Wednesday, August 3, 2011

welcome, new friend!

I sold the laptop for $450, and I only wanted to pay $200 for a netbook. and running something other than Windows, I didn't need anything super duper.

I found what I wanted/needed at Best Buy for $199.99 plus tax, and picked her up this morning.
Gateway LT2802 Netbook
Intel Atom N455 1.66GHz- 667MHz FSB, 512KB L2 Cache
1GB RAM (for now)
Intel® GMA 3150
250GB hard drive
6-cell (6-8-hour) battery
WiFi, Ethernet, 3xUSB 2.0, VGA, card reader, headphones, mic, webcam



the screen is crisp and clear, and not too annoying regarding size, love the trackpad, and I will easily get used to the keyboard (the enter key is smaller than I would prefer- I keep hitting the ' key). the size and weight is perfect. tethering with the G2 was very smooth. install of Ubuntu 10.04.3 was surprisingly easy- in comparison to the Dell, that is. it runs snappy in Windows and Ubuntu- you seriously can't tell it's a 1.66 single-core processor with only 1GB of RAM. no graphics issues as of yet, and I don't really see any in the future.

very pleased with my purchase, so far... exactly what I was looking for and runs like a champ. the trackpad disable button even works in Ubuntu. score.

one complaint: entering BIOS/CMOS is a pain.. you need to start pumping the F2 key as soon as the screen goes black on a reboot, or as soon as you hit the power to turn it on. need to change the timing.

leaving Win7S alone, aside from removing some shortcuts off the desktop. installed Chrome, of course.

after I get some homework done, going to see about triple-booting with Chrome OS Linux. the RAM will be upgraded after the semester ends.

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interesting.. there's a Vista bootloader installed on one of the partitions.

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f that.. the dual-boot install split the 250GB hard drive between Win7 and Ubuntu.. and I don't care for that. I tried to erase the Vista partition (12GB) and install Ubuntu there, while making another partition for all files to be stored, but it didn't work the way I wanted. so buh-bye Win7Starter. all Ubuntu now.

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2GB stick ordered. not that I've noticed I need it, but just because it was under $20 shipped from Kingston.

and this is great- when the lid is closed, it goes into Suspend mode- turns off the wifi, etc.. practically ZERO battery drain.. for hours and hours and hours.. this really is an all-day netbook. very happy with my purchase.

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poop. the memory card reader is not yet supported. not a big deal right now, but may be at some point- them things are damn handy.

2 comments:

  1. I just upgraded to 2GB ram. PAIN. Remove the keyboard. this part is tricky because under the battery there is 3 plastic clips about 1" long that you have to remove to get the keyboard up. Then there are 5 screws you need to remove before the bottom will detach (this is also a pain) after that it is pretty straight forward. Even though I have 2GB of ram the bios will only allocate 8MB of it to video. anything about 480 off of youtube is choppy on the Gateway 2802U

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  2. I ordered the 2GB stick and will be installing in about two weeks.

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26855544/Gateway%20LT28%20Series%20Netbook%20Repair.pdf

    http://www.notebookforums.com/forum/thread/237671/lt2802u-ram-xp-install-instructions

    I'm not having any issues as of yet. I'm running Ubuntu only- not a big youtube person, but use the Hulu Desktop application at 480p- I'm fine with that. still searching for a way to allocate more memory to video within Linux. there must be a way.

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