Gateway LT3101u 11.6" netbook impressions/thoughts/reviews

hey can anyone run the ssims 2 or even the sims 3 on the lt3103u.... please pm with details

 

Well that is $70 more expensive than the LT3101u and it's not shipping yet.

 

Anyone know if the LT3103u has an extra mini pci-e slot open? I wanted to install an internal pci-e SSD card to install Windows then use the 250 for storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609437

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17249/5

 

I see there is an open slot, but there doesn't seem to be anything soldered...unless I'm blind.

 

Out of curiosity..are any users having trouble with the right-side USB ports?

 

I do notice that with my external DVD burner, it uses two USB ports, one for power and one for the USB connection. The power USB prot won't work with one of those ports on the right. And my cellular broadband adapter when in that port will time out and disconnect.
But if I use my USB mouse or USB card reader in that prot I have no problems.

 

VLC is overated, its a CPU hog and doesn't perform well. 720P MKV files ran about 50%. Download K-Lite Codec Pack bundled with Media Player Classic. It has the fastest framerates with any free player you can find. I get about 80% speed at stock and almost 100% when OC to 1.43 GHz. For best performance I would recommend Coreplayer Pro but it cost $20 and cant handle AC3. But if you use avidemux you can re encode just the audio to MP3 and keep the video as it is and achieve playback speeds of 120% even at stock clock.

 

Just a quick note about overclocking. Nothing anyone else has tried worked for me. I found that (ICS9248BF-96) 124/248/82.7/41.3Mhz was the only setting that worked and gave me a clock speed of 1434MHz, 239Mhz Bus, 956MHz HT, and 287MHz on the memory. I'm running Windows 7 RC and my CPU rating went from 2.3 - 2.7.

 

No issues with USB ports on my unit, my external optical drive seems to work fine with just one of the two cables plugged in.

 

Laptop Mag just reviewed the LT3103u. They gave it a 3 out of 5.

Link: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/gateway-lt3103u.aspx

 

Slight update, for those who may be interested in running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on this machine, it appears to make things
significantly faster than slogging through with Vista. The install was a tad rough around the edges, but nothing overly daunting.

Here are some notes I left on the Ubuntu forums, hopefully this might help someone else if they are interested in also going that route.

Would appreciate if anyone can share more successful experiences with ACPI and trackpad gestures.

sg

 

I bought one today = impressive design/case.

Least usable notebook I have ever used - and I have owned hundreds of them. It is absolute garbage.

Mine has the 1 GB RAM and 3 cell battery.

It could be Vista that makes this so slow. I don't get 2 hours of battery life. The 1270 might as well be a GMA 950 for how little it does to speed video up.

 

Something wrong if only 1 gig ram and 3 cell as this should be 2 gigs of ram and a 6 cell...........

 

He might have picked up a (LT3111H) which is sold in (Canada)
the LT3111H looks the same as the Lt1303u, but the LT3111H only has 1gb or ram and a 3 cell battery.

LT3111H - http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10126123&catid=28597

The one the most of us have in the forum is
Lt3103u - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9370272&type=product&id=1218093001788

 

Once again, Best Buy selling a stripped down version of a netbook for funsies

 

I think folks need to focus more on what this machine CAN do, rather than the things its CANT. For its price and intended slot in the food chain, its a great machine and value IMO.

Vista basic is too much OS for the machine, but that can be dealt with without changing OS'es, naturally cleaning out junk apps/services/processes will help, also disable indexing,superfetch and lengthen the time lag or disable auto defrag and just do it regularly when it fits your schedule. After doing all that, my free ram increased signiicantly, as well as performance, full screen video on fox.com is "almost" very good, it can run flawlessly for say a minute or so then it will stutter a for a few seconds than repeat, audio stays constant, windowed its perfectly watchable.

I like mine and it fits my needs well, My XPS M1210 had a ton more power, but I dont need that, I bought this as a portable SECONDARY machine for my many hospital stays, days spent in waiting rooms, and the short times I need to spend away from home and my fairly high end desktop, which is my primary machine.

As a sole machine, no netbook suffices IMO, as a secondary machine, this is one of the best I've tried, and I tried several before keeping this one.

 

Its not a notebook......its a low power companion device plain and simple.

Try some of the Atom NETbooks, and see how painful video can be....it cant even run the ribbons screensaver, and low res windowed youtube is as bad as high def full screen video on the LT (with 2GB ram)

 

Yes, I would pretty much agree with this assessment. (at least until that rumored Acer 1810TZ comes in the same form factor, but running Windows 7 on its alleged dual-core Centrino, which should make it really scream in certain tasks, including 720p video)

sg

 

I just opened the box and I am burning the first recovery disc now.........

 

I seem to have the PLL from the other poster that can change variably. I can't seem though to get the FSB up in one jump. I have to go in stages of 10 mhz or so but get to 250 with no issues..........

Edir; 250 FSB locks up ion WEI, went to 240 and that runs fine............

