Gateway LT3101u 11.6" netbook impressions/thoughts/reviews

I was hoping that would get you there as well with the HyperX memory. Sorry to hear it didn't work out in the end.

The U81a is a dream compared to the Lt-31. A bit bigger but soo much faster. The LT-31 will fit my daughters senior college life well. It is the perfect note taker to bring to class etc. Again the intel 4500 is no gaming GPU but that is not what this is for. The 4500 is better than the x1250 but not by much for gaming, it is way better with HD content though.

 

Has anyone put an Intel 5300 WiFi card in their machine. I bought an Intel 5300 533AN_MMW and my machine won't even boot with it installed. I'm not sure this one is compatible or just a bad card. I bought it on Ebay for cheap, so not sure.

Anyone have any luck with the 5300's and if so where did you get yours.

Thanx

 

Did any one of you have a chance to get one of the unbranded 9 cell batteries (through ebay) which are compatible with both the Acer Aspire One 751 and the Gateway LT31? They have all been sold out with no fresh stock available through any vendor.

Anyone know a good place still selling the 9 cell battery for the AAO 751/ LT31?

thanks

 

Wow it is a shame to see this model go away. I travel for a living and this is far and away the best laptop/netbook I have had. I love the sleep mode (now that it is working!) in win7. I use the machine and when I am done close the lid it can sit in my bag for days and when I am ready to use it it awakes in less than 5 seconds and I am back online. The screen and keyboard are great. All in all I could not be more pleased with this purchase.

 

I also have a LT31 with the SLG84605. However, I swapped out the L110 for a 1.6GHz TF-20. I tried a HyperX stick today, only to find that it doesn't like frequencies above 1.2GHz either. :/

EDIT: This is when messing with just the multiplier, not the FSB.

 

I purchased the same WFI card. It worked fine in my Aspire One D250. When I installed the card in the LT31 - same as yours, my gateway doesn't boot. So, it isn't the card, it's the gateway. I just haven't had the time to research a solution yet.

 

The cpu determines the memory speed in AMD's, not the PLL or FSB.........

If running at 1.6 GHz the memory should be at 320 MHz, DDR2 333 cas 4 would be your best bet...........

 

I wasn't aware of this, thank you for the clarification. I haven't had an AMD-based PC since the early K7 days.

 

I made that same mistake! Try returning it and get your self an Atheros AR9280. IT works but you will have to manually match up the hardware with the software in vista. No matter how many times you install the regular driver the computer wont recognize it. I was able to have gateway send me a link to the driver.
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?ref=DX&id=23184&uid=246285794

 

I'd have to ask, when you install the new cards did you reset the cmos? If you didn't the cmos tables will be set to the resources of the old wireless card............

 

I never thought to reset the BIOS when I switched out the WIFI card. With previous laptops I've owned, it's never been necessary. Once I figure out how to reset the BIOS, I'll give that a try and let you know.

EDIT: Easy enough to reset the BIOS - the "jumper" is beneath the WIFI card - two triangular shaped pads - remove the battery and short the pads together while plugging in the power adapter. In my case, BIOS date resets to 01/01/09.

However, Intel 5300 and Intel 5100 - in either case, the LT31 refuses to boot. Oh well... Thanks for the idea though!

 

So whats replacing this ? THe bestbuys near me are clearancing it . Hopefully a 1.6ghz neo with the hd 3200 igp ?

 

Bought this computer the other day on sale, was going to replace a Samsung NC20, that all of the sudden went dead. Overall I a very impressed with the built quality, feels very good, better than the NC20, and overall design I very attractive IMO.

Got the Packard Bell DOT M/A branded one, exactly the same as the Gateway LT31xxx series, mine came with Vista Premium and 320GB harddrive.

Though only came with 4400mAh 6cell battery, which is not much, have ordered a 9cell 7800mAh battery, so hoping to get 8+ hours (right now I get about -4 hours).

One major drawback, is the lack of built in bluetooth, this should be standard in netbook these days, so was kind of disappointed to see this was not built in.

Am thinking about maybe a modding project, anyone have had the netbook apart to examine the internal parts, maybe there is room for a bluetooth card. Also under the card slot (wlan card), there is room for another PCIE card, but no socket, is that standard and possible to get a socket that will fit, seems like a pretty straight forward just to solder one to the board?

Hoping for at least to get the Bluetooth built in to the device, like to keep the external USB ports free when transporting.

 

How much did they clearance it for?

