Gateway ID Series Notebooks

This is what I guess they have been busy doing instead of revamping the FX laptop line.



Gateway Official Site: Shop - ID Series Laptops

 

I can't believe how close these are to being perfect, but the 1366x768 resolution on 14" and 15" screens makes me wonder what are these guys doing? Is it so very difficult to get high-resolution screens?

Maybe if we are lucky there will be an option for an upgrade to at least 1600x900 in the configurable models.

eSata/USB port would be nice too.

 

I wish it would let me order the ID49C08u model, as it's pretty much perfect for school and light gaming. It says that it's not currently available online. I guess I'll wait and see if it's available later.

 

Maybe Gateway will come out with a 14 or 15 inch FX.

 

I was thinking all of the above as well. But someone will like 'em.

 

I am working on my review of the ID49c.

Pretty awesome: 90% of a 15" MBP at 40% of the cost?

 

Does anyone know when this laptop actually comes out? i mean the lower end ones are out but the ID49C08u model i can't find online anywhere yet

 

Im on an ID49 right now. I love lowres screens . This is actually a quality lowres display, I like it.

I'm enjoying the laptop quite a bit so far, except it has that damn cpu whine, need a fix for this ASAP on win7 x64!!!

 

Are you in Canada? I can't find this laptop sold anywhere but in Canada.

 

Yes. Futureshop.ca sells it. ID49C01h.

 

This computer seems pretty damn good. I like the idea of a decent lcd thats not the crud asus and acer put out.

Anyone got any US release dates?

 

fyi

 

Paypal me $900USD and I'll ship you an ID49C01h

lol

 

Saw it at Fry's today. ID49C08u. Very nice lcd quality - one of the best looking lcd screens there. The mouse button does depress a little more than I'd like like the laptopmag review said. But it's passable.

 

Which Fry's location? Weird that the website doesn't even have a listing for the ID49C08u, but I thought there must be a reason that Gateway's website shows Fry's as having them (just with a "call store" under availability, however).

 

The one in Burbank, CA

 

Thanks, the one near me is in City of Industry. I might go and see if they have it too. $849.99, right?

If the LCD is as good as you say, purell, then the ID49C08u might not be a very bad alternative to the Acer TimelineX 4820TG, for which users are saying have a decidedly average screen.

Edit: Oh and thanks for the heads-up on the review over at laptopmag.com, which I just read... very positive! This Gateway is now gaining favor in my mind over the 4820TG...

 

Compared to the hp's (dm4t and dv5), the acer (3820t) and Sony (y series) next to it.

The gateway won by a clear margin.

Let me know what you think when you see it. Also check out the touchpad it's a hate or love relationship. Lol

 

Well calling up frys was a waste. The guy didnt think that model existed at any of the stores or at the warehouse.

 

Lol the touchpad and keyboard in this Gateway really is what separates it from being a good laptop and laptop that is simply untouchable for its price.

In Canada, there is nothing that even comes close to being as complete of a package as the Gateway ID49C is. You get a massive hard drive, well above average GPU in the 330M, above average battery life, and it is really quite slim and pretty light. The plastic used on the lid and palm rests feels like aluminium, although I'm pretty sure it is plastic.

The touchpad can be slow and unresponsive at times, but its not bad enough (at least for me) that it makes you pull your hair out. I've learned to live with it, and although it could be better, the value you are getting for your dollar here makes it easy to live with. A chiclet style backlit keyboard with a full sized shift key and full sized arrow keys would have been a nice addition to this laptop, however it wouldn't be available at $749.99 with those things added.

 

Hey guys, here's my ID49C08u experience:

Bought at frys in City of Industry (CA), it was an open-box unit, the only unit they had left so I gave it a shot.

After initial Win7 setup and boot back into desktop, it started to install its drivers and proggies and whatnot. 32 items total, with the last being "install cleanup". But install cleanup would not finish. The harddrive was thrashing continuously, and after 45 minutes or so the whole thing had a hard lockup and was rendered unresponsive.