 

Did a bit of an upgrade today, swapped the 250 Gig 5400 rpm stock HD for a 320 Gig 7200 rpm one I had lying around, and decided to go for a clean Windows 7 install, the combination of which seems to make the machine a good deal snappier all around.

Then on to a bit of OC. No joy as far as using the latest SetFSB version (2.2.130.96) but I was able to use the older 2.2.125.93 with these instructions to get to 1.434 GHz in one shot (see parameters in attached pic). Testing now, HD video playback a definite improvement.

So far the Windows Experience index jumped to 2.8 (from a previous 2.3 with stock hardware / no OC / Vista Home Basic)

sg

 

I own a Gateway 17" P series and I needed a small laptop, basically for nighttime to do some light work on bed while still be able to watch some TV (with the 17", was impossible). I am an architect BTW.
I was looking at 11-12" laptops and they where waaaay too expensive. Until this netbook catches my eye...
I have been using it for about a month now and it performs way better than what I ever imagined...
I never expected it, but I even run Autocad 2008 and sketchup and indesign and photoshop without any problems (not at the same time... this is something I can do with my P series)... cannot run 3dmax though...(this (and multitasking) is the only reason why I still use the Gateway P (and for HEAVY gaming like Dawn of War2)
I used to own a Toshiba n105 and this netbook is 1000% faster...on the tosh, Cad apps where barely usable...and I once tried to install Vista and it CRAWLED... it scored a shameful 1 (even with the latest drivers)
I have to admit that I dumped vista for XP and that since last week, this baby in OCed to 1.4 (wish I can get to 1.6).
I also run windowblinds, samurize, and object dock so it is not a stripped down ugly version of xp
I LOVE this system! it is a PERFECT 2nd laptop for architects and designers... and it looks cool too!!

 

I have the other PLL, not the one you have. They say it is the luckier version but I personally but I have to OC in two steps to get too 240 MHz. once to 220 then to 240.

 

I have the P-7805u with a P9600 in it and it is a great DTR. But like you said, it is a bit bulky for lieing around the house. this is just awesome for that. I have OC'd it but to tell the trueth there is little advantage from what I can see so far. it still has issues with full screen HULU but windowed is fine.

Windows 7 is a must here. What a difference in the system, Vista was doggy to say the least, this however is nice and snappy considering the hardware......

 

I installed windows 7 first, and as you say it was better than Vista... bit with XP it is AWESOME!!.

Keep in mind than vista and 7 are no more than "dressed up" versions of Xp. And there are plenty of tools to get the eye candy on Xp...

I use vista, and love it... on my P... If yop don't have horsepower to spare, Vista ... and 7... are a mistake IMO

 

True in that XP would be the horsepower king here, unleashing the maximum resources. Wth 2 gigs here, and 4 gigs in the P-7805, there is plenty of room for Win7 in my systems. As ram gets cheaper I'll look into 4 gigs here and 8 gigs for the DTR.

My main complaint is the ram. The SPD is rated for Cas4 at 266 MHz and Cas5 at 333 MHz. The chipset uses the Cas5 to alow the max memory speed for the CPU divisor. Since we can't get below CPU/5 unless we overclock we will never even get to 266MHz.

These systems would be alot better off if Gateway used a cheaper DDR 266 Cas4 and command rate at 1T rather than the 333 MHz command rate 2T.......

 

How's the heat and fan noise after you OC'ed it?

 

The fan noise seems unchanged for all intents, at least by observation. I ran HWMonitor and at idle the temps seem unchanged at 240 FSB. it could be the fan stays on longer and I haven't tried under load yet either.

 

We need a dedicated thread for tweaks and Os'es and what not for this machine, this thread is so cluttered its hard to find the useful info.

How safe/possible is it to load an OS from a USB drive? I think XP is the OS of choice for this machine, got several dell oem copies that I doubt would work...and my retail copy I upgraded to vista on....so I doubt that would work....putting another $100 or more (external optical) in this machine doesnt thrill me....

 

This Gateway LT3103u from Best Buy is awesome. Just bought it today before I leave for my travel.

Just did a clean install using Windows Vista Home Premium x86. I have aero enabled and it's reall nice and smooth. Certain HD YouTube videos cannot play without glitches, but some can for some reason.

This thing is awesome and lasts me about 4-5 hrs. in Balance mode with the LED screen 1 brightness notch down, which is still bright as heck. The keyboard is awesome to type on and the mouse pad is pretty good in size. The palm area has a very nice rubbery, yet not rubbery texture.

I hate that silver buckel though, very unnecessary and girly haha.

 

Can't tell, feels about the same heat dissipation to me, haven't installed one of those monitoring apps yet, and I am such a total n00b on OC that I do not know what to do and what NOT to do.

For example, when I set it to sleep mode, it always awakens back at the original frequency. Is that something people do, or should I set the clock back before hitting sleep mode?

But overall, this little mod has definitely made video playback much more tolerable and glitch-free.

Trying to also run some music apps on it, and OC definitely helps, but the audio interface's latency still needs to be set so high that it's somewhat difficult when recording anything that's real-time. Editing, looping and sampling is OK I guess.

