Gateway LT3101u 11.6" netbook impressions/thoughts/reviews

Wow, I was so excited the other day when this model was being announced on engadget. just two days after, I called up a local bestbuy and found this model to be in stock. I AM FIRST TO OWN THIS in my city lol. It is a beautiful laptop and the speed is not too shabby. I purchased the acer 11.6 AO751 a few days earlier and it was just WAY TOO SLOW. when comparing LT3103u to the acer, wow, it's night and day, it's so much snappier and especially with the better video card, the X1270 radeon, video playback is so much smoother. unfortunately, it cannot play 720p youtube smoothly. The screen is just absolutely stunning and bright. the resolution 1366x768 is so much better than the other netbooks at 1024x600. Having owned this for a few hours now, I have nothing to complain. the battery is very good as well, lasting up to 5 hrs based on vista's status, it is a 6 cell btw. Maybe i'll update this with some pix and a more in dept review later, just SO EXCITED to own this right now. I think i will put windows 7 and see how things will go.

 

Congradulations, i was curious about the battery life of this notebook. I was kind of hoping it could squeeze 6+hours out. But i guess 5 is pretty nice as well.

I really like the looks of gateways new consumer line of notebooks/netbooks they are stylish and still simple enough not to look "odd"

Congradulations for being one of the first to own one of these nice netbooks!

 

I also picked this unit up at Best Buy yesterday (they just put it on the shelf they said) and despite there being ZERO reviews of it yet I decided to go with my gut.

To my dismay, it's a lot slower than people commenting thinking it would obliterate the 1.6ghz Atom and possibly the N280. But i'm going to beg to differ, any Flash content on any website destroys the power of this machine.. My Atom powerered EEE 901 could play Youtube in a normal window and full screen non-HQ/HD was pretty good too.. This can't even handle non-HQ in a window. I also don't like the fact the 6 cell battery sticks out the backside when Asus EEE PCs have 6 cells fully within it's frame.

The parts I *do* like are the 720p LCD, the 100% sized keyboard (types extremely nice and super comfy). And it's overall design is nice..

Back this thing goes, I guess I need a N280 powered machine or wait for a better platform (Ion?) to come out. Yay i'm losing $60 in restocking fees now. So much for going with my gut, impulse buying and not waiting for a proper review.

Best Buy is also selling the gorgeous 1005HA EEE Pc but only with N270 unfortunately.

EDIT:
Also want to add the Gateway LT3103u has a fan that runs all the time, and it noticeable in a semi-quiet room. I really wanted this to be a GREAT netbook/subcompact notebook.

 

I also picked one of these up. There is a lot to like, but yes, there are also some things that could have been different.

As far as the GW vs Acer 751h, the GW does seem much faster. Although, when watching videos full screen or in HD, it definitely has some lag.

My biggest issue thus far as been the CPU downclocking to almost 0% upon waking up from the screen saver. Even if I change the MIN and MAX CPU % to 100%, if the screen saver kicks in, it defaults back to 0% and takes about 15 minutes to wake up! If I plug it in, this is reversed and wakes up rather quickly.

Anyone run in to similar issues?

Other things to like are the keyboard, screen definition, size and weight... Although yes, the battery sticks out from the back, I find its a perfect "handle" when carrying, just be sure the battery is locked otherwise your handle will remain in your hands while the rest of your new GW is resting on the pavement

Fan does run and is noticable, but this seems to be pretty standard with AMD processors.

I am happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Thanks.

 

OK guys, I have a Gateway LT3103u in front of me, bought it today at Best Buy after seeing Gadling's good review and seeing it in person clinched it.

Athlon64 L110 1.2Ghz (single-core) 6x200Mhz, 512K L2
2GB RAM - in one slot, and CPU-Z shows two slots. Which I really doubt.
250GB 5400rpm Hard drive - Toshiba MK2555GSX, with 8MB cache.
11.6" 1366x768 LED-lit LCD.

