First Impressions - Gateway P-7811FX

This is a review I posted on another forum. Since Gateway and Best Buy won't allow me to post this on their website (strange), I'll post it here:

These are my first impressions of the Gateway P-7811FX. After reading many rave reviews on several different websites and sources, my experiences may surprise some.

PROS: Attractive specs and price

CONS: Pretty much everything else

DETAILS:

Have read the many "expert" reviews on Best Buy's website that so "highly praise" this product, I actually went out and BOUGHT one. Sadly, I must tell you, it is a useless piece of rubbish.

For starters, the build quality is as cheap as they come from China. The bezel on the optical drive always catches when you try to close it, so much so that it came off in my hands after only a few disc swaps. The battery on the back squeaks and wobbles because the holding mechanism uses only a single latch. The clickety-clack mouse buttons feel cheap and are annoyingly loud. The shiny gloss finish on both sides of the lid attracts fingerprints like mad - you'll be wiping it after every use.

Second, the LCD has serious backlight bleeding problems along the bottom, making dark scenes in DVD movies dvd movies impossible to watch.

The speakers on this laptop are also horrendous. I'm talking almost transistor radio quality. They are so bad, you will not want to listen to music on this.

But the most serious problem though, is with the graphics. No matter what game I tried (and I have a dozen altogether) all have failed to run on this machine because it would simply freeze and lock up. And I'm talking serious lockups, where the display would freeze, the keyboard would go dead and the only way to get out was to hold down the power button until the unit rebooted.

This is NOT a driver related problem, it is defective hardware. I tried MANY different drivers (laptop2go.com and even the updated Gateway driver released on 9/9) and none worked - the machine would lock up 5-20 minutes into any game.

I should NOT have to spend hours searching online for drivers and stress-testing a laptop just to make sure it works properly out of the box. Gateway makes the customer do it's quality control??? - that says everything!!!

Trust me, I have had three units returned to one BB store already with this problem, another 2 returned to another location and am looking to see if other stores all carry the same defective units.

For something that is advertised as a GAMING LAPTOP, it is COMPLETELY USELESS. I have not been able to get ANY GAME of mine to run on the units that I have been through so far, and no driver update in existence is going to fix a hardware issue.

One final pet-peeve of mine, especially for something touted for gaming, is the compressed cursor key (arrow key) arrangement on this laptop. From my experience games mostly use 8 keys on a keyboard, the WASD keys and the up/down/left/right arrow keys. The arrow keys on the Gateway are spaced very tightly together, making comfortable use difficult if you have larger fingers. While most average users won't care much or pay attention (or even gamers themselves at first), you will realize that having full-sized cursor keys makes a big difference once you see what it's like without it. This is a 17" form-factor with plenty of keyboard real-estate, I see no need to compress the cursor keys, and many other manufacturers do have laptops laptops with the proper cursor key spacing on them.

Also, watch out - the control and function keys have been swapped around on the bottom left. Why the hell they would do that is beyond me.

Best Buy needs to pull these units quick and should send them back to Gateway or have them issue a recall. Gateway also better have a warehouse big enough to handle the RMA pile.

I am well aware that there are plenty of users out there that have perfectly working P-7811FX units out of the box, but I have also seen just as many users with units showing the same problems as I have described here. I cannot explain why this is, and perhaps Gateway may have an answer for us. My guess is they have made some changes in the past few weeks since the unit was announced. I can only hope that as this is the first of the Montevina units to go retail the ODM will correct the flaws in the coming months and have something that I can look at again maybe later this year.

On the plus side though, I do have to admit is an easily upgradeable unit - CPU, HDD, RAM and optical drive are all user-replaceable. With a 9800GTS GPU and WUXGA screen already installed, it would seems worthwile for hard-to-please users to bump up the unit with a Blu-Ray blu-ray drive, T9600 CPU, and add a second hard drive later on.

While I know some others will criticize my review here and come flaming back at me, the bottom line is I have had 5 out of 5 units fail, and have yet to get my hands on a working unit that HASN'T.

RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT BUY!!!

 

good thing I got mine before I read some discouraging thing like that. well, I guess I was busy playing crysis for the last 5 hours.

 

Luscious: The quality control problems on the FX are well documented, and many members have been forced to go through multiple units to find one that works flawlessly. However, with this laptop being $500-$1000 cheaper than its closest competitor, it's up to the purchaser to decide if the gamble is worth the hassle. For many people, it is.

