T-1616 User Group

Hey guys ive noticed ever since the sale on bestbuy.com a bunch of people were able to get the kickass t-1616 laptop at a very cheap price of 599 compared to its retail price of 799.

maybe we could chat here of any problems or tweaks and reviews of the t-1616

t-1616 ftw.

btw, this has great value later on if you want to resell your laptop, you probably can for a profit but im just saying. im not getting rid of this laptop just yet.

so talk

 

Sounds great! I love this notebook, and I'm definitely a Mac fanboy!

I keep finding cool stuff about it every day. Today I got the digital audio output working through HDMI and optical out. I didn't realize it had optical out until I opened the control panel to set up the HDMI.

 

i was wondering has anyone tried using XP on this thing? im not sure, but i think that the drivers are incompatible with xp.

 

Just pickup this laptop today. Very nice unit. It really is slimmer than most 14" laptops. I upgraded to 2gb before I even turned it on. Left side of the laptop contains the CPU and chipset so all the heat is on the left of the unit. Yes it runs alot warmer than Core2Duo based laptops.

My Pros :
1. Slimmer than most 14" laptop out there.
2. Does not have as much of that Toyish plastic feel like Dell laptops.
3. Quiet fan.
4. Volume touch slide is awsome. No need for the annoying Fn key.
5. Touch pad is very smooth and slick and your finger slides on it very easy not like some other pads that feel like rubber and grip your finger (I HATE that).
6. HDMI port of course!!!!

Cons :
1. Vertical viewing angel on the screen is not the best. The screen looks perfect looking directly at it. Tilt the screen at you and the picture lightens, tilt it away and it gets blacked out so basically its got a very narrow vertical viewing angle. Horizontal on the other hand is very good.
2. AMD Turion X2 is slower than Core2Duo
3. Loaded with too much junkware but you can always fix that.
4. Poor speakers IMO
5. The media buttons have a feeling of "unsureness" to them when pressed.

 

My tweaks and tricks so far...

1. Free 128mb of ram! Go into BIOS and set video memory from AUTO --> 128mb. This will free 128mbs of memory since AUTO sets it to 256mb. You DONT need 256mb allocated. I wish there was a 32mb setting to free up even more RAM. Integrated graphics cant even take advantage of 64mb or ram. With integrated graphics even gaming benchmarks show ZERO improvement using 128mb or 256mb setting. Its just a stupid marketing gimmick by ATI. At any rate set it to 128mb.

 

NOTE : My unit came with a 4400mah battery. The gateway specs show the crappy 2200mah Also someone on the best buy website review section claimed only 1 hour of battery life where Im already past 2 hours while Im typing this now. Maybe he got the 2200mah battery?

Post what battery you got please.

 

nice reviews btw. =) thanks for sharing and ive changed the title to include laptops of the same line =)

 

The speakers really sound like crap. I guess you cant have the best of both worlds. I would rather keep the laptop slim than have bigger better sounding speakers.

I did some side by side comparison with a Core 2 Duo laptop. This Turion x2 1.9ghz is about as fast as a 1.5ghz core 2 duo. I ran a few apps side by side and watched the CPU meters.

 

making it dual core i think its alright either way. the speakers are kinda week. my old dell 8200 sounds louder. but then again its a desktop replacement ^^

does yours have bluetooth by anychance? also could u take a pic of ur lappy? =)

 

T-1616 Video link

 

awesome video haha. yeah i love slot loading dvd drives myself =)

 

Im going to be installing XP on this today. I'l let you know how it works out and if I can find all drivers for XP (I sure I can). After using the unit with the CPU loaded at 50% the left side of the laptop gets quite warm.

 

thannks onion and good luck

 

could anyone install SpeedFan and tell what is their current temp reading. PLZ. just bought one some time ago and i think is running a bit 2 hot.

 

Mine runs at 59c while surfing the net and 55c while idle. Full load it goes up to 79c. This is after I removed the crappy stock thermal pad and put arctic silver 5 on. It lowered the temps a few degrees. It used to run at 81c at full load.

These temps are prefectly normal.

 

Oh and I have to add again the the speaker on this laptop SUCK. The keyboard also has some flex to it. I dont care about the keyboard I just wish the speakers could have been alittle better.