Initial impressions: Great build quality, lots of nice little touches that are usually absent on $399 MSRP notebooks. The keyboard is nice, although a little flat. Quite soft. Screen is quite bright, but not blindingly so. Nice finish on the palmrest. Battery sticks out the back just like the 6-cell AAO. Touchpad is a nice size, although the button rocker is really shiny. Webcam is quite clear.

Cold boot to Vista desktop is about 65 seconds.

wPrime 1.55 says 132 seconds for the 32M benchmark, compared to 125 seconds for N270 and 173 seconds for Via Nano 1.3Ghz, the other other white meat.

PCMark05 says 1527 PCMarks, which is right around where most N270/N280 netbooks bench.

The vent on the side does put out hot air when the system is under load (while it was installing all the Windows updates and performing the benchmarks) but it isn't too bad.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase. I'm going to do some more benchmarks tomorrow of the CPU and Graphics, because those are what set it apart from the Atom netbook pack. Any recommendations?

Usability - I had the good fortune of seeing it in action at BB, and I really liked the speed. It isn't ground-breaking, but I've seen slower. Vista does slow it down a tad, and I'm planning to install Windows 7 RC.

 

I just picked this up as well. I love it. The size, the large HDD and 2GB of ram does help out. I am debating to put 64-bit Vista right now or not, but still need to dig up the max capacity of the ram. It does blow out some heat on the left side, but like the person above said, only when heavy usage (installing apps or updates).

It's a netbook. It's not made to be a notebook replacement. For what it does, I am very happy with it. I'll be keeping mine. Storing pictures, music, doing word processing and e-mail/internet usage is all I nee this for.

 

I've tested this and it's almost-twin, the Acer 751. The Gateway feels much more snappy in day-to-day tasks, but even light multitasking (ie, iTunes updating song volume info on a lot of files in the background) can really drag the system down.

The Gateway feels as usable and quick in Vista as the 751 does in Windows 7. The Vista install on the 751 felt incredibly sluggish.

The video card in the 751, even with the newest drivers, is brought to it's knees by the Windows Ribbons screensaver. Not kidding, you can watch the ribbons creep across the screen. There is a hardware video decoder which theoretically makes watching non-Flash HD videos possible, but there are quite a few software hoops to jump through to get it even partially working.

Also beware all those claiming near-N280 levels of overclocking with the 751. I don't doubt them, but the one I bought wouldn't overclock at all since they come underclocked at 1.24Ghz and just bumping it up to the "default" of 1.33Ghz would make mine crash reliably.

All in all, I'd say the Gateway is the better machine by far for general usage but it's very important to go into it knowing exactly what you're buying. Unlike a 10" or smaller netbook, these 11.6" machines really do look like little notebooks. You see that beautiful, pixel-dense screen and think you'll be able to really do some stuff, then fire up Firefox and watch Hulu turn into a slideshow when you click the fullscreen button.

 

Wow, I just found out about this little guy. I'm impressed with the specs for relatively cheap. Looks like Gateway did it again! Seems like the Athlon chip in it is pretty comparable to an Atom, and I seriously love the higher-res screen. After getting an Aspire One for my wife, the 1024x600 is definitely usable, and you don't really notice it when using the netbook, but it's still rather restrictive nonetheless. If I were to get another one for myself, I want a 1366x768.

So the big question remains... it has an X1270... HOW DOES IT PLAY CRYSIS!?!!? Heh.... but seriously, who's gamed on it? It has to be better than the Intel GMA950 that's severely downclocked in all netbooks

 

Just for fun, I rand 3DMark2001 on mine and it scored about 3000 (about 1/10th of my Macbook Pro's score). If you took this thing back in time a decade or so it'd be a real screamer of an ultraportable.

I also ran Aquamark 3. It was ... well, you'd really just have to watch "Massive Overdraw" render at 2.5fps to get the full effect for yourself. It was somewhat zen, really, but not what one would really call playable.

