Anyone own a Gateway netbook? Share your thoughts.

[ThisIsNot]

There are a couple of things you need to know about Ion netbooks:

1. They won't come out until this Fall. Lenovo has been cooking an Ion powered S12 netbook for a while now. It was supposed to be released this month but they pushed that back to September. Other manufacturers won't jump on the Ion platform until later.
2. It is going to be expensive. The Ion platform represents "new" technology. It is a dual-core processor setup with a (basically) Nvidia 9400 GPU. The 9400 GPU is relatively inexpensive but netbook manufacturers are going to pay a high fee to use this in their products. Nvidia must pay off their R&D department and the CPU's will technically be new. Expect to pay a minimum of $600 for an Ion powered netbook with the lowest configuration. You might as well buy a budget notebook for that price since it would be more powerful.
3. Ion will only be beneficial if you plan on playing 1080p video content. Even then, HP's Mini 110XP can playback 1080p video and it costs $420 when properly configured. The Ion platform seems like it will be nice but it appears that companies really won't start taking advantage of it until next year.

I suggest that, if you really want/need a netbook now, go ahead and purchase either Gateway's model or the HP Mini 110XP if you want 720p (1080p in the case of the HP) video playback. The Gateway's processor will easily be able to last you until the end of the year. It comes with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. That is more than enough hardware to push Windows 7 (it can even run Aero due to the GPU). You can wait until the Nvidia Ion platform launches in more netbooks but I don't think it will be affordable until next year. Additionally, applications will have to take advantage of the platform (almost just like the Broadcom Crystal HD chip in the HP Mini 110XP) in order to properly push HD video without overloading the system. This more than likely won't come out until next year. Lastly, if HD Flash is important for you, I would go with the HP Min 110XP with the Broadcom HD chip. The reason being is that Adobe currently has no plans to support the Ion platform. Flash support for the Broadcom chip will be coming out in 2010. This was in a statement recently released by Adobe. I am sure that they are going to eventually properly support Ion but don't expect anything until Fall 2010 (when you will likely have a new netbook).

[wafin]

Thanks again ThisIsNot.

Once again, you provide some seriously nice input. I'll take a quick look at the HP mini after I post. It looks like it is in development at this time so may not make it to my doorstep by August.

[ThisIsNot]

HP likes to take their sweet time when it comes to "building" their computers for customers. I ordered one Mini 110XP (through my work) back on July 1st whenever the Broadcom Crystal HD chip was just added. HP said that my netbook would not begin the building process until today. I actually got an e-mail from HP saying that they are starting to build the 110XP. However, it takes a couple of business days to finish building it. On top of that, because the U.S. government is cheap when it comes to us, we had to opt for the standard 5-7 business day shipping. I expect that the netbook won't be done until Friday. This means that I won't get it until the end of July but I am thinking that I won't really get it until mid-August. My past experience with HP has been good but, for one reason or another, it always takes about 5 business days once a product is built before they actually ship it to the U.S. After that, it takes another 5-7 business for the actual shipping process.

[wafin]

Well, just picked up the gateway laptop at BB last night. Charging took under 3 hours and the battery was ready to go. We were streaming XM radio with the monitor on from 8 until midnight and still had a bit more power left to go. I liked vista but wanted to revert back to XP so now in the process of doing that.

Creating the restore disks took under an hour with a dvd burner. Now I wait for XP to install.

[ThisIsNot]

You should take a look at putting Windows 7 on it. You can download the RC version for free and it won't expire until next year. My Gateway was running the 64-bit Ultimate version of Windows 7 (with Aero) without problems. In fact, the computer would boot much faster (and run faster) than it did with the basic version of Windows Vista Home. I had installed the 64-bit version of Windows XP (I had a full disc copy) Pro but it was pretty buggy when it was first released and Microsoft hasn't really changed anything. Windows Vista and Windows 7 were built from the ground up to properly use 64-bit architecture processors while Windows XP was basically just patched for 64-bit use.

Using a 64-bit OS wont really benefit the Gateway netbook since it is limited to 2GB of RAM (that I know of) but it doesn't hurt to use the processor in a manner in which it was designed.

[wafin]

Thanks for the insight on W7 installation. I don't have a copy of W7 but I may look into acquiring one. I've always been a day behind on getting and testing new windows products. Probably due to the fact that troubleshooting sometimes causes too many headaches when my wife is looking over my shoulder wondering when she can play on her new computer. But if it's pretty simple as far as finding drivers and such, then I'll give it a shot after I get a copy of W7.

Uhoh, maybe this is how I get into reformatting my computer every 10 days to upgrade and fix things...just like my network guy was doing to his computer every day.

[wafin]

Update:

XP installation went smoothly and it boots much quicker. Also I don't get as much stutter when I'm typing now.

The one thing I was hoping is that it would play DDO but it is just a bit too choppy to run. Don't know about other online games but for now I'll be happy with simple flash games.

I'm really happy with this purchase and am excited to see what the future of the netbooks are especially if they can keep the price down to $400.

If you have any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer.

[wafin]

Update 2:
Everything is running smoothly now with the exception of the wireless card at my home location.

At work, where we have a unprotected wireless connection in the IT office, it works fine. You click on a website it loads up instantly.

But at home, I have a different setup, with Mac filtering and WEP security. At home, whenever you click to go to another website, I sit there waiting about 5 seconds before any action is taken. Could this be due to my security settings? It is a belkin pre-N which is not supported by the netbook. I could get a dedicated G router but it seems a bit silly to do so.

Any thoughts would be helpful.

Thanks!

[ThisIsNot]

You shouldn't have any issues so long as your router is also emitting an 802.11g signal. You may want to contact Belkin if you continue to have issues. You can try updating your router's firmware.

[wafin]

Thanks again ThisIsNot. I did some testing at home and whenever the computer starts to freeze up on the internet signal, a reboot of the router fixes it. It is almost a 8 year old router now so it may just be dieing a slow death.