Gateway EC1430u 11.6" notebook impressions/thoughts/reviews

Hey there's a 1810TZ thread over at Acer forum but none on here so I thought I'd make this up. I think I like the design of the Gateway one better.

I just ordered it this morning from TigerDirect. It's not available in Canada yet but my TigerDirect rep was able to order it for me from the US.

UPDATE:
Just got it!!!!!!!!

Battery is 5600mah and fits flush into the body. Charger itself is compact, the power cables are actually taking up more space. Screen brightness is silly, I only use the 2 bottom levels. Screen temperature looks cooler than my calibrated Dell 24" screen so I will calibrate this with my Eye-One Display 2 to see the difference it makes.

Photos:




In the cube with filthy stickers removed.


I find this sleeve to be perfect fit.
http://eu.kensington.com/kensington/en/ie/p/669/K62914EU/10+reversible+sleeve+for+netbooks.aspx

Review of the unit on Laptopmag.com:
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptop/gateway-ec-1430u.aspx?page=1

 

I also prefer the design of the Gateway version better despite Acer being behind it.

I am curious why Acer still releases notebooks under the Gateway and Packard Bell brands in Europe, its not like both brands hold that much endearment and nostalagia to customers do they?

I was wondering if you would be able to take some pictures of your notebook because mostly all I have seen are promotional images. Which color did you get, red or black?

 

Cool, I'm glad somebody started a thread for this. I bought the EC1436u (the red, SU2300 version) from Newegg and hope to have it by Wednesday. I have always liked Gateway's designs a bit better than Acer's corresponding models. Is it me or does Gateway in the US seem like a higher-end line than Acer?

 

Rahul:

I've been having a hard time locating photos as well. I think both Acer/Gateway have a shiny finish on the lid, the biggest difference is the area around the keyboard & the palm area on the Acer are painted silver/dark grey, and the Gateway has non-painted "dotted" textures on the palm area. For wear-and-tear, Gateway design is better IMO.

That and I told myself I'd never buy an Acer laptop (lack of a better word = POS), but I fondled with the Core2Solo version at BestBuy and I was impressed with the build quality. I suspect it's designed/built by ODM.

I ordered the black one and the rep told me I should get it by Thurs/Fri. I'll definitely post photos when I get it.

 

3 Gigs ram, Su4100, no BT, 320 gig. Sorry I want a 1810T or better yet 1820PT...........

 

I don't know if anybody else notices but Fujitsu has this exact same laptop but with an AMD cpu instead.

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P3010

 

I think the MV-40 is 1.6 single core and there is no list of what the IGP/GPU may be either.........

 

Lenovo Idealpad U150... same machine on the inside?!?!

http://www.notebooks.com/2009/10/26/lenovo-announces-11-6-ideapad-u150-notebook/

 

Updated original post with photos.

 

Thanks for the pictures, I look forward to seeing more pictures if you could take them, especially pictures of the sides, thickness, etc.

 

Hello and thanks for the pictures. I am curious to find out if they have updated the BIOS to support VT in the Gateway as Acer has done on the AS1410.

Could you please check.

Thank you.

 

Do you know if you can use the bios and drivers from acer website on the gateway? I like the look of the gateway better, probably gonna order one very soon.

 

I just ordered an EC1435U. It's similar to EC1430u only it has the dual core celeron instead of the dual core Pentium and only has a 4400 mAh battery.

Does anyone know if I get 800mhz memory, instead of the 667mhz that comes with it, if it will run at 800mhz?

I ordered an SSD to go with mine to speed things up a little.(the EC1435u only comes with a 160GB drive so I just got a 128GB SSD. not a blazing fast one but one that will give me the speeds of a 15k rpm platter drive)
I also have the Althlon 1.2Ghz that came out this summer and was very happy with it. the EC143x series seems to have the same/similar design.

 

I finally received my EC1435u yesterday but I haven't had time to open it yet/ Does anyone have any impressions on the EC143x series?

I still need to order memory for mine. I forgot to order it with the netbook.

 

I do not own an ec1435u, but I am looking to buy an ultraportable and this model is currently at the top of my list.

If you don't mind, let us know if you have any problems with it!