Still, the GMA 500 in the Acer 751 screams for mercy trying to run the Windows Ribbons screensaver and Aero is a stuttering, poorly drawn mess, so I'm not complaining.

Until an ION machine appears in anything other than a damn press release, this is the best we're going to get without moving to 12"+ or paying at least 3-4X as much.

 

How's the battery life guys?

I owned a 751. With XP and some bloatware removed it runs VERY well. It can even play 1080p H264 mkv's 100% smooth.

I did not have to install any software for that. It was with the default installed PowerDVD.

 

I think I might pick up one of these once I see a few more benchmarks to see how it compares to an atom. Your benchmarks so far seem to suggest it's about the same, but I look forward to seeing some more tests.

 

Link the benchmarks you want to see.

 

I'd like to see Passmark performance test. http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm Total score and CPU score.

For reference: Asus 1008 gets 235 total points. Atom N280 gets 314 CPU points. Atom N270 gets 306.

 

Overall I'm happy with the purchase. I'm going to do some more benchmarks tomorrow of the CPU and Graphics, because those are what set it apart from the Atom netbook pack. Any recommendations?

Usability - I had the good fortune of seeing it in action at BB, and I really liked the speed. It isn't ground-breaking, but I've seen slower. Vista does slow it down a tad, and I'm planning to install Windows 7 RC.[/QUOTE]

--

So, bottom line, the Gateway has great usability, acceptable battery life but not 9-10 hours, and doesn't do well with flash/video? I have an ASUS 1005HA on the way from Amazon that will probably arrive Monday, but I'm tempted to get the Gateway at my nearby BestBuy and send the ASUS back unopened (does that avoid restocking charges?), OR, I could try them both and let them fight it out mano-a-mano and return one of them, eating the restocking fee. THis is my first netbook, and will do more emailing, word processing, music downloading etc. than watching movies.
ANY ADVICE????
thanks
richard in boston

 

Oh, and I believe the Gateway has the "G" wi-fi which is slower than the "N" that I think the ASUS has. How much of a limitation is this?
thanks again

 

For web browsing it will not be any limitation. If you have a network for transferring files you will see some impact.

 

Thanks, Phil. Appreciate it.

 

I Wprimed' the Gateway and got 133 seconds on the 32m or whatever test is the top one the moment you load it up.

Compared to a N280, which scores 116 seconds.

Edit: Forgot, I suppose the Gateway was using 2 cores whereas the the N280 is single core.. oops. Don't have the gateway anymore to test.

 

So the AMD L110 is significantly slower than than the Atom for CPU intensive benchmarks. That's quite surprising and disappointing. Considering the Atom is dog when it comes to FP calculations.

 

The Gateway is a single core CPU.

 

LT3103u unboxing and info:

http://www.netbooktech.com/2009/06/29/unboxing-the-gateway-lt3103u-116-inch-netbook/

Installing XP on it:
http://www.netbooktech.com/2009/07/02/installing-windows-xp-professional-on-gateway-lt3103u/

 

Yup, single core. I guess that explains why it seems a little slower with Youtube videos than the Atom. I know my netbook has trouble with HD Youtube.

 

http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/28/gadling-gear-review-windows-7-on-the-gateway-l3103-netbook/

Once installed, the Windows 7 performance index is 2.3 (CPU:2.3, Memory:4.4, Graphics:2.5, Gaming graphics:3.0, Primary hard drive: 5.7).

What's the Windows 7 Atom CPU metric value?

 

Mine is 2.1.

 

Which Atom CPU model is this?


Another interesting point, this that is this is one of first if not the first netbooks to be 64-bit compatible. Though does it even support 4GB of system memory. lol

 

I took picked one up earlier this week. Vista was a complete dog on this thing. It was so unbearably slow as soon as it booted up. So, I went ahead and wiped it and put Windows 7 x64 Ultimate RC on here. It SCREAMS with Windows 7. So far the only 2 down points are (as everyone else in this thread have mentioned): POOR video playback for flash videos (booooo!! what a drag, that was one of the reasons for me picking this up). Fan noise and constant warm air (I realize laptops are gonna get hot, luckily its nowhere near the heat of what my old Acer 5670 put out -- it's warm, not hot.. so far.)

