My Review of the Gateway LT2104U Netbook

Hi Guys/Gals. New here, thought I'd post my personal review of the LT2104u.

****A little background, skip ahead to the review if you wish****

I am a Paramedic at a low volume ambulance service. I work 48-60 hour shifts and roughly 75% of that time is spent waiting on a run playing around on my laptop. I have owned an Asus gaming laptop for a couple of years but my gaming preference has migrated to the PS3 and PSP. My gaming laptop portability is hindered by it's weight and I have noticed that while I'm using it at work, all I do is watch dvd's, surf the web, chat, facebook, and listen to my music. It took an entire separate bag to lug that booger around (Laptop, cords, speakers, mouse, dvd series, etc...) A coworker had an Asus Eee and allowed me tinker with it and it blew my expectations away. I had shrugged off netbooks when they hit the market as being grossly underpowered, low disc capacity, and barely even capable of adequately surfing the web. Boy was I wrong.

Having owned an Asus laptop and playing with the coworker's Eee, I researched it for a few days and had decided on the 1005-PEB. I went to Best Buy and the only one they had was the Red/burgundy color 1005PEB. I was *not* feeling that color lol. They had a few shades of the 1005-HA but it's specs wasn't what I had decided on. So I reluctantly told the associate that I would take the Red PEB. While he was getting it, I was telling him how I was not feeling the color but I suppose I will buy a skin online. The associate asked me what about the Asus made me choose it. I told him the specs and that I currently own an Asus gaming laptop. He then showed me the Gateway LT2104u (Black), which matched the specs as the 1005-PEB and was $20 cheaper. I looked at it, played with it. He assured me the RAM was upgradeable to 2GB. So I purchased it. No regrets yet

***End of background, Begin of Review***

I have been using my LT2104 heavily, as my primary computer, over a week. My asus gaming laptop has only been use to transfer my music, documents, etc.. over to this netbook.

Build Quality 5/5: This unit feels as sturdy as my full-feature laptop. I don't notice any flex/bend while lifting, moving, typing, etc... It is glossy and does retain fingerprints but I was specifically looking for Black or Dark blue in color. The battery sits "semi-flush". It is flush with the back of the unit, the bottom of the battery is designed with a curved 'lump' that runs along the bottom of the battery that appears to serve to keep the back of the system slightly lifted to improve air-flow. The bottom does get warm but nothing unbearable or uncomfortable.

Keyboard 4.5/5: The key sizes feel perfect to me. Both shift keys are bar sized. The only annoyance I have with the keys is the backspace key is smaller than I'm use to and I keep nailing the keys around it. It is slightly larger than the surrounding keys but just not as large as I'm use to. I still hit one of the surrounding keys around it if I don't look first.

Trackpad 4.5/5: The trackpad size is decent enough size for this system. Has a single bar button (capable of left/right click depending on when end you push). The trackpad itself is flush with casing and is designated by white-dots. The dots don't have any tactile feel to them. If you close your eyes and rub your finger across the pad, you would not be able to determine where it ends or begins. It is multi-touch capable, you can zoom with "pinching". Plus it supposedly has some other 'gestures' it can identify but I haven't really explored all of those. The pad will 'deactivate' while typing and 'reactivate' one second after typing. If you are quick to use it after typing, you will notice lag in the cursor but it isnt a true lag, its just you used it a moment before it reactivated immediately after typing. My only complaint is the "scroll area" of the trackpad. As mentioned above, there is no way of 'feeling' where you are at on the trackpad, so I have to stop reading and actually look to place my finger on the scroll area.

Screen 5/5: 10.1" LED LCD with 1024x600 resolution. The screen is bright and clear. Hasn't gotten very dirty after a week of heavy/constant use. I have gotten use to running my browser in 'full screen mode' to maximize display area(Firefox, pressing F11). I really can't think of much else to comment about the screen. The black border around the screen has collected fingerprints from opening and readjusting the tilt of the screen.

Battery 5/5: 6-cell Lithium Ion. I resisted the temptation to fire this puppy up when I unboxed it. I plugged it in and charged it until the amber light turned blue per the instructions. It took about 2 hours I believe. I use it primarily on battery and avoid charging it until I get a critical battery alert. So far I am getting between 8-9 hours of battery life. The only power option I adjusted was turning the screen brightness down to nearly minimum for battery use. The screen is still bright enough to comfortably read.