 

same price , just says clearance

 

I got mine today as well. Windows Vista Basic was slow as hell, so I reinstalled Windows7 Ultimate RC1 for now and it is alot faster.

Overall I am liking the machine for what i've paid and it does seem like a nice little project to work on maybe if someone can refer to a good internal bluetooth/wifi card upgrade. Otherwise I am planning on getting a dual core turion and SSD and 4gb for next upgrade

p.s. the LED Screen is not too shabby either. What ultimately got me sold was the Hi-Res screen resolution. I dont think I could settle for anything less in this estate.


Problem:

Now that i've mentioned ive installed Windows7 RC1 64bit, my webcam is not working, and ive downloaded synaptics drivers straight from their site, but the multi-gesture funtions seems to have been disabled/not included. how can i fix this? Should I try the gateway synaptics drivers?

Thanks!

 

Just took mine apart today, to investigate if there is room for Bluetooth, and just to take a closer look at the hardware.

Followed this guide here: http://netbookitalia.it/acer-aspire-one-751-guida-al-disassemblaggio.html (in itallian) for the Acer 751, same procedure for this Gateway/Packard Bell branded ones. The hardest part for me was getting the keyboard off, and it is not even held in place by crews just some plastic spring loded "snaps" in the top of the keyboard.

Anyway, overall it is very well put together, am impressed it has so many screws for such a cheap netbook. Have also had the Samsing NC20 apart, even though it is easier to disassemble the overall built quality is not at the same level as this one.

Here is the netbook disassembled: http://gallery.wcw.dk/#59.1

The images is not in order, and some not the best focus, kind of hard to hold the camera steady, and no flash was used.

There is room for Bluetooth card, but nu "plug" on the MB, was kind of a let-down for me, was hoping just to buy a card, and plug it into the MB. Now it needs to me soldered to the MB, and have not yet been able to find the pin-out for the 5-pin layout on the MB, anyone got a clue.

Else would be nice to soldere a simholder, and the other mini pci-e socket to the MB, and see if it is possible to get the 3G working, read about other who did this on a Asus eeepc, but cannot find the hardware needed, seems like it is a 4mm hight mini pci-e socket that is missing (52 pins of-curse), but for the simcard holder, have not got a clue here, anyone?

What else to be done with this, any ideas?

 

4mm is exactly the right for the pci-e adapter that's missing. I did add it to mine, but the volatge is missing on pins 2 and 52. That CAN be fixed easily. However, it's not a full pci-e slot. Most of the signals are missing. Only the USB stuff is brought out to the connector. So that limits it usefulness. I'm intending to use mine for this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/NEW-Dell-Wireles...in_0?hash=item3ef8ebe941&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

Where did you get the PCI-E socket, have searched for this, but cannot find where to buy it, please do share .

The Dell (Broadcom) card looks great, will it work, you sat the usb pins (36 & 38 if I remember right), but the missing voltage, maybe it is just a spot on the MB that needs to me connected, any clue?

 

For the pci-e connector, this is the one that I bought: http://cgi.ebay.ca/Mini-PCI-e-H4-0-...in_0?hash=item414953babf&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14.

 

Wow nice, thanks, just what I have been looking for, wondering if this SIM adapter will work two?

http://cgi.ebay.com/DIY-Sim-Slot-Ad...in_0?hash=item3ef8d552a8&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

@whc

That looks like the one that I would buy, for sure. When I get my machine back open later on, I will take a photo to show where to jumper to get the voltage to the PCI-e slot. I'm also assuming that voltage will also have to be patched to SIM adapter as well.

 

Does anyone know if the gpu-accelerated flash 10.1 will work with this?

 

I've been looking all over Ebay for the 7800 mAHr battery, but couldn't find any lately.

Where did you find the 9 cell battery for this? And for how much? Does it stick out from the back AND the bottom?

 

I am assuming that he bought one like this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/9-CELL-Battery-f...ries?hash=item41492ba302&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14. My understanding is that the batteries are compatible. I know that the keyboards are.

 

Hey thanks. Now before I order this, I just wanted to know if anyone uses a netbook sleeve like the one [ pic1, pic2] that I currently have?

Will the LT31 not fit in a 12" sleeve with the extended battery? Please post some photos if any of you have the 9 cell battery.

 

After a lot of searching (and waiting, I might add), just bought a TF-20 AMGTF20HAX4DN AMD processor. Can't wait for it to arrive!