So that is it, I don't know if I'm going to return it or not. Luckily it handles HD video files fine, but just not online video (hd and non-hd are stuttery and poor).

I had an MSI Wind before this, and it handled youtube type videos fine (it was hackintoshed as well), but that resolution was just too small and so was that keyboard. I have a few more days to test this little guy out before I return it.

Anyone else have better experience with web videos (HD/non-HD) with this thing running Windows 7 or any OS for that matter??

 

It doesn't even play normal YouTube video without dropping frames?

The fundamental problem with flash video is that it doesn't support GPU acceleration. Though I read they are working on that problem.

 

Whne I tried it at BestBuy, it seemed much faster than all the other Netbooks they had there. The other Netbooks with XP were sluggish compared to the Gateway with Vista.

I still haven't picked mine up yet. I'm waiting to see if they will have any special no interest financing deals next week. I just want to pick it up by the 19th at the latest. I want to have it ready for when I go on vaction in August. That way I can use it and get online while in the car on the way to Canada.

 

Let me know how windows 7 perform on this! This article from tomshardware
is stopping me from installing windows 7 on my mobile computers...
mainly because the battery life was shot in windows 7, though they're saying it may be due to
lack of proper drivers...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-xp,2339.html

 

Oops, mine is 2.3. 1.6GHz Atom N270. I also have a Runcore ssd.

Also: NetbookTech Unboxing, Putting XP on it

 

OK, the Gateway got a 199.8 rating.

CPU Mark 308.8
2D Graphics 161.3
3D Graphics 38.5
Memory 196.1
Disk 376.6

So it's definitely slower than a 1.6Ghz Atom/GMA950 combo. There is a 12" netbook with the Atom - the Ideapad S12 and it costs $499.

Oh, I ran the benchmark on my NC10 running Windows 7 Ultimate RC and it looks like the CPU is better than or same as the Atom, but the graphics are worse.

Total score 206.2
CPU Mark - 297.7
2D Graphics - 113.9
3D Graphics - 55.5
Memory Mark - 198.3
Disk Mark - 383.2

The NC10 has the advantage of a 7200rpm drive, but the 3D graphics score is way better with the GMA950. Who knew?

I'm happy that Intel finally has some competition though - it may not be a coincidence that the Ideapad S12 also comes with the Via Nano and NVIDIA Ion.

 

so how does it feel in real world usage? When I tried the Gateway at Bestbuy it seemed faster in browsing with IE, playing videos and viewing pictures than the other Netbooks did. But that is also comparing a Vista machine with 2GB to other Netbooks with XP an 1GB.

 

Hulu works beautifully when you set the resolution to 640x480. Seriously.

Anyone know of a way to overclock the CPU in this baby?

 

Set FSB. But you'll need to find out the clock generator.

 

Has anyone cracked it open to se if there are two memory slots so it can be upgraded to 4 gigs?

 

Any problems with wireless strength? I've had this netbook for three days and am super-happy with it, but I'm having trouble connecting to my home network which has a Linksys Wireless-N broadband router. It's a big house and signal is not great everywhere, but other laptops can connect in most places. The Gateway only connects in one sweet spot. Anyone else having this problem?

I haven't tried Gateway support yet but plan to do so soon.
thanks
richard

 

I spent some time today and figured out what the settings were to use SetFSB on the Gateway LT... I'm not sure this is exactly the right clock chip, but it works..

Clock Chip: ICS932S421BGLF
Don't Use the Ultra setting... It will lock up.

From testing I can overclock up to 1.67ghz, but for 100% Stability I backed off to 1655.6mhz (Clock setting of 275.9/551.8/99.8/33.2)

Not too shabby with a 38% overclock...
Now this machine really flies and doesn't at all feel like a $399 machine.

