATI VGA chipset from the Gateway support website but this didn't work, I am stuck at 1080x768 and can't go up to 1366 nor access the Catalyst Control Center.

I was able to get the wireless working without much issue but I'm having trouble getting all of the touchpad functionality back. What drivers did you install for the touchpad?

Any ideas on the video?

Thanks,

mkanet · 4 months ago

The driver actually comes from MS Windows Update. You definitely need to hook it up to the Internet to get the right display driver. Where exactly did you find the AMD/ATI chipset driver? I find the southbridge ATI driver from ATI and manually forced to load the ATI SATA/IDE controller drivers for Win 7 64 bit.

jcoeng · 4 months ago

Got it direct from Gateway Support site...
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/sear...

I didn't have an issue with SATA/IDE drivers, only the video and touchpad.

Any idea what touchpad drivers you are using to keep the multitouch etc.

mkanet · 4 months ago

Here you go... its from the Acer support website for the H751 netbook. You can find other drivers too like the sound driver if you want to try it.

http://global-download.acer.com/GDFiles%5CDrive...

mkanet · 4 months ago

It looks like the direct link is too long to enter here. Just go to

http://support.acer.com/

Driver Downloads/Netbook/Aspire One/A0751h

ichoXvida · 4 months ago

im running win7 x64. Using synaptics touchpad driver from the aspire one 751 support downloads, the x1200 series driver from amd/ati's download page (it's under integrated - mind you the driver is legacy) the Atheros hb35 wifi driver from the gateway driver disc (made by the restore prg) - GATEWAY has these drivers now on their site. Using beta google chrome, it's at version 4.0.202.x now (might be dev build)

Running bitcomet 1.1.4 and trying to use facebook and youtube videos in differnt tabs does dog it down but thats only annoying and nothing more. honestly you'd be rather inefficient if you're running a bunch of programs for no reason, you can't be paying attention to all of those tabs so having more than 3 tabs is really pointless.

it's a shame Flash is a cpu-hog. thats something Adobe should be responsible for, making the flash plug-in scaleable, theaded, and add the possibility for hardware-acceleration is the only way flash video will ever be useful on netbooks such as this l110 or the n280 cpu.

regarding external dvd writers. if you already have a desktop with a dvd burner internal of the ide/sata type and you feel cheap. I'd suggest something like this usb dongle, most computer shops with carry some version of it and it's not that expensive: http://bit.ly/IYptL or ebay search for ide to usb or ide to sata. for 15 bux you get to use your full size dvd burner. or hard drive or whatever.

Buy web hosting · 4 months ago

I know the battery life would be cut in half or more, and it would void the warranty, but is it doable? Could the power supply and cooling handle this sort of thing? Will the motherboard recognize the processor or do you need some sort of software or hardware clock setting thing? Is the processor soldered on or socketed?

Thanks and Regards

ichoXvida · 3 months ago

The processor was found to be swappable but major modification was needed for adequate cooling, and as of yet there isn't a simple solution, most of the posted cpu swaps are severely underclocked from the capability of the swapped cpu (still faster though from the stock L110) and unstable without the appropriate cooling mods required...

thoi trang · 3 months ago

Hi, could you post a lspci on the lt3013? Also, is powernow running on opensolaris to scale down the cpu frequency? Thanks,