 

all small portable laptops speakers suck. the good ones are usually the bigger 15.4' ones.

 

Thanks for the reply Onion. My runs about the same temp.

 

I popped open the bottom cover where the hard drive is and found that there are TWO PCI-express slots. The wifi card takes up one slot and one is open. You can add a Bluetooth card inside if you want or anything else

 

Just wanted to mention again how BAD the speakers are on this laptop. Man they sound like CRAP. Unreal...

 

I have the T-6816 (C2D, 2GB, 9Cell), which is quite similar to the T-1616, minus the slot loading drive and the processor. Fantastic laptop, for the most part. Anyone have any luck successfully running XP on it? I can't adjust the brightness for some reason, and it reverts to its darkest setting despite adjusting it to its highest before it boots to XP. Looks like I'm stuck with Vista

 

onion said he was going 2 try, still havent heard from him

deify how long have you had your t-6816?

 

About 3 weeks, I'm liking it a lot so far, despite being on my third one. (First one I bought was an open box French model for 799$ CAD, the next week the new one in English was on special for that price, so I exchanged it, but the touchpad had some dead spots, so I exchanged that one for the one I have now). I do wish it had a slot loading dvd drive, but it's really no big loss.

Edit: Didn't notice the 1616 had built in bluetooth and HDMI. Americans get such better deals on laptops
Edit 2: v My bad, but the HDMI is still sweet

Edit 3: Any luck with XP, onion? It works great for me, minus the whole unlit screen issue.

 

The T1616 does not have bluetooth.

 

the t-1616 doesnt have bluetooth but can be expanded. apperently my brother (we both got the same laptops) has bought the card for bluetooth.

3weeks, there was that other guy whos got a gateway but different model, only lasted for 14months which really sucks, thats not long enough for me, i expect this t-1616 to last at least 2 years, and im taking great care of it.

vista is alright not too shoddy but it will do

 

In regards to installing XP on the T-1616 it did not work for since the drive are Vista only, was not able to even install video drivers, said is incorrect OS version. So most likely XP will not work, what a shame.

 

I have Xp installed and and found all the drivers. YES, the drivers for Vista are for Vista only thats just common sense. Everything work perfectly with XP. I dont understand why people find it difficult to find XP drivers for laptops that come with Vista. Simply download them from the Mfr of the hardware. Its very easy.

The ATI x1270 video drivers are not out yet for XP. They will be included in the next Catalyst driver release from ATI. You can download pre-leases XP video drivers. They work perfeclty.

Ill post a list of the XP drivers you need and where to get them later.

 

all drivers ^^

 

Does anyone know if you can boot from a USB drive with the T-1616? I don't see the option in the BIOS, so I assume it's a big "no," but maybe someone else sees something I don't.

 

^ To install XP without using a floppy/USB, download Nlite and slipstream the drivers to the CD. there's a tutorial on how to do it on softpedia.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/nLite.shtml

 

Even your brightness adjustment work? That is the only issue I'm having on mine.

 

Yes it works fine. You didnt install the video driver....

What drivers did you install at all? You';re probably missing tons of them. Look in device manager.

 

I just realized how SLOW the graphics are in this laptops. If you have more than one window open there is so much lag when moving windows around. With two windows open I checked the CPU usage while moving around one window around and it was getting PINNED at 80-90%.

I hooked up to a 1080p HDTV via HDMI and the graphics were so slow at the resolution that I thought there was something wrond with the unit. There is nothing wrong though. Unreal how slow the grpashics are. Its probably due to the missing graphics memory chips that Gateway did not include

SUPER slow graphics!!! Coupled with the sub par screen I think I maybe returning this unit now....

 

could it be because of windows XP? since the drivers are incompatible or something.

 

I agree it must have something to do with XP. I've had mine hooked p to my HDTV through HDMI and had no problems with speed. In fact I had the desktop split with the laptop at 1200 X 800 and the TV at a full 1080p and it was fine.

 

Its running Vista not XP. Im returning it to best buy. This AMD and ati integrated graphics setup has too hard of a time with Vistas graphics. Reducing Vistas graphics apperance helps alot. I even tested one on display at best buy. Same thing. Then I tried Core2Duo based units and the Core2Duo based units were so much faster. Im def returning this unit and picing up the gateway m6816 which is the same laptop but core2duo based.