Everyone Else: Very mature guys. People are allowed to say bad things as well as good things about a laptop. As far as negative reviews goes, this one's pretty composed. Not once did I hear the words "lawsuit" or "class action", and that's enough to pass my test.

My Opinion: I disagree with the build quality stated in the review. The Gateway FX has quite a nice build for a consumer level laptop, the speakers are average for a laptop (which isn't very good, but is to be expected), and the keyboard is quite standard. Many Clevos also have the fn-key and the ctrl-key swapped on the left side.

 

Just to add to the above post.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you have nothing productive to say, then I advise you not to post(some posts were deleted). And if a user does the necessary research before buying, he/she will be able to read through the "bull" and make the right decision.

 

I have no problem with negative reviews. I do think the reviewer here may be a little off base in a couple of comments though.

Agreed with Lithus that I do not expect great sound out of a portable machine. So this is not a negative to me. Headphones/earbuds cure it. I use in-ear monitors that roll up tiny and give great sound, so I feel fine.

Also I wonder about the reviewer's comments on the DVD drive. It is hard to believe that every single one of his drives could not close without the bezel coming off.

Even harder to believe is that the battery on all his laptops was shaking and ready to come loose. Mine fits tight and there is no hint of wiggle.

I had to trade in my first 7811 too, because it would also freeze in video stress tests and on the game COD4. But I distinguish between my two different machines when I talk about them. I find it hard to believe that every single one of the reviewer's five machine had the identical problems he was talking about. Therefore, I question the review's fairness.

I am not unsympathetic to the reviewer's problems at all. As I said, I had one of them myself. But his review seems a bit over the top to me, and I don't know that people should put much trust in it. No offense, just my feelings on reading it.

P.S.: Yup, this thing attracts fingerprints like crazy.

 

Hmm... I don't find the quality of this thing to be any different then the various Dell machines I use at work but whatever. If you buy a 1250 laptop expecting a 5k dollar quality build then I'm afraid you are in for a dissapointment. I for one can easily overlook a few nitpick items for the insane value the notebook represents. To each his own I suppose. I feel confident that buyers will take the word of nearly every major review publication (maximum pc, pc gamer, etc...) over some random forum post.

Oh the FN and Ctrl key thing does annoy the hell out of me also.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I can understand the reaction to my review, and while I may not work for NBR or present an official review here, I HAVE actually owned and used the units extensively, therefore I feel I am competent enough to post my experience about the P-7811FX, be it a fairly negative one.

I have worked with and owned many laptops and many brands over the last several years - COMPAQ, HP, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Dell, Asus etc.. and I am very critical about how I judge a good laptop.

Think about it - if you go out and buy a laptop that has the CNET editors choice stamp of approval, wouldn't you expect it to perform flawlessly? You would definitely not expect it to crash after 5 minutes on every game and go through 5 bad units in a row as I did.

The price of the Gateway does reflect the level (or lack) of quality and attention to detail put into the unit. The Toshiba X305 is a comparable gaming laptop in a similar price range, yet is of much better build quality, has much better speakers and doesn't exhibit the inherent backlight bleeding problem the Gateway's display suffers. Move up into the $2000 range and a HP HDX16/18 or dv7 will also be of better quality, despite subpar graphics hardware.

Call me biased if you will, but my four-year-old 17" HP zd7000 has better speakers and a better keyboard. It is also one of only a few laptops I have ever worked with that is built like a tank. The zd7000 isn't even designed for gaming, yet has held up better than expected.

A good laptop should work out-of-the-box without the user having to hunt the web for drivers or search through forum posts to troubleshoot problems.

A good GAMING LAPTOP should provide a crash-free gaming experience, a problem-free display and better speakers than an average notebook. In that regard, the Gateway is in my opinion a failure, even with the appealing $1400 pricetag.

To put it into another perspective, if I could correct all the problems with the P-7811FX and sell it for $1800, it would still be a profit maker for Gateway.

Suffering with one bad unit is understandable and I would not be raising any arguments at all. Going through 5 bad laptops though, and reading posts and reviews of user after user reporting lock-ups and freezes (essentially the same problems as mine) on not only this but other sites across the web only leads me to believe that Gateway has a serious issue with their product and underscores my negative rating.

