Downsizing – Gateway LT2104 Netbook

I picked myself up a .. toy.. today. A new Gateway LT2104 netbook. I don’t call it a toy because of it’s power, it’s cause it’s not something I absolutely needed… but is a belated Christmas present for myself.

I saw it on display at a Best Buy yesterday, checked it out online a bit along with a couple others. This one looked to be the best deal of the bunch. It’s got the new Atom N450 processor, along with the usual stuff, 10.1 inch display, 1GB ram, wireless N, 3USB, VGA output, webcam, etc. The bonus stuff it comes with is a 6cell battery giving it bout 8hours of time, a 250GB hard drive (most netbooks run around 160), and a multi-touch touchpad. All this for $330…

I actually lucked out in getting it tonight. After deciding last night I wanted to get this one, I went to another Best Buy this morning and found out that it wasn’t supposed to be on display yet, that it doesn’t actually go on sale until tomorrow. After running around awhile today, I stopped at yet another Best Buy and inquired about it, showing them the pic of the display tag I snapped with my Pre yesterday.. and sure enough… they had 18 in back and went and fetched me one. Bonus!

A couple minutes later, I was walking out the door with this box, just 8.5″ x 4.25″ x 12.75″ box. and I thought my Acer laptop was small when I got that.

So I get it home and started un-boxing it. Inside there was a multi-language sheet about how if it’s been stored or transported in cold or damp environment to let it warm up before power up. There’s some pics on how to install the battery, etc.  It’s January in Minnesota… I figured I’ld let it sit a bit to warm up.

Not much else inside the box, under the cardboard cover is the computer itself, and below that the power supply with US plug adapter and the Quick Start & Troubleshooting Guide. I pulled that out to browse while letting the computer come to room temp.

The Quick Start is very generic. It is probably the same one shipped with all their Win7 laptops and such… I ended up not really spending any time with it.

The initial boot had the usual screens for setup, then the Gateway registration. I declined to do the trial of Norton’s. I’ll add AVG or something later. It found my home network easy enough.

First thing I did was boot up IE so I could go download Firefox. I debated on putting Chrome on here, and I may later, but for now I want FF so I can keep bookmarks sync’d and such using delicious.

It’s 9:15 and the battery meter says I’m at 8hr14min and 97% – gonna run it unplugged for awhile and see how the battery does. Oh, and as a bonus… maybe it’s cause Acer owns Gateway now, but it seems to use the same size plug as my laptop so I’m hoping I can mix and match my power supplies.

Ok, next up was unintall Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton Online Backup. I also nuked the Google Toolbar for IE, nothing against Google, but I don’t plan on using IE, so why take up the space? Same for the Microsoft Office with it’s 60-day trial. I’ll be putting Open Office on here, so let’s get rid of that.

For basic protection I decided to try Panda Cloud Antivirus - it’s supposed to have a nice small footprint, resource friendly. We’ll see how it goes.

Only other stuff I noticed that that needed nuking; eBay Worldwide? yea.. gone. Microsoft Works? They still make this? Gone.

Then I went to ninite.com and used their custom install creator to add Dropbox, Skype, VLC Player, and Open Office. I still need Thunderbird, Filezilla, Pidgin, and a few other programs, but I may go with the portable versions, putting them in my Dropbox so I can run them from work, laptop or netbook… I already do this with KeePass (even sharing the database with my Ubuntu desktop).

I checked on the battery after an hour of heavy downloading and such, the battery meter now says 6hr46min (80%).

After that I decided to kick back for awhile and watched Max Payne, streamed it over my network from a burned copy on my desktop. My network is Wireless G, and it played just fine using VLC. The movie is 1hr43 min, just finished watching it and it’s been just about 3 hours since I first powered up – the battery is at 47% remaining and estimates about 2hr38minutes. It would be interesting to compare how it uses the battery playing a movie off it’s own hard drive vs pulling it over the network.

So far I’m pretty darn impressed by this thing. The 1024×600 screen will take some getting used to, but the video looks good. The base audio actually seems better than my Acer laptop, the test call with Skype had good audio and the mic picked up me snapping my fingers. the movie sounds really good using my headphones, picking up small background noises, etc.

Oh yea, the touchpad… it’s not really a separate pad – it’s pretty slick, just built in to the wrist-rest area. There’s some dots printed to indicate where the touch area is, and it has a scroll area on the right edge. There’s a single button along the front edge that functions as both left and right buttons depending on which side you click on. Still need to play with and get used to the multitouch, but the pinch to zoom in the browser is working pretty good.

I’m looking forward to playing with this some more tomorrow. The 93% sized keyboard will take a little getting used to, but I think it’s going to work good for what I got it for.

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