 

By the way, look how much CPU usage you have with only two internet explorer windows open and while dragging one around the screen in a circle. CPU usage SKY ROCKETS. Core2duo based laptopa dont do that!

 

i dont use internet explorer i use firefox and opera on windows vista. i do alot on this laptop photoshop and browse and game works wonders for me,

but its a shame it wont support vista.

does the skyrocketing of cpu usage cause the laptop to crash or hang? or is it the cause of incompatible display drivers?

 

Again, Im using Vista that came preloaded on the laptop. I have a seperate harddrive that I used to install XP.

Lokster, YOUR laptop will do the same CPU skyrocket as mine does under vista. This laptop setup is just not powerful enough to handle Vistas GUI well. Im returning mine. Dont get me wrong. I LOVE the design of this laptop. Im just getting the core2duo version of it.

 

My C2D T-16 doesn't seem to have that problem at all. It runs Aero very nicely. Also, the x3100 seems to run Call of Duty 4 decently, I'm thoroughly surprised. Are you on power saver possibly? Maybe it's a RAM issue too.

Going back to the XP installation issue. I had all the drivers installed, minus the audio ones. I'm going to try again this weekend to fix it up.

 

Here's a weird one...

This morning I was ejecting a DVD and the fabric strip over the opening of the DVD drive came off with the disc! Now when I eject discs they shoot out and slide across the table. Kinda cool!

Anyway, I called Gateway, got a live person (in the USA) after one ring who didn't hesitate to send me an entirely new optical drive immediately. They secured it against a credit card in case I didn't send the old one back (pretty standard for computer parts) but didn't try to hassle me in the least. Really good customer service experience.

Yay, Gateway! My part should be here in five business days. Until then I'll be shooting out some DVD's. PEW, PEW, PEW!!

 

Nopr no issues at all and im not in power save mode. The system is just not powerful enough to run Vistas GUI fast thats all. I already returned mine today.

 

rofl. wth xD hope mine doesnt start acting up. ew thats pretty cheap >.< rofl.

 

lokster, can you confirm very high CPU usage when you have TWO internet explorer windows open and dragging one around in a circle fast?

I can confirm on the core2duo version on this laptop CPU usage when doing that is only 8-10% while on my t-1616 it was around 70%

Can anyone confirm with thier t-1616....thanks. Something is wrong here...

 

cant confirm it. when i have 5 internet explorers, dragging around one in a circle fast. no problem at all heh. this laptop runs neverwinter nights 2 awesome! ah usage is around 40% anyways u got the other laptop by now eehehe.

 

Thanks. You just confirmed my thoughts. High CPU usage even when dragging windows around. Yes I returned mine and got the core2duo verison. It somkes the t-1616. Its so much faster its shocking.

As you stated 40% CPU usage. That will easily hit ~60% just like mine if you really move the window around fast. Core2Duo version never goes over 10%-11%. Its shocking how much faster the intel setup is. I dont know, maybe the AMD based T series have driver issues with Vista or something. I would recommend keeping an eye out for updated drivers from AMD/ATI.

I actually paid the same price for the core2duo as it was on clearance at best buy. Made me feel good and the holiday spirt was restored.

 

awesome ok onion i did it again, there was an update of windows last night, and multiple internet explorer open and spinning around with 76 processes lol

it says zero but it really took 8-10% then max jump was 15% i think the update last night helped. was soo surprised i took a screenshot

 

For those with the hdmi output, is anyone serious about home theatre and set this up.

Not just the video output but also the audio. HDMI should output the audio as well. For those with receivers with hdmi input, did you guys run into any problems?

Or for those who don't have hdmi receivers and just output to the set, how do you output the digital sound? Does the headphone jack also act as a mini SPDIF?

 

I have output digital audio through both HDMI and optical out via the heaphone jack and into my Denon amp. Works great! I also had the video output set at 1080p.

 

PERFECT! The features on this laptop is the future of laptops, hdmi/dvi and spdif will be (should be) standard soon. People with hdtvs which is growing in amount, will realize its the way to go. And for the price, this will still serve great for those who watch x264 mkv 1080p/720p bluray/hddvd rips and output.