To those out there that have a working, crash-free P-7811FX - my congratulations!

 

I don't think that was really necessary. This site encourages user reviews and he has a right to an opinion.

I found nothing inflammatory at all about this review. I was planning to do a border dash to Kalispell to get a 7811 but instead decided to get a 6831 (again). Tough for me to exchange multiple times when I live 700 miles away.

 

There are only a few professionals at NBR, most reviewers are hobbyists like me. Simply posting this review gets you to the same level as the rest of us.

This is a great site for consumer advocacy when you filter out the fanboys and post purchase rationalizations.

The Gateway forum is full of problem 7811FX threads - that clearly indicates a problem.

 

yea 7811 seems to be gateways "flash pan" model. awsome specs, awsome parts, awsome price, the perfect sounding laptop... until you turn it on. im not slamming the 7811 since i have never used one, but from what i hear, i wouldnt buy one

 

Makes me nervous about buying mine soon I live 70 miles away which isn't that far but still 20 bucks worth of gas. I plan to play DMC4 and Crysis (DL'ed the demos and put them on my flash drive) for an hour or so before leaving the city to make sure it's not a gimpy unit. Just hope I get a good one right off the bat.

 

i haven't had mine lockup yet once, prob logged total of 30 hours of WoW on it.
Also 10 hours of Sins of a Solar Empire

 

I realize that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that reviews here are welcome - good and bad, but it's very important for those who are a reviewing a computer to have a good understanding of the difference between a "con" of a computer and a "defect" on that computer.

Half of the things lucious described are not normal for a P-7811... and IN MY OPINION, his review is largely biased against the 7811, probably ever since he returned his first one which was defective.

There's a big difference between a poor review and a vengeful attack. My only concern is that his review which is mostly composed of defects rather than cons will lead users to stray away from a fantastic laptop.

 

I applaud your review. While not ALL 7811fx's are defective, I am **** sure that there are some serious build/manufacturing issues with this laptop. First all, both my second and third units have had this "white ghost" effect come up on the LCD when viewed at a right or left angle. This third one has a bit of bleeding on the bottom left corner, that is although usually not noticeable unless against a dark background, is still a defect that bothers me. What I am most worried is that it will get WORSE over time.

Should I go in and exchange it for a fourth unit? Well, TBH I am considering doing just that before they sell out, but I am also pretty **** tired of exchanging. I might just settle with this one since everything else seems to be working normally. I'd hate the fourth unit to have even worse problems where I have to consider exchanging again.

But think about it honestly, if Gateway managed to make a laptop line (7811FX) that supposedly performs soooo well, then why oh why do they need to cut the prices to 1250 dollars, twice? At 1449 this laptop is already one hell of a bargain compared to everything else on the market these days, yet Gateway still cuts 200 dollars off? How do they even make money by selling it so cheap?

Hopefully 7811FX's were built to last atleast 2 years heh

 

This is where Best Buy's protection plan thoroughly earns its keep. I got it for three years, and if anything goes wrong over the course of 3 years, I get it fixed for free or a new one. If I just decide to be a weasel after 3 years, I drop it, so them my oops, and get a brand new current-model laptop. Pretty sweet.

 

These are my thoughts exactly. While I don't feel the OP should be anxious to recommend a laptop to people that he couldn't get a good one of after five tries, I think it would be safe for him to assume it's very likely that his store had a bad shipment of them. While this isn't his fault, it's also not representative of the majority of users.

While I do realize that this forum does have a lot of users complaining of issues, the reality is that with this model's price vs. performance it should be obvious it's going to be selling well enough to have people running here. Your opinion seems to be misinformed, as you seem to believe that all the complaints here mean that most everyone must be running around with a defective laptop. The reality is that it's not necessary for most of us (including myself) to post on those threads or create them because most of us don't have any issues with our laptops. If you've noticed, a good majority of the problem posts are from people with 1-10 posts, which indicates that they probably signed up on these forums JUST to complain about it. Why would it be necessary for most people to go these forums if they had a perfectly working laptop and had no questions?