Held the power button down until a forced shutdown, then rebooted into Windows, seemingly with no issues. Checked the basics out, used hwmonitor and cpuz and all looked peachy. Installed Starcraft 2, only to have even the main menu run at a very sluggish framerate. It was my first time experiencing Optimus, so I messed around with some settings in the nvidia control panel, even adding starcraft ii.exe into the profiles to make sure it ran on the GT330M. Still no dice, and no matter how many times I launched starcraft2 it ran like crud and seemed like the optimus was not switching. Supposed to be seamless and automatic, right?

Thought it could've been because of the initial setup hardfreeze, so I did a complete factory restore. After booting into the desktop again, the driver/program thing froze the computer again at the last "install cleanup" step after a while. At that point, turned the unit off, packed it back into its box and said screw it. Returned it to frys.

LCD quality was low, both for the unit I bought as well as the store's display unit. Very washed out and bad color quality, just the same as most of the other laptops at frys. Messing with the intel control panel color settings did alleviate the crappiness somewhat, and this would've been an issue I could overlook had all the above not happened. I just wanted to comment on this because of what purell said regarding the screen quality.

Anyways, gonna wait to see if the Acer 4820TG-3195 becomes available near me, because I don't wanna bother trying to get another ID49C08u unit on the offchance I simply got a lemon.

Edit: The touchpad with its weird button was not ideal imo, but at least usable. The keyboard had flex in the middle areas, but the key action was nice and responsive and the flex is not a hindrance. Also, I did really like the overall build quality and design, very solid and it is a sleek unit. Wished things had turned out better.

 

You probably had very old nvidia drivers installed. New ones might improve the display quality, optimus switching, and starcraft performance.

The factory restore is probably messed up. Try clean installing win 7, deleting all the partitions and trying again.

 

I love the LCD on this unit. I've got half a mind to buy some random crap 14" laptop and replace the LCD with the LG of this notebook (which would be ordered through some wierd site...)

 

I didn't check what brand of LCD was in my unit or the store display unit, but both were not very good at all, just average like most of the glossy screens nowadays. Either Gateway is using multiple manufacturers for the LCDs on the ID49C's and the two units I saw had the bad brands, or you guys have low standards lol.

Again, I probably got a lemon, but the store had no more units that I could exchange with, so sucks for me because I would've tried again.

 

The one I saw the display was sharper and brighter than the other laptops for sure.

Maybe they use diff. lcd panels. The hp dm4 was crap in comparison.

 

I got my ID49C01h today and am pretty happy with it so far. This is the canadian model from future shop with the geforce 330m. The laptop is surprisingly solid. There's no creaky or flexing plastic - you could swear it was metal. I wanted to be able to do gaming on it and it doesn't disappoint

I just fired up Starcraft 2 on it and it runs awesome on High Detail settings. For example the first of the medium difficulty challenges (the one where you need to kill 125 enemies in 3 minutes) I never dropped below 30fps even when nukes were going off! Also the laptop is very quiet even when gaming.

I'm now in the process of copying over a 100 gig steam folder so we'll see how other games run on here soon enough.

I am using the latest drivers by doing this .inf mod detailed here. The nvidia optimus is working fine and always switches over for games.
Modding 101 - Missing Optimus Device IDs - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

Oh, one thing... the speakers are utter crap! I use a USB headset though so not much worry for me. There was also a lot of bloatware but it was easy enough to uninstall it all.

Oh and the annoying glowing touch pad.. there is an app that you just double click to turn it off.

 

I checked out this laptop at a local electronics store (futureshop in canada) The screen was manufactured by AU optronics (i forget the exact model number though). Needless to say, the viewing angles and black levels were really awful. I guess its a luck of the draw to see which screen you get, LG or AUO.

 

Must be, cause mine from future shop (ordered online) is an LG screen.

 

One quick question for owners of these, where is the hard drive? Would it be easy to drop it out and install a SSD? I don't want to take a laptop apart to do so, my old Gateway has a hard drive that just drops out (it is also 10 years old so perhaps things have changed)

Right now I am torn between this and an Envy 14, Envy costs more but should be higher quality with slightly better customer service plus you can customize.