 

Congratulations! I lucked out and found one of these on eBay a while back. I've also tried a few Turion X2s but haven't had much luck with them yet.

It's worth noting that with the TF-20 installed, your LT31 will still be running at 1200MHz (or in your case, 1435MHz due to your hardware modification) unless you use RMClock or a modified DSDT table.

 

So if it still will only run at 1.2 GHz, or respective overclock, what is the advantage over the original L110?

I could see if it would run at the 1.6 GHz, a 33% improvement.........

 

It will run at 1.6GHz, but not out of the box. The BIOS seems to lock the frequency (multiplier?) at 1.2GHz for some reason. You can change this once an operating system is loaded with RMClock (which detects all of the multipliers supported by the chip) or a custom DSDT table with the proper frequency entries added.

 

Got my TF-20 installed yesterday. Imagine my excitement at seeing the BIOS post at 1900 Ghz! Unfortunately, Turmlos is right. Somewhere the multiplier is throttled back to 6 from 8. Using RMClock, it is easy enough to reset the multiplier.

VID is a little higher too at 1.05v, up from .9 with the L110. Over all, I am quite pleased with the upgrade. With the 9 cell battery purchased from ebay, battery life is around 7 hours (without any tweaking at this point).

 

I wonder if there will be a refresh before the end of the year with HDMI out. I can't believe that port isn't on the notebook, but it could be because its using an older chipset.

Always good to see competition between Intel and AMD, especially since AMD's integrated graphics kick the pants out of Intel's.

 

I believe the stock VID on the TF-20 is 1.00v. RMClock lets you increase the voltage a little.

I'm running my TF-20 at the following voltages:
0.850v @ 1.6GHz
0.800v @ 1.4GHz
0.7625v @ 1.2GHz
0.7250v @ 1.0GHz
0.6875v @ 0.8GHz

My old L110 could undervolt a little better, but I prefer the extra speed.

Seven hours...nice. I can milk five out of the six cell, but that's with CPU frequency/voltage scaling and fan control. Linux seems to use more power than Windows on this machine.

Have you tried getting PowerNow working, or do you run it at full speed all the time?

 

@Turmlos
Thanks for your numbers - I've been brewing beer today and am a little bit fuzzy, but your numbers tell me right off that I could be doing better. I am now at 7:23 full life time on the battery according to BatteryBar.

Earlier, I played with my numbers and went with a 4x FID at .80v vid at index 0 up to 8x FID with 1.0 - I am going to try to put your numbers into that to see where I end up!

 

Is there a way to turn off the fan, or decrease it?
With Windows 7, it runs a LOT cooler, I'm surprised actually.
I tried the link to the Acer software, but that did not work.

 

By Acer software, do you mean AA1 Fan Control? If so, that's the only way I know of to control the fan in Windows. It worked for me in XP/Vista, but I haven't tried 7.

For the Linux users out there, I recently sent a patch to the developer of acerhdf, which he quickly modified and merged. You should now be able control the fan with version 0.5.19 or greater.

 

Hard not to when you are/own ATI

 

Hi Donaldson,

Im going to give a shot at adding a pci-e connector to the extra slot near the wi-fi card - Could you tell me where to jumper to get the voltage to the extra PCI-e slot.

Also did you have any luck with the Bluetoothcard?

(Im actually trying to see if i can get a Broadcom Decoder Card to work in this Netbook.)

Thanx

 

@Turmlos

By PowerNow, do you mean varying the CPU clock against the processor load? I have got that working with RMClock and the (is it?) Performance on Demand setting. I found (quite by accident) that I could select more than one FID. With more than one FID select, the processor scales through those FIDs based on load. I've only played with it a bit. In fact, it was just yesterday that I tripped over the settings.

And with my FIDs and using your numbers, I was able to drop everything by a volt: 4x at .7, up to 8x at .9. Thanks for that.

Can I also say how impressed I am by how much quieter the LT31 runs now. The fan never seems to spin up as loudly as it did with the L110. Now that might be the Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound Paste, or it might be the processor. But I am very happy with how much quieter things are.

 

I'll have to dig up a picture for you. Though the pci-e connector is on one side of the board, the jumper that I ran for the voltage is on the other. I basically traced out pin 52 of the PCI-e connector with a volt meter set to continuity until I found a match. Anyways, I will dig out (or open up my LT31 and take) a picture.