Case in point here:

HP:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3

Dell XPS:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1049

A lot of the posts there are problem posts as well. Does this mean every HP and Dell model are going to blow up in your hands, killing you and your family? It's entirely unlikely. People have no need to discuss problems they don't have, and as such most posts on any computer/notebook based forum are going to be informative posts or troubleshooting posts. There might be a few "hey we're all happy for our laptops let's circle jerk" posts, but you're not going to find me or most anyone else in there. There's no point.

Oh, and it's not Gateway doing those sales, it's Best Buy. Best Buy frequently takes the hit on computer sales (they don't make almost any money off laptop/computer sales anyways) because they want to get you into the store to sell you their protection plan, additional components, and accessories like notebook bags. Those are where they really make money, to the point where it's worth it to run a sale like this. With how many people said their stores were completely sold out and they were unable to find them, I think it should be obvious as to why Best Buy would run the sale again

Though I disagree on some of your other points, you're certainly entitled to them. I just feel that you let a bit of your frustration make your review far more subjective than it needed to be, and reviews need to be completely objective to afford the viewer as fair and informative an insight as possible.

 

typical review from a bestbuy shopper & hp pc user,
unfortunately, here on gateway forum, no1 got paid to educate ppl
how to get p7811 to work.

 

I have three P FX series, all with the latest nvidia drivers from laptop2go.com, and have had zero problems. From what I have seen on this Forum, most of the problems with the FX series is self induced, upgrading the wrong drivers, improper ventilation, not reading install notes ect...

 

Thank you. And exactly my thought as well. I would have put up with the display issues, but there was no guarantee that it would not get worse with time. Likewise, it's not out of the question that a unit working well one day would not start to freeze and lock up later on. My second unit that I had ran well for over half an hour at first, and I was beginning to smile to myself. Then BAM, freeze and lock-up.

That's exactly the reason why I chose to drive across town to a different store to see if they had a working unit. I was worried that after two dud laptops BB would refuse to honor a refund on a third, and I was pushing that 14 day deadline.

Needless to say, the demo unit at the other store crashed, and the two units I purchased there also ended up being returned.

I am waiting now to see if Gateway does do something about it in the coming weeks/months.

Quite the contrary - I signed on here to SEEK HELP because I was having a problem with a product. My review only came AFTER I had exhausted my other options and AFTER reading about the problems other people had also encountered. Giving your first impressions of a product and detailing your experience is a great research tool. Had I been perfectly happy with my purchase, I would have written a review just as critical giving all praise and recommendations. Would the folks with bad units then come back scathing at me for having a marvelous problem-free working unit? I don't think so.

The average user doesn't spend 3 days reading through 100+ pages of forum posts online, downloading/uninstalling/installing multiple drivers, reinstalling an OS, installing game after game and stress-testing a laptop for hours just to make sure it simply works out-of-the-box.

The average user doesn't drive 12 miles across town and back going from one store to the next and end up returning units to both stores because they don't work.

The average user doesn't walk in to a BB armed with a USB thumbdrive with tools to stress-test a laptop before he buys it because he thinks it won't work out of the box.

And the average user will most likely give up after two bad units and buy something different, not keep thinking maybe the 5th one will finally work!!!

What the average user does do is see a laptop with the CNET editors choice stamp of approval on it, reads one or two rave reviews on BB and NBR, sees the awesome specs and price and takes the unit home, only to find out that it does not perform as advertised.

The average user then goes back to BB and listens to some guy in a white shirt tell him to buy a laptop cooler and go to Gateway.com to get a fresh set of drivers. When that doesn't work the average user goes back to the guy in a white shirt a second time and gets an exchange or a refund. If he is past the 14 days, the guy in the white shirt tells the average user to send the unit in for repairs and wait 2-6 weeks.

I'm not the average user, I'm smarter than those guys in the white shirts, and I pretty much know what I'm talking about when I take more than one laptop back that doesn't work.

Be happy if your P-7811FX is working great, and you did not go through the effort and troubles I went through before posting my review.

 

mm yes ...and well if i were to try to be optimistic, as frustrating as my whole 7811fx experience has been, i've learned a hell of a lot of knowledge about laptops/troubleshooting! im sure it'll come in handy in the future.

 

Good luck, and do post back your findings!

I'm hoping Gateway or nVidia identifies the source of the problem and resumes shipments to BB. It's unfortunate that the Gateway is the only laptop so far to carry the 9800M GTS and is plagued with such problems. I would jump at another 9800M GTS on another model without hesitation.