Here are Benchmark Scores:

WPrime 32M Test: 97.734 seconds <- Faster than a HP DV2
Windows Vista Experience Index
Processor: 3.5
Memory (RAM): 5.0
Graphics: 4.6
Gaming Graphics: 3.0
Primary Hard Disk: 5.5

SuperPI 2M - 2m 06s

Hope this helps everyone

 

Nice work! That's an impressive overclock.

Have you tried Intel burntest? If it finishes that then you'll know for sure if it's stable. I do recommend watching your temperatures though.

 

No... I'll give it a shot... But it's plenty stable for me. I ran some heavy duty CAD software on it (ProE) with no issues.. Although it could use some more ram as CAD is a memory hog.

I'm also going to see how high I can push the graphics by overclocking the ATI X1275 Chipset using one of the ATI Tweekers. I'll report back what I come up with... I may try one of the "Optimized" set of drivers to see how they work since this is really just a pretty standard RS690 Chipset
Here are some CPUID Screen Shots to show whats really under the hood

One Issue I have found so far... THe processor doesn't use CoolNQuiet and do CPU Throttling... It's stuck at full speed all the time. I tried some of the CPU Utilities to control this, and nothing has worked. Looks like its locked in the bios as the CPU shows it supports Multipliers fo 4 thru 6 in .5 steps.

 

How about the memory, is it one or two banks?

Ps. Maybe undervolting could help temperature and battery life.

 

Single Bank Memory....
Too bad, but running it this fast I still get pretty good throughput.

As for tweeking voltages, again no luck so far, it seems to be locked in the bios
But on a fresh charge just idling I show a little over 6 Hours of battery left with wireless on. If I start surfing and doing other things it drops to 5 1/2 hours right away, but then it stabilizes.
I havn't had time yet to do real world battery life testing, but so far this is a really impressive $399 laptop (Notice I didn't say netbook...)

 

Can anyone who owns this machine post up a video on vimeo or youtube showcasing the webcam performance?

Thanks.

 

I'm still pretty impressed by this little guy... it has basically everything that a lot of people now want out of a netbook... just the CPU is a little slower than the Atom.

 

Could someone comment on the trackpad? I have always been a trackpoint person. Even though I am interested in this machine, the trackpad thing might be a problem.

Also, does anyone know if the CPU is soldered or socketed? L110 not supporting powernow or locked in BIOS is bogus.

Thanks,

 

the trackpad on the LT3101u works just fine for me. I'm returning the ASUS 1005HA I ordered from Amazon in the unopened box because I did not like the bumpy trackpad when I tried it in the store. The Gateway also has a far superior keyboard in size and feel, and the screen of course is bigger and looks terrific.
I've had some teething problems with wi-fi connections but it seems to be better now, don't know why. And I'm also tweaking the power profile to get the best battery life and performance. The "power saving" mode is totally useless, it takes forever to do a single operation.

Since I"m mainly a writer and editor, and don't really care about watching Hulu HD movies or things like that, this is an ideal machine for me - so far!

 

Please let us know what the battery life is like in normal usage.

 

Re battery life: In a test where I had the netbook on my desk and worked on it intermittently, mostly web surfing, some word processing, and installing programs, I got 4 hrs 10 minutes. There are three power settings -high performance, balanced, and power save. The latter is useless as it's unbearably slow. I tweaked the "balanced" profile to turn off the display after only a few minutes of idle and adjusted some other settings - this works fine for me. On high performance it's plenty fast, but eats up the battery charge.
Be interesting to hear what others get under different conditions.

 

Hey, the trackpad is fine. The feel is alright, but I like the sensitivity of my NC10's trackpad more. It might be a setting though. The area is nice - bigger than NC10.

 

actually could someone talk about the multitouch and how that compares to the mac multitouch? Thanks,

 

Has anybody tested the video playback battery life on this thing?