Now wishing for a dual-core version of this little beast....

sg

 

I bought the LT3103u and like it a lot SINCE 8-9-09.

It does sometimes confuse me.. what do "800MHz Front Side Bus and 512KB L2 cache" mean by that? the 800MHz Front Side Bus that meaning I can buy the Patriot 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz for LT3103u?

 

Any benchmarks that show real world value to OCing this chip? IE is high quality video near perfect? or just a "little" better? I increased video quality a fair amount simply by disabling superfetch and indexing.

I'll OC the bejezzus out of desktop components provied I have the proper cooling resources, with itty bitty notebooks, I'm much more wary, it may run great for now, and a mont, 3 month, 6 months....but it may die sooner than expected, especially as vents clog with dust, fan starts getting strained and whatnot.

I'm tempted to try and OC the CPU, just not sure if its worth it.

 

Someone else confirmed 4 gigs works here. Your memory only runs at 239 MHz so DDR2 533 and above should work unless you OC the FSB as this also raises the memory speed too and you may then experience the CPU/5 going up with too slow a memory.........

 

Thats the frequency of the CPU, 200mhz quad pumped nets 800mhz FSB , the 512kb cache is the amout of cpu cache , the "pool" data jumps in before being processed byt the CPU

 

Hey tanware, Can you write up a straight forward simple "for dummies " guide to properly use and configure set FSB complete with OC and norlaml shortcuts? I've found snippets of info scatterd about, but no reall comprehensive "guide" I dont want to jump in half blind,especially if the gain is going to be fairly insignificant.

 

I am going to work on that but I'll need a bit more time. I am playing with mine now and want to get a better feel for it. I can say we have 2 different PLL's in these too. I am supposedly lucky and got the better of the two, time will tell.

I am very familiar with AMD and the FSB core workings so I definately have a head start...............

 

Slimline with AMD cpu and M-4GB RAM.


(LT31) Netbook with AMD and M-2GB RAM.

Notice: They both are same Maxuim Memory Capacity * 4194304*. LT has the second empty slot.

 

TanWare- what OC stand for?

 

Over Clock

 

Kamin< thank you very much for reply.. ahh I got it.

 

I tried this

http://www.gatewaynetbooks.com/index.php/forums/11-hacks/64-instructions-for-overclocking-the-lt3103

and no dice, for one there were no shortcuts, then when using the program I got the pll error, my bios is 3130 5/27/09

I also went to the setfsb homepage....and throughly confused...cant find any DL links....

What exactly is "PLL" and how do I find out what I have?

 

Yeah this post# 204 is what you talk about?

 

Yeah< i notice that. I have to pull the plug off then plug it back in USB port. it will works. thats very strange unlike asus netbook Ive zero issues..

 

I wrote this on the other forum also- (For some people it worked) but not all
some i guess have different settings they have to use.
However i can tell you this works for me. both with my orginal memory and
with my memory upgrade to the kingston 4gb which is just like this guys.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5135994&postcount=204

And yes when i tried using the setfsb manually, it gave me a pl error after a
while -- then just kept poping up.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just make the two short cuts below - no need to even start (SetFSB.exe)

(See below for the shortcuts you need to make)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I also use a program called CPUID CPU-Z to watch the processor speed
up/down -free program from www.download.com

I would also suggest getting a program to watch the heat.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Directions
get setfsb.zip
from - http://gatewaynetbooks.com/files/setfsb_2_2_125_92.zip

(Make sure you put it in this folder - so that the shortcut can see it.)
Extract the files to C:\SetFSB

Make shortcuts on your desktop of your netbook
(You have to make these shortcuts yourself)

Overclock: shortcut
Target
C:\SetFSB\setfsb.exe -cg[ICS932S421BGLF] -w0 -s267 -q -i15 -b
Start in
C:\SetFSB
-------------------------------------------------------------
underclock/normal: shortcut
Target
C:\SetFSB\setfsb.exe -cg[ICS932S421BGLF] -w0 -s200 -q -i15 -b
Start in
C:\SetFSB

This will slowly ramp up your clock to 1.6ghz. It will also slowly ramp back down to 1.2ghz.

This worked for me - goodluck to everyone

Note: Not sure if it matters- but i have hung my computer up when i didn't close all programs.
I usually just have cpu-z and my Heat tracking software running in the background. When i do
my overclocking or returning it back to normal speed.

Remember (OverClocking can cause damage!)
_________________________________________________________________
Since im not that technical you will have to read the others post in the www.gatewaynetbooks.com forum-
if you don't have the same fsb settings as my netbook.

 

I have the same PLL as you so the shortcut works fine for me too. I however am not comfortable with that high an OC so for now 233 is my max and the system is happy.............

 

I copied and pasted the shortcuts (changed fsb to 233) and same old same old

 

Check this info out maybe their settings will work for you. GoodLuck!

http://www.gatewaynetbooks.com/index.php/forums/11-hacks/174-overclocking-method-2

 

That worked, Thanks! its not a slow climb though, its instant to 1434.7, now to see if its worth it!