 

On the bottom, there's a panel with a little harddrive icon for it, so I'm assuming easy access with just a screwdriver. I had plans of putting in a SSD before my unit turned out to be defective and I returned it.

 

my sister needs a new laptop. I'm looking at the 15 inch one from futureshop. she doesn't do anything extreme so integrated card is more than ok for her.

this is an awsome laptop for the price.

anyone seen the 15inch panel ? is it ok quality wise?

 

So I see futureshop has an i3 version of this with a larger HD. I would like to see the i5 version listed on the Gateway website, BB should get them soon?

Anyone have any issues burning cds/dvds? In the past Gateways had terrible optical drives.

Also, according to reviews and the Gateway site the lid and deck are supposed to be made of aluminum, probably why this laptop weighs over 5 lb.s but it's a little strange most of you guys who own this thing think it's plastic, must be some cheap metal.

 

The shell is definitely a thin piece of aluminium (nice brushed aluminium that doesn't show fingerprints)... obviously not solid metal construction though That is what I was refering to earlier. It's more of a decoration but how solid it is will probably give you the illusion that the whole thing is metal. The best way is to look at a side pic, where you can see the two pieces of metal:
http://notebookcritic.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/id142.jpg

As for the optical drive all I have burned is the backup discs so far (3 for the computer and OS, 1 for drivers) and none were coasters.

 

Hi Kabes, I'm about to buy the same laptop as you from futureshop (montreal). I was just wondering if you didnt have any issues yet. Its the kind of best deal you can get actually for this laptop. I'm thinking about getting warranty but i'm not sure its worth it

 

No issues yet, ben. Aside from gaming it is even handling heavier apps like photoshop and video editing with sony vegas. It's the first laptop I've owned with desktop-like responsiveness - even moreso since I put in a Momentus XT (hybrid SSD+HDD drive) which makes loading of all apps and games speedier (though the default drive was doing fine I wanted the extra pep - just using the 640gb 5400rpm that came with it as a backup).

I never got an extended warranty I guess because I've never had an experience where I needed one. In my experience if something is faulty it's going to show its fault or break shortly after you get it. Perhaps I am just lucky with electronics. /knock on wood

Also surprisingly Gateway has been updating the nvidia optimus drivers. In fact the version they have up now on their site is newer than the ones on the nVidia site. So we may not have to worry about modifying .inf files for regular driver updates.

 

Good, thank you Kabes, how did u make sure it was an LG screen ?
You added an Momentums XT, its and SSD+hdd drive that you can directly insert inside the laptop?

 

Hi kabes, I finally got the Laptop. It runs great but 3 things are bugging me. First, i wasnt able to get drivers with my SN number on gateway's website. Second, this morning, i had to manually renable the dvd reader into the device pannel (it disabled by itself). Third, i also bought SC2 but it doesnt run at 30 fps in high details, i guess i dont have the latest drivers yet for the video card. Where did get them?

 

I havent tried getting drivers via serial number I just picked the model manually.

Try here for the new video drivers:
Gateway Support Drivers & Downloads

The first one is the one you are looking for.

 

thanks man!

 

Hey guys, I am torn between this laptop and Acer 3820TG that is sold at staples in Canada for $699.99.
The main diff is that Acer does't have optical drive (not a concern for me) and it has i5 processor and ATI 5470 (512 mb).
I do carry around the laptop everyday and the #1 thing is the durability between this Gateway laptop and the acer 3820tg.
I had HDD failures before and don't want this to happen again.
Please lend any advice you guys have!

 

I would love to hear more impressions of the ID49 as I am seriously considering getting it.

 

I just got my Gateway ID49C08u yesterday at a local Fry's, here in WA state.

It has the i5-450 cpu, w/the built in integrated graphics, as well as the Optimus supported Nvidia GT 330M graphics.

So far, I love the laptop, except for the keyboard, which flexes quite a bit. Has everyone noticed the same issue on theirs, and if so, has anyone come up w/a cure, such as maybe putting something behind the keyboard in order to keep it from flexing so much?

How easy is it to disassemble in order to get to the keyboard, much less, get to the cpu? Is the cpu socketed, allowing for it to be upgraded? I've seen on Gateway's specifications listing, cpu listings up to the Intel i5-650, which included the built in integrated graphics.