Performance 4.75/5: Intel Atom N450, 1GB RAM stock (I upgraded to 2GB), 250GB HDD, Win7 Starter. I bought the RAM upgrade when I bought the system. I waited until after the initial startup/setup before I upgraded. After initial setup, I powered it down completely, and upgraded the RAM. There is a small compartment to change the RAM and a larger compartment to change the HDD if desired. I powered it back up and used my last win7 upgrade license to upgrade to 32bit Home Premium. The ONLY time I have ever noticed a performance drop is on a webpage that has multiple flash based advertisements there is some 'jerkiness' with scrolling but Firefox with Adblock eliminated that. Youtube, Hulu, and my personal DVD rips play flawlessly in standard def. I haven't tried HD video as I have read those can jerk/jump so I have no expectations there. I am happy with standard def. I uninstalled the 60day MS Office trial and installed Open Office. Open Office runs as well on this netbook as it does on my full featured Laptop. I even disabled the Quickstarter, it still runs just as well and loads up quickly (My personal spreadsheets aren't real function heavy, just minor calculations). I am toying with the idea of trying Office 2010 beta to play around with OneNote. I installed VLC for my videos. Media Player wasn't giving me any performance problems, just seems that VLC better resizes to full screen (This isn't due to the netbook, I use it on my Laptop for the same reason). The built-in speakers are far from superb when it comes to volume. If you are in a large room or vehicle with any other noise then headphones will be required, if you are in a bedroom with the netbook relatively close then the speakers *might* be adequate depending on preference. Majority of users will probably want headphones or external speakers. The built-in webcam is adequate for me. I'm not a heavy user, I mainly only video chat with my kids during my long shifts. My wife says it looks clear on her end and isn't grainy or too dark. Overall the systems boots quickly, shutsdown quickly, loads programs quickly and multitasks well for me (Firefox, Yahoo, Folder open, Open Office Calc open simultaneously). The only thing keeping performance from 5/5 is that the volume could use a little boost. I can't give an opinion how well it would function with the original 1GB Ram since I immediately upgraded after initial setup. I didn't notice any major performance issues during the initial setup. Also, I uninstalled the antivirus trial that came with the system. I don't have any antivirus running in the background, I prefer to scan on demand instead of having a program eat resources constantly (Note: I don't suggest this to everyone, I am confident in my computer skills and usage to bypass active protection. My wife's laptop and our shared desktop DOES have a program actively running at all times)

Connectivity & Expandability 5/5: The system has 802.11 b/g/n Wifi capabilities. It has gave me no issues with my home wireless network or the two wireless networks I use at work. It also has an Ethernet port,3 USB ports, Headphone and Microphone jack, Full size VGA port for external monitor. The system comes with 1GB RAM upgradable to 2GB RAM. The HDD is 250GB and easily replaceable thanks to a removable plate on the bottom of the unit (No practically disassembling this to upgrade the HDD). It does have a multicard reader. I was thinking I read somewhere that it wouldn't accept HC cards, any over 4GB and it would have issues with "seeing" it. I have an 8GB PNY CF card I have used to transfer my music/videos from my Laptop to this netbook and have not had *any* issues, neither does the 8GB card from my wife's camera. My cell phone is a Motorola Droid and when I connect it via USB, it is quickly and flawlessly detected. The system does not have built-in Bluetooth.

Overall 4.75/5 (Actual average ~4.82): I can see this little fella practically replacing my full featured laptop as my primary system. It is VERY portable, great battery life, great performance. It does everything I generally do daily with my laptop. Now my laptop sits at home, the only reason it seems to get turned on now is for video encoding. I am just amazed at the power of my netbook and its portability.

Let me know if I missed anything or if there are any questions.

 

I can't deal with GMA3150, you're a stronger person than I am.

 

I can verify that you can flash the BIOS on the LT2104u (Gateway - Black) with the Acer 532h BIOS.

Go here:
Acer Support - Download Drivers

Then click 'Netbook' and find '532h'. The latest BIOS 1.25 and the one present on the LT2104u (at least mine) is 1.05. You can flash either by DOS or Windows. And you must have the AC adapter plugged in to flash it.

FYI- if you use the Windows flash program provided-- it will confirm that the original (Gateway) BIOS series is the same series (N50) as the Acer, though an earlier version.

 

I have the mighty little LT2104u, and after some frustration with Windows 7 Starter, I nuked the HD and installed Crunchbang Linux
( CrunchBang Linux - A nimble Openbox Linux distro ), which worked flawlessly. I installed a program called Cheese to use the webcam.

I had a similar frustration with finding the up/down scroll area on the touchpad, but I put a "Linux Inside" badge adjacent to the touchpad margin, so that I can find the scroll area of the trackpad. Works a treat.

I am especially happy with the wireless adapter. It provides some cool functionality. Google "Aircrack-ng" for why I like this adapter.

I have much appreciation for Intel Atom processor computers, owning three.
Less is more.