 

I still haven't opened it up. I plan on opening he box this weekend and putting the SSD in it too. I only ordered the 4GB of memory this week so I it won't arrive until next week.

 

I love my little ec1430u. It's not bad little machine for the price. I bumped the memory to 4gigs.

two things that kind of irk me are the lack of VT extensions and the lack of bluetooth.

Other than that it's perfect. Win7 64bit and Ubuntu 9.10 64bit both run really really well.

PM

 

Does anyone know where I can get a dump of the original bios that came with the Gateway EC143x laptops?

I flashed my Gateway with the Acer1410 bios, and I JUST noticed that it wiped out my SERIAL/UUID info.

I tried reflashing the bios with my serial# and uuid info using PHLASH16 but it hangs at the part where it has to backup the system bios. Someone told me I needed to get the original bios from gateway for it to work.

(And the ACER/Gateway tech support want $200 to do a bios recovery on my laptop. UGH!)

 

I finally opened up my ec1435u box and did a back up and then installed the SSD.
It is certainly very fast booting with the SSD. I ended up putting in a faster one than I had originally planned. I put in an OCZ 120GB one and used the Clone disc that came with the Kingston one I was going to install. Now I just need to put the memory in when it arrives next week.

My only complaint so far is the fan noise. I had the same problem with my other gateway with the Athlon chip but there was a program I installed that would adjust the fan turn on and turn off temp so it was mostly silent.

Is there a program that will adjust the fan in the ec143x so it doesn't run all the time?

 

I see the fan was running alot since MS security Essentials was scanning the entire drive. Under normal usage like web browsing and email the fan is off or running at a very slow speed.

This netbook is even smaller than my LT3101u with the Athlon chip. I thought they would be the same size but the EC1435 is actually a better size.

The only thing missing is a backlit keyboard. That would make this netbook perfect since it would allow me to use it in a dim/dark room.

 

I agree.

I've also got a Gateway EC1803h with a Core 2 Solo 1.4 GHz (SU3500).

It's awesome.

 

I took this laptop to Asia with me for 2 weeks, fits great on a plane and battery life is very good. I was even watching Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in 1080i on the plane!

If anyone needs bluetooth, this is the best $2 you'll ever spend. No driver is required.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11866

 

WOW!! Thanks!!

I just ordered several of these.

 

Pretty sweet! Thanks for the find. Ordered a couple.

PM

 

I just added my 2x2GB of OCZ PC2-6400 memory to my ec1435u. Now the memory is running at 400Mhz instead of the stock 333Mhz. I wasn't sure if the memory would run faster or not.

So this should be a good improvement for only $75(after rebate) Double the memory and 20% faster speed.

 

After doing some tests, the 400mhz memory seems to be around the same speed since the memory settings are slower.
The 400Mhz memory is
Cas Latency 5
Timing 5-5-5-15
And the 333 Mhz memory was a little faster. But in the memory tests they came out similar.

So I think I'll try some 2x2GB sticks at 333Mhz with
Cas Latency 4
Timing 4-4-4-12
settings and see if that works better. Hopefully I can sell the 400Mhz memory if I decide not to use it.

 

IMO, I wouldn't bother. The speed/latency difference would make very little if any real world difference at all if you're simply doing word processing/surfing the web/etc.

You'll probably find bigger difference when playing games but I wouldn't do it with this laptop anyway given the slow graphic processor.

 

I know with my desktops the quicker latency does make a difference in daily usage. The 400Mhz memory made the daily use feel about the same as the 333Mhz faster latency. and the memory tests showed that as wel showing similar speeds between them.
So I'm hoping the faster latency 333Mhz memory will speed things up a little like they do with a desktop. And I figure with the SSD for a hard drive the faster memory won't hurt. It was delivered today so i'll pick it up tomorrow and install it tomorrow night.

 

Anybody know where I can buy a spare power supply? I can find aftermarket ones on ebay but they're all 60W+... the original one is only 30W and it's so nice and compact. Thanks.

 

I wish it was smaller. It's larger than my Athlon based 11.6 Gateway Netbooks power supply.
Although both with Similar ratings.

 

I just bought a Gateway ec1435u and am thinking about flashing it with the Acer BIOS. If you know how I can dump the original BIOS, I can send you a copy.