Thanks.

 

How do you find out who manufactured the screen?

.

 

Haha jbjbdot - I'm looking at the exact same laptops right now and I have the same dillema. However I'm thinking of getting the ID49 because of it's superior construction and GPU. There isn't a lot of difference in the CPU honestly, very similar.

I have a very important question though, for you Kabe, or anyother ID49 user. How long does the battery life? In normal usage, heavy usage, what ever you know. That could be the breaking point, since the 3820 offers 8hrs on paper and 5-6hrs on usage (acc. to reviews).

 

I get 4+ hours on balanced profile with medium brightness surfing the web.

 

Hi how do you guys find out who made the screen of the laptop?
Also is it possible to remove the optical drive and put in a ssd in its place?

 

I would be very cautious. I purchased the 15.4 " model a week ago and it is going back today. Tech support was absurd. My talk with corporate today received the following statement " We don't guarantee the computer will work with any other software installed other then what came from the factory". That means, any problem that occurs after you install any other software, even though it is not being used, negates their responsibility to work on the problem. They will ask you to revert the computer to the factory initial default, and if the computer works then, they are out of the picture.

In my case, the touchpad became erratic and only worked on the right third of the screen, after using IE ( factory installed ) for awhile. It required a reboot and then it would work briefly. They could not give me ANY help. The problem is between the touchpad driver and Win 7 themes. I found the fix ( but perhaps only temporary ) ... Graphics Options -> Panel Fit -> Scale Full Screen will immediately return the touchpad to working order.

However, the retailer agrees with me that this is too many problems too early and there is no vendor interest in resolving simple system bugs ... so back it goes !

Be cautious when considering this product. I've got 30 years experience and never before have I written a review like this.

 

I'm thinking about getting an ID 58 Series laptop. specs are as follows:

Processor - Intel Pentium Dual Core T4500 Processor (1MB L2 cache)
Processor Speed - 2.3GHz
Memory - 3GB
Hard Drive - 320GB
Optical Drive - 8x Super-Multi slot drive (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM)
Digital Media Reader - Multi-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, MS, PS PRO, xD)
Input/Output • Input: Four USB 2.0 ports, Microphone-in jack.
• Output: HDMI port, external display (VGA) port, eSATA port, headphone/speaker/line-out jack with S/PDIF support.

This is going for $600 Cdn.

Worth the buy? or no?

Also, what are the major issues with Gateway laptops? Should i spend the extra $$$ and get a different laptop?

 

I just bought a new ID series laptop last month, the ID79C to be exact, i knew very little about it at the time of purchase (still can't find very much info on the series) even Gateways own website only shows the ID49 and ID59 making no mention of the the ID79, the best i can gather is this series is only available in Canada or at the very least primarily in Canada, i bought mine on ebay from a Canadian seller, i paid $799 for it (u.s. dollars), i know this series was just introduced this past summer and why it's not more widely available i haven't a clue, perhaps testing it out in the Canadian market first? i don't know, overall i'm pretty impressed with this laptop for the price (other than one "feature" which i addressed in another thread... http://forum.notebookreview.com/gateway-emachines/527676-gateway-id79c-second-hdd-bay-useless.html ...

ID79C
Windows 7 home premium 64-bit
Intel core i7-720QM processor 1.6GHz (2.8 w/turbo boost)
17.3" 16:9 HD backlit LED
ATI mobility radeon HD 5650 1GB VRAM
6GB DDR3 memory 1333MHz
500GB HDD (5400RPM)

 

I have a ID49C01h with a GT 330M

The problem is whenever i attempt to play a "game" on medium to high settings such as some of the games from the list on notebookreview under this GPU and computer i seem to get a "BLACK" screen and nothing happens.

Anyone know how to resolve this?

Why am i not able to play any games?

I did already go into the Nvidia control panel and added the game shortcut plus changed to Nvidia high performance, but still no go.

Any tips?

It seems the computer is only trying to run the game using the INTEGRATED INTEL CARD.

Runs games on the lowest resolution and setting only, tested with TF2, L4D2 so far.