It's funny the bluetooth card will work in my Aspire One (I installed a second pci-e adapter in that one, too), but not in the Gateway. I'm not at all sure why. Another card that own like this one http://cgi.ebay.ca/2in1-Bluetooth-W...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item20adce1cb2 works just fine in the same slot.

The second pci-e slot is a usb only slot. Most pci-e signals are not brought out to the slot. The slot was clearly originally intended for a usb wwlan card - the usb tracings are there as well as the tracing heading out to the SIM card adapter. The broadcom card, if it is the HD decoder card you are talking about, will not work in that slot. The HD decoder card is a pci-e card and requires those additionals signals.

 

Yes, that's what I was referring to. Unfortunately, if you are planning to use it for any extended amount of time (it helps battery life quite a bit), you will most likely encounter lockups due to the SLG clock generator. See my post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5351077&postcount=240

I'm glad my numbers helped you out.

I used Arctic Silver 5 when I swapped in the TF-20 as well. I also removed the vent grills from the underside of the unit. These factors combined with the undervolting and frequency/voltage scaling help keep things very quiet. If I keep the fan on, the CPU temperature rarely breaks 50-degrees C at 1.6GHz.

 

What speed would the memory be running at with a 1.9GHz TL-58? I'm guessing it would want DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)?

 

With my TF-20 running at 1.9ghz, I'm running a no name piece of 667 at CL5 - no problems what so ever - at least so far. The stick is clocked at 5-5-5-15 @ 382mhz at 1900ghz. But your right, a stick of DDR2 800 would probably be better.

Now, with mulitple FIDs - very first thing I did was run the Prime numbers stress test, - no problems reported. Passed with fly colors - but with your warnings in mind, I'll keep an eye on it. How frequent where your lock ups? I've probably run the machine hard for 12 or so hours within the past day, and maybe another 2-3 hours of casual use with no problems.

 

Thanks for the memory speed information. Maybe my stick of DDR2 667/PC2 5300 simply wasn't up to the task when I tried the TL-58.

Hmm, wouldn't a stress test pretty much max out the CPU most of the time? My lockups occurred while in the process of changing FIDs/VIDs. Their frequency ranged from within minutes of boot-up to several hours. They seemed to occur more often in Linux than Windows, but I can't be certain since I don't use my Windows partition very much. Regardless, they disappeared with the new motherboard. The only difference I could find between the motherboards were the BIOS version (1.3103 vs. 1.3302) and clock generator.

 

Your right of course, stress testing with wPrime would not have revealed a problem as the processor scales directly to 1.9GHz. On the other side of things, I've been using the gateway now for days without a single hiccup. That's with Windows, btw. I may just be lucky and have a tolerant gateway.

I've thought about your gateway, and I wonder were you overclocking it? The default value of control register 0 is F3. Using the SetFSB instructions that are currently available sets it to 9B disabling Spread Spectrum for ATI and for SRC. Usually these are enable. Using the data sheet, a more compatible value is F3 resulting in the 1435GHz. So I am thinking that it might be the fact that spread spectrum has been disabled. Maybe?

 

No, this wasn't with overclocking. I'm not aware of any Linux-based utility that allows one to adjust the FSB apart from lfsb, which doesn't support either clockgen.

I know that other users with the SLG clockgen have experienced the same problem. See:
http://newyork.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1253365

 

From here on in, I got nothing. Other than that I've got that rare Lt31... but I've had no problems to this point, just none (knock on wood). I've been really happy with the processor swap, and RMClock, and my hardware overclock mod. This machine seems easily as responsive as my timeline AS1410, if not more so. Next on line, at least at some point, is an upgrade to 4gb of ram... then I guess I'm done, right?

 

kingkenshin:
could you import the ICS9248BF-96 clock gen file from SETFSB(using the creator option), and email to me ? thanks . I got a lt3109c which is selling in china , and i try to oc this lap in both way ,but it does't work . my email yanyan*yantong.cn (*=@) thank again

 

I just tried this in mine with Win7 premium on it. It's working fine.

What are the receommended on and off fan temps when running the CPU at 1.2Ghz?

 

Just saw this and thought I would pass it on.

Buy.com has the LT3103u (refurbished) for $299.

The LT3103 comes with Vista Basic but does have the slightly faster Radeon X1270 GPU vs the X1200 in the LT3101.

With a $10 off coupon and a $25 credit (Bill Me Later) I got one for $264 to go with my LT3101u (w/Win 7) that I already have.

It was just too good a deal to pass up.