 

What does the Acer Bios give you?

 

I've seen reports that the latest Acer BIOS enabled Intel VT support.

 

Order_status, I have created a dump of the original BIOS. I used "fla.exe" from one of the Acer BIOS downloads. The dump is very similar to Acer v3115. Windiff finds one difference near the end. Give me your email, I can send you a copy.
BTW, can you verify that the Acer BIOS has VT support? Also, does the missing SN, UUID give you any trouble?
Edit: the tool is f-l-a-s-h-i-t-.exe. The board found the name offensive.

 

I can verify that the acer BIOS work fine, and the newer ones do support VT. That was the main reason I flashed, virtualbox with a bunch of machines on a vnet is really smooth.

I didn't care about breaking any OEM junk for the bundled OS, but going in the bios it at a glance it appears to still have gateway strings.

I had pulled out the hard drive and installed my own technet copy of ultimate on a SSD anyways. Installing from a 2.0 thumbdrive to that was really damn quick

 

I bought an extra factory power supply from a local notebook store. They literally took it out of the new laptop box. LOL.

 

I'm getting odd noises from the headphone out while the hdd is reading/writing. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? It's a soft noise and I can only tell it's there when music isn't playing. The noise doesn't occur through the optical out so it's not likely a software issue. Has anyone taken one of these apart and taken photos yet?

 

I updated to the latest Acer BIOS. VT is supported. The little "1810tray" app is working well now. It wasn't able to read the temperature reliably with the stock BIOS. All the Gateway BIOS stuff including SN, UUID stayed the same. So far, it looks like a perfect update.

 

Xiaowei,

I ordered an ec1436u and now waiting for shipping. Can you tell me what o/c result you have with acer 3303 bios/1810tray? My understanding is if you do TME mod with 1810tray you can have your cpu o/ced.

 

The hardware mod looks pretty difficult. I'm happy with its performance as it is. The most demanding task I have for the laptop is 1080p playback, which it handles just fine after installing Haali spliter.

 

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Atom-ION-Netbook-Ultraportable,review-1484.html

Tom's Hardware compares Gateway 1437u with ION Netbooks and it kicked butt.

 

how is it that a bios change can enable VT extensions? Aren't they part of the processor? According to Intel's site, VT extensions are not part of the SU4100.

I am genuinely curious as I've installed the 3303 bios as well.

Thanks!
PM

 

Mine is a 1435u with SU2300 CPU. It supports VT. But for VT to work, you also need BIOS support, which was added some time ago for Acer 1410. Gateway is really lacking in this regard. They also wanted me to buy their premium support for questions about their lack of BIOS update!

 

Still waiting on my 1436u. Xiaowei, how did cross-flash with acer bios? Is there a special bios-flashing utility for this purpose? Or you use the .exe file which contains the 3303 bios? I'll replace the hrad drive with a travelstar 500g 7200rpm, hope it won't drag down the battery time too much. I am still debating if I should upgrade to 2x2gb RAM. What is you guys opinion?

 

Ahh.. thanks for explaining it to me. Pretty slick that the bios change did the trick for you.

PM

 

Flashing with Acer BIOS is really straightforward. Just run the Win7 64 bit exe file. Depending on how you use the laptop, you may or may not benefit from 4gb RAM. I'd wait until I see evidence that memory is a limiting factor (high swap rate) before buying more memory. Unlike hdd, upgrading RAM is easy to do at any point of time.

 

Totally forgot about this thread. Thanks for all the help Xiaowei. Turned out the mobo was bad... got it serviced and all is good now. Bios updates went along like a charm and everything is working perfectly.

 

US kb FTW

I hate the bilingual kb, even though I love Quebec.

 

Just recently started looking at the new Atom N450 netbooks, and then I see this little gem, which was just released a couple months ago. But it looks like they are being phased out already!

Anyone know why? Maybe a refresh is coming? I'd kinda prefer a matte screen...

 

Look around....they are great! Picked one up for my sone for $260 with Win7 upgrade and what a steal!!!!

Great size/power/weight...and on and on

You willnotlike the atom considered to the CULV....too restricting and slow as I am just finding out...